The Last Time We Were Us (2 page)

“Liz,” Lyla says, looking up from the magazines. “Just the person I wanted to see. I need to talk to you about the bridesmaid dresses.”

“Hey, sweetie.” Mom looks up at me, a wide smile showing off her straight whitened teeth. “How was your little excursion?”

“Excursion?” Lyla temporarily forgets about the dresses.

“She went out with Innis
Taylor
,” Mom says. “What’s that, the second date this week?”

“Don’t order the engagement announcements just yet,” I say. “A trip to Crown Commons doesn’t exactly count as a date.”

“Crown Commons?” Mom shakes her head, disgusted, like she’s found a hair in her glass of scuppernong. “Why would you go there? You never want to be that far down on Irving Road.”

“We went to the Target,” I lie, sliding onto the chair next to Lyla’s. “And for the millionth time, it’s not the ‘bad part of town.’ There’re like eight new condo complexes and the Target is brand-new.” I take a sip of Lyla’s coffee without asking. She makes it extra sweet, just like I like.

“Let’s forget about the fact that Liz is hanging out in the hood,” Lyla says, even though she knows as well as I do that it’s not. “What’s this about seeing Innis multiple times a week?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Can you guys not get totally ahead of yourselves?”

My mother is already horrified that I’m
seventeen years old
and have never had a boyfriend. Apparently, Carolina girls are not only the best in the world, but they’re supposed to have the boyfriend thing down pat. Lyla had been dating Skip for two years by the time she was my age.

“Okay, okay.” Mom throws up her hands. “Crucify me for being curious about my
baby’s
life.”

Lyla’s eyes narrow at me like she’s got a question on the tip of her tongue, but her smile comes back, and she seems to let it go for now. She tugs on the ends of my hair. “When are you going to grow it long again?”

Mom and Lyla hate my “short” hair almost as much as the fact that I don’t go by
Lizzie
anymore.

“It’s past my shoulders, geez,” I say. “When are you going to shut up about it?”

“Girls,” Mom says. “Please.”

I sip the last of Lyla’s coffee to spite her.

“So anyway.” Lyla puts her serious voice on. “I need your opinion on the bridesmaid dresses. Sea foam or baby blue?”

“Neither?” I ask. “You know I hate pale colors.”

Lyla holds up two fabric swatches. “Come on. Indulge me.”

“How about electric orange with hints of chartreuse?”

“You are going to wear a sea-foam or baby-blue dress.” She puts her swatches down and crosses her arms. “I’m giving you, and only you, the option to weigh in, Miss Maid of Honor. Don’t waste it.”

I let out a sigh. “Blue, then. And please, no ruffles.”

Lyla rubs her hands together like she’s concocting an evil plot. “I want tiers of them, and sparkles, and tulle, and a big satin bow that goes right on your ass.”

“Lyla,” Mom scolds. “Your words.”

We both laugh, but Mom shakes her head, flipping a page in her magazine. “I should never have let you quit cotillion.”

Quit
. Mom made the mistake of putting me in Lyla’s chapter when I was eleven. After I tossed a dessert fork holding a maraschino cherry at my sister, the rogue fruit splattering all over another girl’s formal dress, we were both very politely asked never to return.

“Oh,” Lyla says, putting her planner voice on again. “Before I forget. Can you email me Veronica’s address? I know it’s late, but I thought it would be nice to send her a proper invitation.”

“Veronica?” I ask.

“Yes,” Lyla says. “I figured you’d want her at the wedding. She’s your best friend.”

Mom raises her eyebrows at my sister—I haven’t told her the whole Veronica saga, but, like a mom, she’s probably figured most of it out—but Lyla doesn’t catch on.

“I don’t know if she’d want to come,” I say.

Lyla, in true big sister form, misinterprets me. “I was trying to be nice,” she says. “I thought you’d want someone at the wedding.”

I run my finger along the tabs of the huge binder, avoiding Lyla’s eyes. “I’ve just been hanging out more with MacKenzie, I guess.”

Lyla knows as well as I do that that’s high school code for
we aren’t really friends anymore.

“What happened?” she asks. “I liked Veronica.”

Mom clears her throat. “Why don’t you just give Liz a plus one and let her decide? We can’t invite the whole rising senior class.”

Lyla looks from Mom to me, but seems satisfied. “All right.” She closes the binder, and I whip my finger away just in time. “Do what you want.”

Mom stands up. “That’s settled then. You girls want some potato salad or something?”

“None for me,” Lyla says. “August sixth is less than two months away. Bridal potbellies are not the answer.”

I roll my eyes because Lyla couldn’t gain weight if she tried. “I’m okay.”

“Well, if you’re not hungry, I’m going to go upstairs and get ready. The Homeowners’ meeting is at Suzanne’s in half an hour.” She looks at Lyla. “Will you be here later?”

She shakes her head, stuffs the binder into her bag. “I’m meeting Benny’s parents for dinner.”

Mom nods on her way out. “Just make sure you decide on the bridesmaid dresses by tomorrow. Mrs. Barton needs to know.”

“Righto.” Lyla looks at me. “Extra bows.”

Mom is barely up the stairs before Lyla starts in. “So what’s this about Innis? You two are dating?”

“I don’t know. . . . It’s hard to tell.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, totally oblivious.

“I mean I’m not you, Lyla. Guys don’t ask me to be their girlfriend on day one.”

She giggles. “Benny was just eager, is all.”

“Everyone’s eager with you,” I say.

She shrugs. “Well, are you enjoying Crawford Hall at least? That house is crazy.”

“I’ve only ever been in the basement.”

“What do you mean?” Lyla asks, scrunching up her nose. “You go straight to the basement?”

Of course Lyla would have had free rein of the main house. She’s Lyla. “Yeah,” I say. “I told you, I’m not his girlfriend. I haven’t properly met his parents or anything.”

“Still seems weird,” she says, but she sees I’m hurt and tries to lighten the mood. “Well, the house is out of this world. Seriously.”

“If I ever make it in, I’ll let you know what I think.”

“You will,” she says. “I’m sure Innis is just different about things like that, that’s all.”

I lean forward, rest my elbows on the table. “So would it bother you? If we were actually dating?”

Lyla pretends to be fascinated by her hands. When she finally looks up, her lips are pressed together, determined. “He’s a good guy,” she says. “From a good family. If he’s the one you like, then, no, it wouldn’t bother me at all.”

Guilt hits me first, because she’s no good at hiding the pain on her face, but then thankfulness, that in spite of everything, she supports me in this, even though I don’t know what “this” is yet.

“Are you going to bring him to the wedding?” She forces a smile.

I am nowhere near asking Innis to any kind of official function, much less my sister’s wedding. “Wouldn’t that be a little weird?”

She shakes her head quickly. “It’s been two years,” she says. “All that stuff with Skip is behind me.”

For a split second, I wonder if I could tell her about Jason, if it really is behind her.

But I think about Lyla at seventeen, about those first months after that horrible night, and I decide that telling her is not for the best.

Chapter 2

M
AC
K
ENZIE AND
I
GET TO
I
NNIS
’
S JUST AFTER NINE.

Crawford Hall stands in front of us, gorgeous in the evening dusk, a rich, buttercream yellow that only gets more beautiful with age. Shutters flank every window—deep hunter green—and not the kind that are tacked on for show, like the ones on my house. These ones have purpose, clapping together when you want to shut out the world.

We park on the street, just off to the side, because we still aren’t sure what we’re supposed to do with the circular driveway that leads to the huge garage behind the house.

Kenzie reapplies her lip gloss before hopping out of the car and striking a ridiculous model pose just for me—leave it to the girl to always make me laugh.

We walk past a screened-in wraparound porch full of white wicker and oak rockers. The screens are speckled with thirsty mosquitoes and horseflies. It’s the right time of night for lightning bugs; one buzzes by me, and out of habit, I cup my hands together, catch it on the first try.

“You’re strangely good at that,” Kenzie says.

“I just have a lot of practice. Don’t tell me they don’t have lightning bugs in Ohio, either.” Kenzie moved here from “up North,” as Mom calls it, last summer.

“We do,” Kenzie says. “And we call them fireflies like normal people.”

I peek at the yellow-orange light that fills the cave of my palms. Jason and I used to spend hours filling jelly jars, seeing whose could shine brightest. I let it go, and in seconds, its light goes out.

“So what’s so great about the inside of the house anyway?” Kenzie asks. “Why is your sister freaking out about us only going to the basement?”

I put on my best tour guide voice: “Lorne Crawford—that’s Innis’s great-grandfather a bunch of times over—was an inventive businessman who was able to turn his thriving tobacco business into a successful investment firm after the Civil War. Crawford Hall has been in the family since seventeen-hundred something-or-other.”

She looks at me. “What are you, a stalker? Did you study up on his house?”

I laugh. “It’s on a plaque in the library, next to something they donated. Although the more informal version is—‘The Crawfords used to grow tobacco. Now they grow money.’”

Kenzie laughs, too. “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we aren’t in Ohio anymore.”

We walk a little farther, and the sweeping daylight basement comes into view.

“Did they have slaves and everything?” Kenzie asks, as if the thought’s only just dawned on her.

“Probably,” I say, and it leaves a bad, bitter taste in the back of my mouth, like the whole place is tainted. Mom says we shouldn’t judge the dead, different time and all that, but I can’t help but be glad that
my
great-great-great-whatever-grandfather was in Ireland, and not lording over a Southern tobacco plantation, way back when.

“God,” Kenzie says. “That’s terrible.”

“It is,” I say.

When we get to the basement, the subject drops, and the mood changes. Through the windows, I see the glow of electric violence on the flat-screen: Innis’s latest steal-cars-and-chase-girls video game.

He loads the characters on-screen with bullets and doesn’t look up as we let ourselves in.

“Ladies.” Payton Daughtry flashes a hundred-dollar grin and raises his beer in a mock toast. His buddy, Alex McGuiness, follows up with a loud, thick burp.

The screen villains are dead now, and Innis pulls his gaze from the TV. He looks me up and down, smiles wide. He doesn’t do gushy compliments—at least not in front of other people—but I can tell he thinks I look pretty.

“We can thank Miss Grant for the provisions,” he says.

Payton hands us each a beer, and I follow MacKenzie to a couch along the wall. Innis gives my freshly shaved legs another quick look before he goes back to his game.

So far, we’re the only girls here. Since the beginning of summer, our bad fake IDs, courtesy of Kenzie’s shady second cousin in Ohio, have been our ticket to Innis’s weekly hangouts, but we’re usually surrounded by at least a few other girls: Alexis Clairemont, Innis’s freshman-year girlfriend who still hangs around. Marisa Wong, Alex’s on-again, off-again, who loves Goldschläger—“it’s like drinking jewelry!”—Jessica Jackson and Nicole Tully, two cheerleaders who practice together, tan together, and even hooked up with Blake Edgeworth together last summer.

Kenzie and I are usually the final stragglers, and the last three times I was here, Innis and I ended the night by making out on the couch while Payton and MacKenzie slipped away to Payton’s car or the pool or wherever. Still, it’s annoying to have all the other girls around, a little reminder that the boys would be just fine without us.

“You think anyone else is coming?” I whisper.

Kenzie leans in. “Fingers crossed, no.”

“Seriously?”

“I told Payton we were tired of providing beer for basically every other girl at East Bonneville. From the looks of it, he got the hint.”

If MacKenzie could apply half her acumen for breaking into the popular crowd and “getting us hot boyfriends” to school, she’d be one of those freak geniuses who graduate Harvard at sixteen. To her, there’s no love or luck. Just challenges to be solved.

I take a sip of beer and try not to get my hopes up, not too much, at least. If boys are challenges, Innis is Mount Freaking Everest. He’s not just high school royalty, he’s town royalty. And when he grows up, he’ll still be royalty. Just the banker-doctor-lawyer kind. He’s got an almost guaranteed admittance to Duke, where both of his parents are big donors. He’ll be popular for the rest of his life. Maybe it’s the money or the breeding or that he lives in the town’s most famous house. Or maybe it’s the fact that, in everyone’s eyes, he’s the ultimate brother. No one will ever forget what happened to Skip, because bad things don’t happen to the Crawfords and the Taylors of this world without there being a villain and a hero.

Innis is the hero.

He looks like one, too. His hair is dark and curly, a mop of ringlets set off with cool, gray eyes. His cheeks have a hint of red, and his jaw is strong. He wears a rotation of bright polos and too-tight khakis, like he just stepped out of a preppy photo shoot. And when he’s not trying to be a badass, yelling at a guy on the lacrosse team or bragging about a video-game score, when it’s just the two of us and he looks at me like I’m his, I have to remind myself to breathe.

“When do I get to play?” MacKenzie asks Payton with a well-designed pout. He gives her a half look, his eyes still glued to the screen. She’ll get his attention eventually, though. Always does. I wish I could convince her that there are better goals than Payton Daughtry, who has the makings of a beer belly at just seventeen and is quite likely to outlive his IQ, but she wants him, and what MacKenzie wants, MacKenzie gets. It only took her five short months at East Bonneville before she moved Veronica and me to a centrally located cafeteria table, buddied up to the popular girls, joined the softball team, and started getting invites to parties.