Page 92 of Bloom

“You were upset, and I didn’t want you driving back without me.” He wraps his arm around my shoulders and I lay my head against him. “She feels really bad, just so you know. And the only thing she told Allison about was the flowers, and the fact that we were together.”

I nod. “You know, I’m not even mad it got into the magazine. I’m just hurt, and I was already hurt. How can she be so willing to believe such awful things about me, James?”

“I have no idea,” he says. “But I know it’ll work itself out. So the article was bad, huh?”

“I guess you haven’t read it then,” I sigh. I tell him the highlights, feeling him tighten beneath and around me with each detail.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

“I don’t know. If I call my mom, she’ll tell me to talk to their lawyer. And he’ll tell me not to say anything, because that’s what my dad will have told him. But I’m sick of making decisions based on what works best for other people.”

“I wish you had better parents,” he says quietly. “Don’t get pissed when I say this, but you’re too young to have to deal with all this shit by yourself.”

“I kind of agree,” I tell him. “But you know, my mom did give me one good piece of advice when this all began. She said to be smart, not defiant. And I think, in this case, that maybe speaking up is both. Even if my dad doesn’t care about my reputation, I do.”

Chapter 50

I ask Corinne to set up the interviews. It’s a lot to ask, given that when she sets up a TV exclusive it will be with the competition, something that could easily get her fired. But she’s happy to do it, and agrees with my strategy: one print interview and one TV interview, each chosen with the utmost care because I’m not going to say what I have to say more than twice.

She squashes my initial plan to do the interviews on the way back to school. “If you wait that long, the story will have cemented itself in people’s minds. You need to get on air the very first minute you can.”

James and I are sitting on the deck waiting for Corinne to call back when Ginny walks out. Her movements are purposeful, heavy, as she approaches.

James jumps to his feet. “I’m gonna shower,” he says. Liar. He already showered this morning. I sense I’ve been set up.

He walks inside and we sit in a silence so awkward that I begin to stand and follow James. “I’m sorry,” she says abruptly. The words are so rushed it’s hard to tell if she actually means them, but I lower back into my seat. “Not just for what I said about you and James. For everything. The whole summer.”

I’d thought an apology would make me feel better, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t change the things she’s accused me of this summer, and that’s what sits at the root of my anger. “I just don’t get it,” I say. “We were best friends for 16 years. You don’t turn on someone after that long the way you did.”

“I know,” she says in a choked voice. “You’re totally right. Allison had a lot to do with it, but I’d be lying if I said it was all her fault, because the truth is I was already jealous.”

“Jealous of what?” I ask. She’s got a brother who loves her and two parents who are still together and appear to care about her and a boyfriend she’s been with for three years … what could I possibly have that she would want?

“Everything’s always come so easily to you,” she replies. “Always. Look at this summer — I have to work two jobs because my parents think it will ‘instill responsibility’ while you don’t even have to work at all. But even as a kid, you just had this amazing life. Me and James are stuck back in Connecticut every summer while you take off for Italy. You meet celebrities, you travel. My whole life revolved around the last presidential campaign, but you were the one who got to go to the inauguration and you didn’t even care.”

“Ginny, I would have … ”

She cuts me off. “I know. You’d have gotten me a ticket. You’d have given up yours. I know you would have. That’s how you are, and you’ve done things like that for me our entire lives. I didn’t want to ask. I was tired of being the person who had to ask. I was tired of the fact that you were always in the position to give. It’s not like I sat around dwelling on it, but then last year Allison started pointing it out. And once she did I started seeing it everywhere.”

“That still doesn’t explain how you could have believed I’d cheat on your brother or try to steal someone’s boyfriend.”

“Like I said, I can’t blame her entirely but she just kind of put ideas in my head. Like when she found out you were coming down, she said I was lucky Alex was gone for the summer because girls like you tend to prove their worth by accruing men, especially those who belong to someone else.”

“She didn’t even know me … ” I argue.

She stops me. “I know that’s not you and I told her that, and then she says, ‘so you never liked someone who liked her instead?’ and of course that did happen. It happened all the time. Not just Timmy Phillips but like, every guy I ever liked wanted you instead and … ”

“That’s not true,” I counter. “Tons of boys liked you.”

“But they always liked you first, Elle,” she says quietly. “And that gets old. I don’t think I knew how sick of it I was until Allison pointed it out, and then I was like, ‘wow, I’d never thought of it like that’. And the thing is, Alex was gone but I did have a crush on someone here. I didn’t tell anyone because I was embarrassed, but then you’re here for two seconds and all of a sudden you’re best friends with him and spending all this time together and I just started to believe her theory. Especially after she caught you guys together … ”

“Wait,” I say, cutting her off. “There is so much to clarify in that statement. ‘Him’? Who’s ‘him’? The only guy I hang with aside from James is Max.”

She runs her tongue over her teeth, a habit from the days of braces, and shrugs.

“Max?” I screech. “He’s your ‘crush’? You spend all your free time maligning him and lecturing him. You like him? Like that?”

“Yes,” she says reluctantly. “I like him. Like that. But he was always hitting on you. You know, all ‘ooh, Elle looks just like her mom’ and shit like that.”