Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley

CHAPTER 40

The next morning, Lily found herself at Juanita’s coffee shop with Emily. It was a Sunday morning, and there were families breakfasting, kids hanging out in the play area, a steady thrum of voices. Emily seemed subdued, but willing to listen.

“I can’t believe he just walked away,” Lily said, sipping at her chai and slowly demolishing her orange-cranberry muffin into a pile on her napkin. She’d planned on spending the night at Tobin’s, but obviously that hadn’t happened . . . and frankly, she was too upset to drive all the way back to LA. She’d been crying at the Bowl, sitting on the concrete circle and completely wrecking her makeup, when an equally upset Emily had found her. Emily was more angry than tearful, though, and she’d repeatedly said, “I don’t want to talk about it,” so Lily had respected that. She’d crashed at Emily’s one-bedroom, tossing fitfully on an air mattress, getting nearly no sleep. She was sandy eyed and heart sore, and she felt torn. She got the feeling she’d screwed up, but at the same time, she felt like Tobin had a part in that too.

“I mean, I worked too hard to get where I am,” she told Emily. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to tell him that!”

“No, of course it isn’t,” Emily said, her voice soothing. She tossed back some of her drink, some four-shot monstrosity that apparently she lived on, since Juanita had claimed it was her usual. “But what I don’t understand is what exactly happened to break you two up?”

“He wanted me to go to Australia with him!” Lily said. Well, wailed, really. She shook her head at herself. “With no notice! I mean, I have a job to do. And I’m just getting where I want to be. I have contorted myself and put out content relentlessly, and now I’m getting noticed. I finally got that palette deal I wanted. Things are happening, and I worked so hard.”

“You don’t have what it takes to succeed,”she imagined in Daisy’s mocking voice. “Your numbers are going to tank.”

“So obviously you couldn’t go with him,” Emily agreed, studying Lily shrewdly. “What I don’t get is, why does that mean you have to break up? I mean, it’s not like he’s never coming back, right? He wasn’t asking you to relocate to Australia, right?” She paused. “Actually, was he? With Tobin, you never know.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Lily admitted. “But . . . I mean, he had offers for work. I heard him talking with his agents. Do you have any idea what kind of opportunities he’s gotten, especially since our collab? He’s in the perfect position, and he’s just . . . just squandering it!”

Emily’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t suppose you told him that.”

“I was just asking what he was thinking, that’s all,” Lily said, knowing that her tone was stubborn. She squeezed the muffin crumbs into a cube. There was no way she was eating the pulverized baked good now, so she wrapped the napkin up around it.

“So you told him that,” Emily corrected, and her voice was tart. “Lily, I love you, but let’s face it: you’ve always had your eyes on the prize.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Lily grumbled.

“It is,” Emily said softly, “when you’re willing to leave all your friends behind to do it.”

Lily blanched. “That . . . I don’t . . .”

“Remember? That day in high school, when you said that you weren’t going to eat lunch with us anymore—then came back, horribly embarrassed?” Emily’s voice was sharp. “I never said anything, because Tam begged me not to and because I saw how upset you were. But what you did was hurtful. You basically said that we weren’t good enough for you, and you needed to be with people who were better.”

“Oh, God,” Lily said, feeling sick to her stomach. “That’s . . . it’s not what I meant. It had nothing to do with you or the Herd.”

“Felt like it,” Emily said. “I got over it, though, because I knew that what you wanted wasn’t something you were going to get and that it was going to hurt you more than it hurt us. Besides, you know we didn’t hold grudges.”

“No,” Lily said. “You never did.”

“Hell, we didn’t hold grudges when you basically disappeared for years and never got in touch with any of us,” Emily said, rubbing salt in the wound. “But we could have, believe me. And we could’ve shut you out, even back then. You were always kind of a handful.”

Lily felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes and dabbed them with her fingertips. “I took you for granted,” she said. “All of you. Tobin showed me that. And I’m sorry. I guess . . . I thought because the Herd seemed to take in anybody who didn’t feel welcome, we were just the outcasts. The dregs. And I thought everyone else saw us that way.”

“Maybe they did,” Emily said. “Who gives a shit? We were accepting. That’s not a bad thing. We knew what it was like to be treated like shit, to be judged for our qualities—good qualities, I might add—which were seen as somehow undesirable. For fuck’s sake, we were the top of our honors classes, we kicked ass at instruments and chess and academic team and art, and people thought we were just a bunch of socially awkward dipshits. And it was their loss.”

Lily stared at her friend like she’d never seen her before.

“I have never, ever been ashamed of what we were,” Emily said.

“I’m not ashamed either,” Lily said. “And I am so, so sorry if it seemed like I was, or that I was trying to shame any of the Herd.”

Emily seemed mollified, nodding. “Tobin felt it, too, you know,” she said. “He was never angry at you, not really. Just baffled.”

Lily sighed. “I’m baffled by him,” she said. “Hard work is one of my good qualities. Hell, almost all of us had that drive. We wouldn’t have known each other if we didn’t. Why does he act like I’m persecuting him just by pointing out that he’s going to derail all his hard work if he makes this choice?”

“Was he asking you what he should do?” Emily said. “Or was he telling you what he needed, and you told him that he’d made the wrong choice?”

“I didn’t . . . ,” Lily started, then stopped.

Had she?

She swallowed hard.

She had.

“If that’s the case,” Emily said sagely, “then yes, sweetie. You fucked up.”

“Oh my God, I so did,” Lily moaned, resting her head in her hands and covering her face for a moment. “I can’t believe I did that.”

“What, exactly, did he tell you?”

Lily quickly ran the conversation back in her head. “He said that he needed a break. He needed to take a sabbatical, because he was starting to hate what he did.” She bit her lip. “And . . . I told him that was a bad idea. And then gave him a bunch of reasons why it was a bad idea.”

Emily shook her head.

“But he could’ve just told me he wasn’t looking for my opinion,” Lily protested, still feeling wretched. “I screwed up, but if we’re going to have a relationship, he needs to talk to me.”

“I get the feeling our good buddy Tobin has been depressed for a while,” Emily said. “Maybe not clinically or anything—I’m not a doctor—but I would say that he’s been desperately unhappy. Tobin and I have hung out a lot since we all graduated. There’s the Herd, sure, but then there’s the townies, and we tend to stick together. I know that wasn’t something that you necessarily wanted—you left Ponto Beach with a vapor trail, I swear—but for the ones that stayed, we never lost that sense of family, you know?”

Lily didn’t know, not quite. But suddenly, desperately, she wanted to know.

“The more unhappy Tobin is,” Emily said, toying with the collar on her coffee cup, “the harder he pretends to be happy. He gets . . . hyper. Super jovial. But it’s a front.”

Lily felt her heart pinch painfully. She knew that. She remembered when he’d come to her apartment, so upset. The first time she’d kissed him. How the mask of “weaponized silliness” had slipped, and she’d seen the raw, real, deep emotions Tobin was harboring.

That was the moment she started falling in love with him, whether she realized it or not.

“I screwed up so badly,” Lily said again. “And I don’t know how to make this right.”

“He should have stayed and talked it out, true,” Emily said. “I just get the feeling he doesn’t have the emotional energy to do that now. He’s got to take a break, and I think you have to let him.”

Lily blinked. She’d been ready to jump in her car and rush over to his house, throw herself at his mercy, and force him to talk it out. “But . . .”

“He didn’t ask you for your opinion on what he was doing as far as a break—he was telling you what he needed,” Emily reminded her. “So you don’t get to decide that he has to talk to you now. He walked away. When he’s ready, then he can always come back and talk to you.”

“But I’m in love with him,” Lily whispered.

Emily sighed, her eyes clouding. “Sometimes love isn’t enough, trust me,” she said, her voice edged in personal pain. “But it’ll be okay. Trust me. It’ll work out if it’s supposed to, right?”

Unfortunately, Emily didn’t sound like she believed it herself.

“Besides, you’ve got this gangbuster career going on,” Emily continued. “You two would’ve needed to discuss how that was going to work. You live in LA, for instance.”

“Two hours isn’t too far apart,” Lily said, but she nibbled at the corner of her mouth in thought.

“And you film all the time, and you go to all those parties. You wouldn’t stop that, I imagine,” Emily continued. “Doesn’t leave much room for him. You expect him to do what’s best for his career. Would that have meant insisting, or at least suggesting, that he move to LA?”

She blinked. Lily could suddenly see, in startling detail, that she’d probably do exactly that. That it may have already been an idea that was forming in the back of her mind: thinking of a place big enough for the two of them, even though they hadn’t even discussed dating yet.

And he would’ve hated it, she realized. But it wouldn’t have stopped her.

Lily swallowed against tears again. She sucked. She so sucked.

“The question is, What is it you really want?” Emily said. “Because if what you want is the big career, then you need to stick with that—and stop torturing the person who can’t or won’t follow. I speak from some experience on that.”

Lily was struck with a thought. “Vinh was there last night,” she said. “You seemed really upset. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Emily said tightly. “Vinh went back to New York last night—private plane. And I still don’t want to talk about it.”

Lily nodded. She’d respected Tobin little enough—she needed to respect Emily’s boundary.

Emily’s phone buzzed, and she glanced at it, grimacing. “Sorry. My mom needs me . . . something to do with my brother,” she said, shaking her head. “I imagine you’re going back to LA, but drive careful, okay?”

Lily stood up and hugged her friend. “I’ll be back soon, Tobin or not,” she said and felt Emily hug her tighter.

“That’d be good,” she said. “I’ve missed you.” Then she waved and walked off.

Lily sipped at her now cool chai, forcing herself not to track Tobin down. She scrolled through her phone. Ordinarily, she’d be rushing back. She was missing out on posting content, and she really, really needed to. She didn’t want to miss her schedule. But for the first time, she asked herself, Why? Why is this so important to me?

“Kevin, TAKE THAT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH,” a woman said, her tone frazzled. A baby was squalling, and a toddler was shrieking and hitting a coffee table with a toy truck after sucking on it. Lily winced and started to get up to escape until she saw the mom in question.

“Kylee?” she said, shocked.

Kylee did not look like she had at the reunion. Her hair was in a haphazard ponytail. She was wearing makeup, but her concealer game was off: the bags under her eyes were rampant and dark. Her lipstick was mostly on her go-cup of coffee. She was wearing high-end yoga clothes, but there was baby spit on the leg of her ice-blue pants, and her T-shirt was smeared with chocolate, apparently from her toddler’s iced doughnut.

“Hi, Lily,” Kylee said, obviously trying to rally and present a dignified front. That would’ve worked a lot better if the baby didn’t choose that moment to yank the end of her ponytail, hard enough to make the woman’s eyes water. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Same,” Lily said, still feeling stunned. They stared at each other in silence for a moment.

Lily was about to ask about her kids or something, but she was interrupted by a giggling group of teenage girls, who walked up to her. Several wore Ponto High School Cheer T-shirts. “Excuse me,” one of them said with a toss of some perfectly round curls. “Are you . . . EverLily?”

Lily smiled, then nodded.

They squeed in unison, and Lily couldn’t help it. She grinned.

“OMG, I told you!” another chimed in. “Can we get a picture with you? Please?”

Lily nodded, letting them take several selfies. She couldn’t help but notice Kylee watching her, the baby continuing to fuss.

This was her moment. Kylee was the original Daisy—the one who told her she wasn’t good enough, that she’d never be good enough. The one who wouldn’t let her be good enough by moving the goal posts of acceptance and exclusivity. It seemed like Lily had spent her life proving herself, working hard, in order to be a success—which she’d always thought meant being popular, one way or another.

“So they actually know you?” Kylee tried.

“You don’t know who she is?” one of the girls shot back derisively as the others rolled their eyes.

“Oh my God,” one muttered under her breath, and the others snickered.

“Hey, don’t be mean,” one said. “Old people don’t know YouTube.”

Kylee started, then winced.

The girls wandered away, laughing, oblivious to the destruction left in their wake. Kylee looked defeated, completely at a loss.

This was Lily’s moment of triumph. The picture-perfect Kylee, finally being the one to know what it was like to be judged, belittled, excluded.

In an instant, and as a result of her talk with Emily, she suddenly saw Kylee. Here was a woman who had curated her external life as carefully as any Instagram influencer. She hadn’t had friends who would stand by her unconditionally, like Lily had with the Nerd Herd. Kylee’s “success” and “popularity” were based on keeping up an unachievable perfect facade and fending off all perceived threats to staying on top.

Just like Daisy.

Just like me,Lily thought, aghast. She’d become so fixated on succeeding she’d lost track of why she wanted it.

Lily found herself sitting next to Kylee on the low couch. “Why don’t you let me hold her,” she said, holding her hands out to the baby, “and you can grab yourself a scone or some more coffee. Sound good?”

Kylee’s eyes widened. Then it was like her expression broke, and she looked . . . exhausted. And sad. And surprised.

And a little grateful.