Connor glanced over at Mark, and she couldn’t read the look that passed between them. She bent her knees to her chest and brushed sand off the calves of her white jeans, which were all wrong for a party like this.

“So, HB,” Connor started. “There’s something I should maybe . . . tell you real quick.”

Annabelle planted her good hand in the sand and burrowed her fingers in. Those words could be good—some kind of confession about how he felt. But would he do that right in front of Jordan and Mark? And would that be quick?

She slid her fingers under the surface of the sand until she found a rock, and then she closed her hand around it and squeezed.

And that’s when the girl showed up. Wavy brown hair that flew around her face in the wind, rosy cheeks, and eyes that could have been pale brown or pale green or hazel—Annabelle couldn’t see well enough in the twilight to be sure. The girl carried a shiny blue beer can in each hand, and the pieces started to shift together, even though they still didn’t quite click. The indent in the sand right next to Connor. No beer for Connor when Annabelle sat, but an extra one in this girl’s hand.

Connor cleared his throat and rubbed one hand around in the sand, leaving a ripply arch shape.

“Hi there,” the girl said.

Her cheeks were seriously rosy. As if she’d been out shoveling in a snowstorm instead of hanging out at a beach party. They made her look pretty in a low-key, outdoorsy kind of way.

“Who’s your friend, Con?”

Con. And now Annabelle saw the way she looked at him. Tilted head. Small, private smile. Like he was hers. And her eyes were hazel—Annabelle could tell for sure now.

Annabelle felt like she’d been underwater too long, and she was struggling to make it up for air.

“Caroline, this is Annabelle,” Connor mumbled, and his face was pink, too. Not rosy-cheeked like this Caroline. Embarrassed.

Was he embarrassed for Annabelle?

Did he know why she was really here at the party? Why she texted him all the time, thinking—ack!—thinking she was being confident and spontaneous, not pathetic and desperate?

He knew she liked him, so he’d been about to tell her about Caroline. To break it to her that he was taken.

And now Annabelle was in Caroline’s seat. She’d been getting herself all worked up over every message from Connor, convincing herself that every reply was proof of his interest. She’d thought Kayla and Elisa didn’t know what they were talking about. She’d thought Ruby was her biggest competition. She never in a million years would have believed that there could be someone else completely.

“I like your shirt,” Caroline said. “It’s adorable.”

Adorable. Like a puppy or a baby or a personalized purple towel.

A few hours before, Annabelle had admired the way the thin striped fabric clung to her chest and waist. But now she saw: It didn’t matter that the shirt showed off her new curves. She only looked like she was trying too hard—playing dress-up in her mom’s clothes.