Page 34 of A Not-So Holiday Paradise
The completely confused moth.
“Ah,” she says, her sparkle leaving her eyes as her gaze drops to her lap. “Got it.”
I don’t miss the hurt in her voice, and regret twists around my rib cage somewhere in the vicinity of my heart. Bizarrely, that feeling of regret only intensifies as I let myself study her—her hair frizzy in its messy braid, her skin smudged with mud, her eyes tired.
“I—it’s not—”
“No, I get it,” she cuts me off. “Best friend’s little sister and all. Nothing in common.” The smile she aims at me is bright, but it’s too strained, cracked around the edges, and her voice has that same forced quality it had last night when she tried to joke about being stuck here.
“Actually,” I say, and I’m speaking before I can stop myself, before I can even think things through all the way. “That’s not true. We have plenty in common. So…yeah.” I try to take a deep breath withoutlookinglike I’m taking a deep breath, even as a deep sense of foreboding comes over me. Then I spit out the words I’ll probably come to regret later:
“We…can be friends.”
Eleven
Beckett
I’m notsure how true my words are. I’m not sure I know how to be friends with her.
All I know is I can’t stand the look on Molly’s face when she’s being shot down.
Her eyebrows shoot up now, though, and her feet cease their swinging. “Really?” She shoots me a skeptical look that I frankly don’t appreciate. “You’re conceding?” Her nose wrinkles. “But you’re so…antisocial.”
“And you’re a perpetual people pleaser,” I say with a snort. “You don’t hear me complaining.Youwere the one who wanted to be friends—”
“I’m not a people pleaser!” she says, looking offended.
My jaw drops. “Are you serious?”
“Yes!”
I shake my head slowly, angling my body toward her and ignoring the way our knees brush. “Molly O’Malley, you are one of the biggest people pleasers I’ve ever met. You are incapable of saying no or imposing on anyone.”
“I hardly think you’re qualified to make assessments like that about someone you barely know—”
“You stayed here with me on the island even though you didn’t want to,” I say, holding up one finger. “You walked the perimeter of the astronomy facility because your mom begged you to, even though you originally said no.” Another finger up. “You purposefully don’t tell people things that you think will worry them.” A third finger. “You are absolutely a people pleaser.”
Molly glares at me. “Well, you refuse to form relationships with anyone because you don’t believe they’ll be able to love you or stick around.”
My eyes widen, but I don’t even have time to respond before Molly is clamping one hand over her mouth, looking mortified.
“Oh my goodness,” she says. Then, dropping her hand to play with the hem of her shorts—which she mercifully put back on earlier—she whispers, “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I swallow back the tangle of emotions rising in my throat. “Why not?” I say. “It’s true.” I pause. “That’s why you said it, right?”
“Well, yeah,” she says miserably. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know. I was just—stupid things—just what I noticed—”
It’s a combination of mumbling and stuttering, but it gets her point across well enough. And one thought crystallizes in my mind as I listen to her babble: for most of this woman’s life, she’s probably been severely underestimated, with her quirkiness and the constant fish talk and the lack of filter.
And yet she’s saying about me the same things my school-appointed therapist said when I was in the seventh grade, angry at the world and pushing everyone but a select few out of my life.
And she’s right.
Idoavoid relationships, whether familial or platonic or romantic. I avoid most of them. I like to believe that I’ve been fine on my own for most of my life.
And yet I also can’t deny the impact the O’Malleys have had on me. They’ve been more of a family to me than my real family. Where would I be without them?
“You know,” Molly begins, and even though I’ve only been with her for the last twenty-four hours, I already recognize this tone of voice—she’s about to tell me some obscure fact, most likely about fish.
