The Last Time We Were Us (33 page)
Read The Last Time We Were Us Online
Authors: Leah Konen
S
TANDING ONLY ABOUT
a foot from Lyla up at the altar, I tear up through the entire ceremony, careful to dab each one before it swims down my cheek, reveals the real me.
I’m not sure if it’s just the wedding I’m crying for, or for what I know my sister gave up with Skip, or for the fact that I’m up here, standing with her, after all, and me and Lyla are me and Lyla again—and in a weird way, closer than we’ve ever been before—but it doesn’t matter, the tears keep coming.
Lyla doesn’t shed any, even though Benny is a blubbering mess. Instead she stares into his eyes, promises to love him forever, kisses him in front of everyone she knows, and smiles like she’s the happiest girl in the whole wide world—and today, I really think she is.
The reception is a blur. Aunts and uncles and grandparents and everyone fluttering around, drinking too much, dancing badly. Everyone must have gotten the memo from my mother, because no one asks me a thing about what happened, or even makes any kind of eye contact with my face—and I’m thankful for that, because I don’t want to think about any of it on what’s supposed to be a happy day.
Kenzie’s the perfect date. She and I drink too much champagne and do the twist so low, we fall right over. We dance through the slow songs, arms around each other like awkward middle schoolers, while the real couples look deeply and profoundly into each other’s eyes, and we get three fat slices of cake between the two of us.
At one point, Lyla pulls me aside, and she tells me “thank you” for being her sister, and I say “thank you for being mine.”
And maybe it’s when I see so many people I love gathered around, singing “Shout” in unison, or maybe it’s when my mom hugs me and it feels like it’s me and her again, without any of the drama of this summer, or maybe it’s when Kenzie pulls me into a corner and demands we swap some seriously intimate details of our sex lives, it’s so clear to me all of a sudden: It’s not about friends and enemies, my side or yours. We’re all just trying to be the best version of us, the only way we know how. When Mom was judging Jason, she was being the only kind of mom she knew how to be. When Kenzie was yelling at me about throwing everything away, it was only because to her, that’s what a good friend would do. I spent a summer trying to figure out what was right, weighing the words of everyone else, cursing myself for my inability to be what others expected of me, when there was only one answer, really.
Lizzie or Liz, it doesn’t matter—I can only ever be me. I can only ever follow my own heart.
But it is so achingly wonderful to know that when I do, the people who really matter, they’ll be right there beside me, even if I make a mistake or two in the process.
A
FTER
L
YLA AND
Benny have been carted off in their limo, after MacKenzie’s mom picks her up and the band packs up their instruments and there’s more than enough champagne in all of us, when my parents are about to head home, Jason arrives to pick me up.
I hug my parents good-bye and tell them it was the best wedding ever, which it was, and climb into the truck.
“You look gorgeous,” he says.
“Like the new, bandage-free me?” I ask.
He leans in to kiss me. “I like it a lot.”
Jason drives back to his house, and Mr. Sullivan meets us at the door.
“Liz,” he says. “Aren’t you just all dolled up? You look like a proper young woman. God, you kids grow up way too fast.” He hugs me tight, like he has every time he’s seen me since that night. Now that he knows all, that Innis and Payton were the ones who beat Jason up, that Innis came into his home when he was gone, he’s been very protective. His eyes look from Jason to me and back to Jason again like if he looks away too long, one of us might disappear.
“All right. I’ll leave you alone. I’ll be in my room if you need anything.” He heads back, and it’s just the two of us.
I walk straight to the bathroom, change out of my dress and into the more casual clothes I packed in a bag, carefully take the hundreds of bobby pins out of my hair, let down my hairspray-crusted curls.
“You want to watch a movie or something?” Jason asks when I walk out of the bathroom.
I hesitate, staring at him, not completely ready for what I’m about to do.
“What is it?” he asks.
I touch my face, softly. “I should probably take this makeup off,” I say.
He nods. “You want me to put the bandage on?”
I shake my head. “Not really.”
“Okay.”
I go back into the bathroom, turn off the lights and close the door, work a pump of face wash into a lather, and gently rub it in circles onto my face. Forehead, nose, one cheek, two cheeks. I keep on rubbing, feeling the layers of makeup wash away, and then the unmistakable raised ridge, my battle scar. When I’ve rinsed it all off, carefully patted it dry, I look up at the mirror, see whether my eyes have adjusted to the dark, but they haven’t. I shut them, cup my fingers over my eyes.
“All right,” I call through the door. “Come in now.”
The door opens with a creak, and I feel Jason standing behind me.
“Turn on the lights,” I say.
He does.
“I’m afraid to look. Is it horrible?”
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
“You have to say that. It’s like in the boyfriend handbook or something.”
Jason laughs. “Might be.” I feel him wrap his arms around me from behind. “But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.”
I pull my hands back before I can stop myself, whip my eyes open.
At first all I see is me. My hair and my eyes and my nose, but then there it is, a white ridge, tinged with red, reaching across one side of my face, turning me into someone else altogether.
I catch Jason’s eyes in the mirror. “It’s all you see, isn’t it?”
Jason shakes his head. “All I see is you. This is just a new part of you, that’s all.”
“I look awful,” I say.
“No. You look powerful and wonderful and all of the things that make you you.”
And I want to call bullshit, I want to point at my face and say,
But look, look at this right here!
, but I don’t. Because I see his face, his reflection, instead, and there is no horror, there is no cringing, there is only love, so pure, so easy to recognize.
I turn around to face him.
“You promise I don’t look like a monster?”
He laughs. “You are the furthest thing from a monster that has ever walked the earth.”
I smile, lean up, and kiss him, his lips a perfect answer to mine.
We are not five years old and running through the sprinklers while Mr. Sullivan makes us peanut butter and jelly. We are not eight years old, playing detectives, building our own private worlds. We are not ten, sneaking away on our bikes and gorging ourselves on funnel cake. We are not fourteen, navigating the changes in us, the pubescent divisions, and the coldness of those eighth-grade lockers. We are not even sixteen, missing and loving and judging each other from two different worlds altogether.
We are here. And we are now. And after everything that happened, all the good and the bad, the beautiful and the awkward, the sexy and the innocent, the loving and the angry, the scarred and the unscarred, we are still Lizzie and Jason. We will always be Lizzie and Jason.
I pull back, my arms still linked around his neck.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?” he asks.
“For everything.”
A huge thanks to the many people who made writing this book possible.
To my agent, Danielle Chiotti, I cannot express how grateful I am that you a) have never given up on my writing and b) don’t mind dealing with the occasional writer freak-out. To my editors, Laurel Symonds and Kelsey Horton, as well as the entire Katherine Tegen team, thank you so much for believing in this book and offering your amazing and insightful notes to help make the story better.
The North Carolina juvenile system is a tad too complex for my layman understanding, so immense thanks to Grace Salzer, whose legal knowledge prevented me from relying on Google searches alone. Also, thanks to Sweta Patel and Daniel Whitesides for doctors’ perspectives on the hospital scenes.
I am so grateful to all of the friends and family who have enthusiastically supported and encouraged me over the years, especially my parents and my sister. Finally, to Thomas and my nutty dog, Farley: Thanks for always knowing how to make me laugh. It’s a crucial step in the writing process.
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LEAH KONEN
grew up in a two-stoplight farming town in Washington State before moving to suburban North Carolina, where there were many more stoplights and lots of sweet tea. After studying journalism at the University of North Carolina, she headed to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. When she’s not working on novels and articles or writing for fashion brands, she enjoys devouring new books; spoiling her dog, Farley; biking around Brooklyn; checking out live music; and binge-watching TV. Find her online at
www.leahkonen.com
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COVER PHOTO © 2016 BY REKHA GARTON/ARCANGEL IMAGES
HAND LETTERING BY ZACHARY SMITH
COVER DESIGN BY HEATHER DAUGHERTY
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE LAST TIME WE WERE US
. Copyright © 2016 by Leah Konen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015952418
ISBN 978-0-06-240247-9
EPub Edition © April 2016 ISBN 9780062402493
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