“If you’re thinking about bringing up certain topics,” he began, tightening a lug nut like it had done him a world of wrong, “then it was both.”

Swallow pride. Apologize. My internal dialogue was having to guide me through this. “I’m sorry I followed you that night to Holly’s,” I swallowed, something about that name just didn’t feel right to say, “and I’m sorry I went off on you the next morning.”

“I don’t care about any of that,” he said, clenching his jaw.

“You don’t?” I crossed my arms. “Then why are you still so damn pissed at me you’re about to blow your lid?” Being someone prone to bouts of temper overload, I could spot another’s ticks from ten paces.

Jude exhaled, leaning his forehead into the tire. “Damn it all to hell,” he muttered, banging his socket wrench on the metal cart behind him. “Because,” he began, shifting his eyes over at me, “because you took his word over mine.”

That rendered me speechless. In all my midnight over analyzations, I’d never arrived at this conclusion. “And I was wrong to?” I said slowly. “Because it turned out Sawyer was right.”

“He was right about what?” Jude said in a tone that was scarily controlled.

“You and Holly.” Man, I hated saying that name. I was done. She would now be referred to as the tramp that shall not be named.

“Me and Holly, eh?” He fastened another lug nut into place. “So you didn’t think to ask me about her before you decided to stage a stake out? You didn’t choose to trust me over him?”

“Jude,” I sighed in frustration. He wasn’t getting it, or I wasn’t getting it. One of us was definitely not getting it and neither of us was speaking the same language. “It turns out I had no reason to trust you.”

“And you know this for a fact because?” he asked, fastening the last nut into place. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye; being near him and arguing was better than passing by him and being ignored.

“Because I saw you, Jude,” I said, wondering how much I needed to spell out for him to get it. “I saw you with Holly and . . .” I swallowed, “and the baby. I saw it all.”

“You saw me with Holly and the baby,” he repeated, nodding his head with each word. “And that’s why you can’t trust me?”

This should be more obvious than it was to him. Unless cheating behind one’s back had become a morally accepted practice recently. “I think that pretty much sums it up,” I said, wondering if I was missing something. Something so obvious I was overlooking it.

“Well, there you have it,” he said, striding to the opposite wall. “We’re at an impasse again. Neither one of us trusts the other.” Pressing the lever, the Mazda lowered to the ground.

I didn’t want to go, I wanted to figure out what the hell was going on between us. What gaps we’d been remiss to fill in. “I get you’re still pissed at me and I’m still a little pissed with you too,” I said, following him around the back. “But do you think we can get over it and be friends again?”

He laughed one low note, heaving the flat tire into the trunk.

“I miss you, Jude. I miss having one friend that actually has my back and isn’t throwing daggers at it when I turn around.”

He stopped, keeping his back at me. “Sorry, Lucy. You and I can’t be friends.” Shouldering by me, he went around to the driver’s door and opened it.

“Since when do you call me Lucy?” I asked, feeling a new depth of heartbreak.

“Since we stopped being friends.” He craned his neck to the side, motioning me into the car.

I wouldn’t be herded. I planted my feet and crossed my arms. “You can’t make that choice for the both of us,” I said, glaring at him. “You don’t want to be my friend, fine, that’s real big of you. But you can’t tell me I can’t be your friend. So go screw yourself and deal with it.” Hello, temper, nice to see you raising your ugly head again.

His face didn’t even soften like it used to when I went off on him. “People like you and me cannot be friends, Luce,” he said, staring at me like he used to, “and you know it too.”

“What do I know?” I asked, waiting. And waiting. “Come on,” I said, marching towards him. “What do I know?” Because, for the umpteenth time, I didn’t have a clue.

His lips tightened as he tried to slide aside. I didn’t let him. I blocked his path, shoving him back. “Come on, Ryder. What the hell do I know?”

His eyes blazed, meeting mine. “You can’t be friends with the person you were meant to spend your life with,” he said, his eyes darkening. “So get on with your life and live mine the hell alone.” Nudging by me, he jogged out of the garage and kept going.

And what I regretted most, more than anything I’d screwed up along Jude’s and my journey together, was that I didn’t go after him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Every day of the rest of the school year, I regretted letting him go that day at the garage. I regretted not chasing after him and holding him captive until he explained exactly what the hell he was trying to say. In concise, detailed sentences a woman could decipher.

The months that followed our cryptic conversation left me wishing the silent treatment back because now when Jude passed me in the hall, he was no longer intentionally ignoring me. It was as if I didn’t exist.

I’d gone from something he despised to something he didn’t notice in the space of one conversation that only gave light to more questions.

I turned eighteen last month and was going to graduate next week, and in the fall, I would be a freshman at Juilliard. It was a time to celebrate, to let down my once again long hair and look back at the past with nostalgia and forward to the future with hope.

I was having a tough time implementing that idea and, although I would never allow myself to openly admit the reason why I felt like some lost ship in the night, at the very core of me where things like right and wrong, truth and love existed, I knew why.

“I’m calling time out on your zoning out bouts tonight, Lucy,” Taylor shouted at me over the stereo blasting some song about summer and friends and partying. It was really a terribly cliche song, but I suppose it set the mood for the night. “Tonight is about nothing but having a killer time and being in the moment.”

Sage words coming from a girl that mainly talked about her bright future. “And by that you mean getting smashed and making out with the first piece of ass you see, in the moment?”

Taylor groaned. “And I thought I was a cynic.”

Turning the volume down, I pulled the top of the dress Taylor had stuffed me in up and the bottom of it down. There, now it covered half of my boobs and most of my ass. “Sorry. It just comes so natural when you’ve dressed me like a cheap hooker on her way to work.”

“You’re wearing pearl earrings, for crap’s sake, Lucy,” she said. “Last time I checked, hookers didn’t wear pearls.”

“Fine,” I said, checking my reflection in the mirror for the third time. Could she have added another coat of mascara before my eyelashes snapped in half? “A hooker on her way to church.”

Taylor laughed, staring over at me when we hit a red light. “Jewelry, huh?” she gave me a scandalous look. “Somebody must have been very good, or very naaauw-tie, to get a pair of pearl earrings for a graduation gift.”

“Your depravity never ceases to astound me,” I said, sticking my tongue out. “And the earrings were a graduation gift from my parents, not Sawyer.”

Thank god he hadn’t given me any jewelry yet because I was about three commitment levels below jewelry.

The light flashed green and Taylor gunned her little Volkswagen off the line. “You only have yourself to blame for that. Guys get jewelry for girls as a reward for putting out. It’s a simple fact of life.”