“Don’t go actin’ like you know, Lane.” Curtis flashed a semi-toothed smile. “We all know what you and that goat were doing all last summer.”

I raised my eyebrows, hoping I was misunderstanding the implication.

“Y’all don’t know shit,” Lane said. “Least I ain’t popped one of my testies blowin’ up a lawnmower like some kind of dumbass.”

Curtis shot him a look and gave him a shove. “You ain’t supposed to talk about that in front of strangers.”

“And you ain’t supposed to bring up Greta.”

As weird as the conversation was, I was smiling and enjoying the hell out of my evening. This trip to Fairhope was one of the first real breaks I’d taken from my regular life in a long time. I could feel a sort of calming warmth rising up inside me day by day. This was the sort of stuff I’d been craving without realizing it. Some dumb guy talk. Some fishing, even if I wasn’t catching anything. It all felt good, and as the conversation dwindled except for the occasional fight between Curtis and Lane, my thoughts drifted along, just as lazily as the river water.

I thought about what kind of life I might want when I was older. Would I really be happy if I swore off relationships forever? No, I thought. And if I found the woman I wanted, wouldn’t I do anything to keep her? Yes.

I was done pretending I didn’t want Pearl like that. I did. I was ready to be a dumbass and put my heart on the line again. But the part I wasn’t ready for was trusting myself. I’d been the one to fuck things up just as often as it had gone the other way. I was the problem, even when it might’ve looked the other way around. I got bored. I stopped putting in the effort to be a good boyfriend. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the relationships always soured.

Even if I might want to go straight back to Pearl and tell her I wanted her–no more pretending–I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t because I cared about her. Caring about her meant I wasn’t going to risk fucking things up with her. She deserved better. She deserved a guy who wouldn’t let her down.

So I would make sure I never let her down by making sure I didn’t get the chance. The decision sat in my stomach like spoiled food, but I knew it was the right one, so I bared it.

27

PEARL

Lizzie gave a twirl and a sassy little shoulder bump. She looked breathtaking, of course. Her dress was every little girl’s dream and her hair was bouncy and curled to perfection. “Well?” she asked.

“Jonas will definitely want to tear that off you,” Steph said, sounding bored. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it? We spend all this effort picking out the perfect clothes when the goal is kind of to make some guy want to get us out of them. It’s like picking food that would taste the best to throw up, or something.”