Most Likely to Succeed

She nodded, gazing out my window at the blue sky. “Lynn loves him.”

“A lot of people do.”

“So does Harper’s grandfather, which is saying a lot, because that man . . .” She didn’t have to finish. Everybody knew Mr. Moreau was hard to get along with. If he loved Sawyer, Sawyer was special.

“Lynn says I’ve been too hard on him,” my mother said, “and on you. After discussing it with your father, I think I was wrong to ground you, or to prevent you from dating him. But if you do have sex, you’re using a condom in addition to your IUD every time, yes?”

“Mom,” I said with both hands splayed in front of me, “we broke up.”

“Oh.” My mother sounded sad.

I was so angry with her that I couldn’t even feel anymore. I flopped backward on the bed and closed my eyes.

“Tell me what happened,” came my mother’s voice.

“He stuck by me through a lot,” I said woodenly, “but you have been awful. There was just so much even he could stand, I guess.”

She shifted up the bed and twisted a lock of my hair to make a tighter curl when she fingered it out. “I’m confident you can solve that problem,” she said. “You are smarter, and stronger, and more of a woman than I’ve given you credit for. I’m sorry.”

I opened one eye, and then the other, to stare at her in disbelief. She concentrated on pulling out the twist and placing the curl across my temple, framing my face. Finally she met my gaze. She said again, “I’m sorry.”

My voice sounded throaty with crying as I said, “I have an appointment Monday to see a counselor at school about stress management.”

My mother raised her eyebrows. “That’s a positive step.”

“I think so too. It was Sawyer’s idea. He set it up for me.”

She nodded slowly. “Why don’t you invite him over to go out on the boat with you and your father tomorrow? He can stay for lunch.”

“Because we are not spea-king,” I enunciated. My mother didn’t quite seem to get that Sawyer and I were broken up for good.

Then she said, “You need to eat breakfast, or lunch, or whatever you want to call it. I’ll fix you anything you like. But right now, you need to hop downstairs, because Aidan is here.”

“Oh. My. God.” The last person on earth I wanted to deal with this afternoon. The thought of him made me feel like I weighed five hundred pounds and had sunk permanently into the bed. “I don’t suppose you could tell him I’m asleep. Or dead?”

My mother shook her head, as I knew she would. She’d never in my life let me avoid a confrontation.

I rolled my eyes, put on a bra under my T-shirt, and slouched down the steps and onto the front porch. I never would have appeared like this in front of Aidan before, but I honestly didn’t care what he thought of me anymore. My decision was reinforced when I saw he’d taken the swing with the comfortable cushion. I had to settle for the seat across from him. I didn’t even bother to hold my head up, just collapsed across the wicker and waited for his bullshit.

“I came to apologize,” he said.

Now I looked up at him, curious. This was one of those rare times he dropped his pompous tone and let me see the real boy he’d been hiding under all that bravado.

He really was sorry.

“I’ve been thinking hard about what I did to you last night,” he said, “and what Will said to me afterward. I really regret it.” He mumbled under his breath, “The hangover doesn’t help.”

I squinted my eyes to focus on him in the dappled shade. He did look a little green. I said, “I imagine not.”

“The office of the president went to my head,” Aidan said. “You’ve been telling me that, but I couldn’t hear you. We’ve been drifting apart for a while. Probably ever since we started going out in the first place. I’ve been angry with you about that, which got rolled into my feelings about student council, and . . .” He heaved a sigh. “I hear you now.”

“Good.”

“The last time I was over here,” he said, “I got that letter of recommendation from your mom. You were mad at me for waiting to break up with you until after. The truth is, I was thinking at that point that it would be cool if I got into Columbia and you didn’t.”

“Really.” I swallowed. I’d understood he resented me. I hadn’t realized how much.

“I should have known better than to ask you for a break rather than a breakup, and to try to hold on to you at the same time I was letting you go. I don’t know where a lot of this negativity comes from. Maybe we just got together too young, and we were together too long.”

I finally sat up. “It’s not all your fault,” I said. “Lately I’ve realized I was counting you as one of my accomplishments, something to put on college applications. You know, ‘Dating the student council president, Most Likely to Succeed.’ I thought that way in ninth grade. I guess I don’t think that way anymore.”

“Well, maybe we won’t have to cross paths in college. I’m not sure I want to apply early admission to Columbia anymore. If we get in, we’re locked in, and I’m not positive I want that to be my one and only choice.”

“Me too,” I said, seeing this for the first time. Flopping across the seat again, I asked, “Are you going to apologize to Angelica, too?”