CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I'M NOT LEAVING YOU
GRACE
Our second morning in San Francisco began with Sofia slumped over a toilet and me being the guardian angel, the savior, who had to hold her hair back because neither of us had enough time to find a hair tie.
She was lucky to have someone here with her. The only reason why I was there was because I ran into her in the hallway, courtesy of my crippling insomnia and her upset stomach, and I didn't have it in me to let her do this by herself. That's how the both of us ended up in a bathroom at five-thirty in the morning, trying not to wake anyone up.
I did try, though. I asked her so many times if she needed me to go get Meridian, the only person she ever listened to, but she refused every time. I don't want him to worry, she'd said. Let him sleep. It's not like he ever does. As frustrating as it was, I chose to trust and believe her on that one and didn't chase him down the hallway to handle this situation in my place because, well, it was five-thirty in the morning.
"Must have been something you ate," I said, in an attempt at being comforting. I didn't quite know how to do that, so I could only hope my words and my presence were doing a decent job at it. "You should drink some water."
"Maybe," she croaked out, sounding barely louder than a heartbeat. She'd finally stopped throwing up long enough to speak and I took that opportunity to fetch a small hand towel and dampen it with cold water. Her skin was feverish, scalding to the touch, and I was certain she'd appreciate the change in temperature. "I'm sorry. I know this is gross."
"A little bit," I admitted. "Are you sure you don't want me to go get—"
"Positive." She whimpered and hurled once again, while I rushed to pull her hair back once again. Even though we were trying to make as little noise as possible, some people in the house were light sleepers and I knew we were bound to wake someone up eventually. "I . . . I think I might—"
A quick, random flash of me running into June as she bought a pregnancy test went through my mind as Sofia tried to explain whatever messy situation she'd gotten herself into and I decided I didn't want to see it all go down again. I had already lost June over an unborn child; I wasn't going to let Sofia walk down the same road.
". . . really stupid," Sofia murmured, raising a shaky hand to flush the toilet—something I could have done a lot easier, yet I hadn't. "Stupid. So stupid."
"If the next words that come out of your mouth are something along the lines of 'I think I might be pregnant', I'm literally going to drown you."
Sofia turned her head to face me so quickly I was impressed, considering she'd been vomiting her guts out mere moments prior. Her dark eyes widened, looking even bigger now that her skin had paled and enhanced the purple circles, and her mouth dropped open in shock.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been so aggressive. Maybe that had been one of my biggest mistakes back when I thought I knew how to handle June's situation.
Maybe I was doing it all over again.
"No," she said, looking away. "No, of course not. That's, um . . . impossible. Quite literally."
"Good. We're not going through that again."
"We?"
"Yeah, bitch. We. I'm not leaving you." Sofia's lips twisted into a poor excuse for a smile for a split second, disappearing as quickly as that. I wanted to believe her stomach had quieted down, as she seemed to be holding up just fine, but I needed to remind myself to not think too ahead. "What's stupid, though? Did something happen?"
"I told Leon why I broke up with him."
I sighed, with all the patience in the world, or so I hoped. Even though I'd been the one to ask what had happened, I still wasn't a big fan of being pulled to relationship drama.
"So?"
"Do you know why I broke up with him?"
I shrugged. That was not the conversation I ever expected to have at almost six in the morning. "You'll have to forgive me, but I've never thought much about it. I could only imagine it must have had something to do with that charming personality of his."
Sofia grunted, slowly rising from the floor, and closed the toilet seat so she could sit on it. Then, she looked up at me, looking truly miserable, like a puppy left outside during a storm.
"I had to choose," Sofia confessed, arms wrapped around herself, and decided she no longer had the courage to look me in the eyes. "It was either him or June. I couldn't keep both so I . . . I knew I had to give something up. June had been my friend since forever—"
I raised my hand to cut her off. "June made you break up with Leon just so she could date him?"
"When you put it like that, it sounds kind of mean."
"Sofia. Dude." I leaned forward to place my hands on her shoulders to force her to stay awake and conscious. "I might be mean, but I refuse to sugarcoat things that are shitty just to make people feel better. If any of them ever made you feel like you had to choose between the two of them, then that's on them, not on you. Don't berate yourself for having been placed in that situation."
"No one forced me to do anything. I just . . . I just felt like I had to."
I pinched my nose bridge. "I'm going to try to explain my point as clearly as possible. You were pretty much manipulated into breaking up with your boyfriend, a guy that loved you, because your best friend loved him too. She was well aware it would hurt you and, instead of being there for you, she immediately ran after him when he was hurt and vulnerable just because she wanted to and because she could. She used your guilt against you, was more than okay with it, yet you still kept defending her. Why? Why did you do that? Don't you think it was messed up for your own best friend to put you in that situation?"
"It wasn't like that—"
"Sofia, I don't know how to not be blunt about this, but, to me, it sounds like June tended to be a really shitty friend to you, yet you're still putting her on a pedestal."
"Stop."
"If you stop to think about it, that wasn't the only time she blew you off. All those times when ballet was more important than watching your volleyball matches, all those times when you had to stop whatever you were doing just because she felt like it? All those times she gave you the cold shoulder and ghosted you for no apparent reason?"
"Stop."
"She didn't even text you, Sofia. She took my bike, texted everyone else, and, once again, didn't give a shit about you or any of us. What will it take for you to realize that she wasn't as good of a person as you thought she was?"
"Stop!"
She spoke so loudly I was certain she'd already woken up the entire house. I didn't want to be found in this situation, bringing the girlfriend of the guy who owned the house to angry tears, and I knew he'd come barging into the bathroom any minute now. Especially now, with her sobbing her heart out and choking in between.
Still, a part of me felt strangely proud. I knew Sofia well enough to know just how utterly stubborn she was, and I knew she wouldn't be in this state if she didn't see the truth in my words. She was coming to terms with the fact that she was believing in something that wasn't fully real. I was simultaneously proud and ashamed—ashamed I had used so many painful memories against my own friend.
Maybe I wasn't that much better of a friend to her.
"Sofia, it's okay," I murmured. "It's okay to break out of an illusion. It's okay."
"She was my best friend," she choked out, as the door swung open. Meridian only acknowledged my presence to make me step aside to get to her faster. It was the type of thing Christina would have done for me. "She was, wasn't she? It couldn't have all been a lie."
"No. I don't think it was, but not everything was—"
"I think you've done enough," Meridian chimed in. He was still groggy from having just been woken up—rudely so, even—and he spoke quietly, but the bathroom made his voice echo all around the house. "I'll handle it from here."
I raised a finger. "Don't tell me what to do."
He threw me quite an impressive glare, one that could possibly rival mine or my mother's. Almost. "This is my house, Grace. Go to bed."
"That's grand. Should I go outside to yell at you, then?"
Meridian rolled his eyes. I knew I was pushing my luck, but I wanted to hang onto the fact that Sofia would hesitate to tell him just why she was crying. I couldn't picture her talking to him about Leon, especially considering Meridian utterly despised him, and I low key wanted to believe I was safe from his wrath.
I threw them a military salute and exited the bathroom. Even though part of me believed I was doing the right thing, my chest felt strangely heavy—something I couldn't quite shake off.
As I crawled back into bed next to Christina, I wondered—was I really that much better than June? Wasn't I doing the exact same thing she'd done, doing the same bullshit she'd done to hurt other people as a way of justifying my own hurt feelings?
I groaned. Christina stirred on her side of the bed, then rolled around to face me, still sound asleep, and draped an arm around me.
I sighed. I'd deal with it when morning came.
The last thing I wanted to do was walk around Pier 39 on less than five hours of sleep. Courtney seemed pretty adamant about us doing so and I hadn't found the energy to refuse and lock myself in my designated bedroom, so I let her drag us all outside.
Christina dragged me by a hand across the Aquarium, looking up and around her in an explosion of aquamarine blue. She never stopped for long enough to get a proper look at the fish, unlike the majority of the people around us—unlike Meridian and Sofia, who never even bothered following the rest of us inside.
I supposed they had bigger things to worry about, more important subjects to discuss, but, if they were following June's instructions, we were meant to follow them together. Maybe they thought that, by splitting up into a smaller group, they'd cover more territory, but I couldn't picture them looking for cryptic clues around the pier. They wouldn't find anything while skipping down the Musical Stairs.
God, I hated piers.
"You okay?" Christina asked, with a hand resting against the glass capsule in front of us. She'd stopped right next to the moon jellies. "You seem a bit off today."
"I didn't sleep much," I said. That wasn't a lie; it simply was not the full truth. "I'm just counting down the minutes until we go back to the lake house so I can take a nap."
"I noticed." She drew back her hand. "I woke up in the middle of the night and you weren't there. Did something happen?"
My chest grew heavier with each lie—white or not—and half-truths I told her. We weren't supposed to keep so many things from each other, but I'd spent so much time going behind her back I feared I was walking down a path with no return.
Nevertheless, there were things I wasn't supposed to share with other people simply because they weren't my secrets to tell. If I wasn't even sharing them in therapy, which was meant to help me with whatever disorder I'd inherited from my mother, then I was going to great lengths to keep them away from prying ears.
"Sofia wasn't feeling too good," I explained. "I figured I'd stay with her for a while; you know, just to make sure she wouldn't, like, choke in her own vomit, or anything of the sort." I shrugged. Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. "Just wanted to look out for her, that's all."
"Why do you think they left without us?"
"Beats me. Maybe they just want some alone time."
"Yeah. Maybe." Christina sighed, then crossed her arms as she turned to face me. "I have a feeling they're hiding something. I have a feeling you are hiding something."
I let out a nervous laugh. "What makes you think that?"
"Well, I know you. Duh." She dramatically rolled her eyes. "I don't know why you feel like you have to do everything by yourself, but you can trust me every now and then. I've been told I'm a good listener."
"What if it's not about me? What if it's about someone else?"
"Hm?"
"I'm not keeping any secrets from you. At least, none that concern me." I swung back and forth on my heels. Felix and Xena were making their way towards us, and I definitely didn't want Mr. Gossiper to hear what I was about to say. "Everything I didn't tell you is about someone else. I don't like spreading people's secrets just like that."
"That's fair, but you can trust me. We're supposed to be in this together."
I groaned. "Fine. We'll talk on the way to the car."
Outside, the sun was setting, which meant it was time to go back to the lake house. I knew the fun only began after dark, which was when the children and the families went home and I could slide my fake ID to a naïve bartender, but my friends were determined to make my Spring Break my own personal hell on Earth. It was horrifyingly boring.
Fortunately for us and unfortunately for the environment, we'd brought the two cars to the pier, so we wouldn't have to wait around for Sofia and Meridian to come back, even if we had to break a few laws to fit the entire group in one vehicle. After an entire day of following June's Spring Break guide, we had no new answers.
At the same time, we had no new questions, which was somewhat comforting, but it didn't really make it much better.
Christina was fully up to date on everything I knew, which wasn't a lot more than what everyone else did, but it bet being in the dark. I caught her looking at Leon like one would glance at a sick puppy, with pity and all, and wanted to remind her so bad she should be channeling her negative emotions towards June and all her cryptic manipulation.
As much as I wanted to do it, it wasn't wise to do it with Leon in the car. I had no desire to get into an accident.
The only thing remotely relevant happened near dinner time, which was when the front door opened and closed. Meridian and Sofia came barging in, carrying several grocery bags—after all, we shouldn't spend the entire week surviving on takeout and junk food—and Courtney rushed to help them, while the rest of us stayed put.
We waited. I knew so many people there were dying to demand answers from them, as they certainly couldn't have spent the entire day grocery shopping, but no one had the balls to do it.
No one but me, as it seemed.
"So, where the hell were you?" I asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. "You disappeared."
"We went grocery shopping. Before that, we went to San Francisco Ballet," Sofia revealed, tossing her cardigan to the back of a couch, "to see if there was anything we could check out, but they were closed. Won't open until two days from now."
"And you didn't think we should know about it?" Leon questioned, without ever looking at her, and kept flipping through the TV channels, in search of something worth his time. I scoffed. Sofia never bothered replying and I knew Meridian certainly wouldn't give him the time of day. "Duly noted."
"So, did you guys find anything?" she continued, as if he hadn't even spoken.
"No," Christina replied. Sofia's face dropped. "Nothing suspicious, nothing helpful. Just a whole bunch of . . . regular Spring Break in San Francisco stuff."
Leon stopped switching the channels, a significant change in the background noise, and I was just about to chastise him for wanting to watch the news, out of all things, when I noticed what had caught his eye.
The first thing I saw was the detective in charge of June's case. The second one was the headline—they were releasing an official statement.
They'd figured it out. Way before we had.
"Based on the evidence we collected at the scene and the multiple interviews we've conducted, we're ready to close this case," he said, as cameras flashed around him and blinded his deputies. I recognized Joffrey and Clare, the ones who had interrogated me and, probably, everyone in the room. "With that being said, we've ruled Juniper Beaumont's death as accidental."
so, that's that. explanations will be headed your way in the next chapter.
also, in case you're wondering "so, was sofia interrogated or is this a plot hole??" you'll also get an answer to that. did you know there are only two chapters left? because there are.