Page 77 of One Last Time

Or, more likely, had Lee managed to turn this place into such a mess just this morning alone?

“You wanna maybe tidy up in here?” I asked him.

“Okay,Mom.I’m kinda busy right now.”

“I’m serious, Lee. I thought your parents said they have buyers coming this afternoon? And that guy’s meant to be coming to measure for new flooring…”

“He can measure around some mess.”

“Lee!”

“Fine,” he grumbled, pausing the game and tossing aside the controller. He surveyed the room for a second before starting to gather up trash. “And the buyers canceled just this morning. For the record.”

“What? But that’s…that’s, like, theeighthtime people have canceled viewing this place.”

“Guess they keep changing their minds.”

“Lee, are you…Have you…”

“Careful, Shelly. You know if you finish that question, you’re gonna get an honest answer.”

I sighed, throwing up my hands and going back to pouring my coffee. “You know what, you’re right. I’d rather stick to plausible deniability, thanks.”

“Good choice.” He threw me a smile. “So what time do you want to leave tomorrow?”

“What?”

“Tomorrow,” he said again, pausing to look at me. The enthusiasm froze on his face, his features stiffening. The hopeful lilt in his voice faltered only slightly as he chuckled and said, “You know.Tomorrow.Our trip to Berkeley?”

Oh,fuck.

“Elle?”

I was the biggest asshole in the world. I couldn’tbelieveI’d forgotten all about the trip this weekend. We’d had it planned for ages now, and here I’d been thinking I had a Saturday clear of bucket-list plans. I hadn’t even questioned it. I’d just sort of assumed Lee had plans with Rachel or something.

Wrong.

He had plans withme.Big plans. Huge plans.

The absolute mostmonumentalplans of the entire summer.

“Seriously?” he cried, reading me way too easily.

“I’m sorry! I don’t know how I forgot about it. I really don’t, Lee. And I’ve made plans with Noah….We have reservations at some fancy restaurant your mom recommended, and we were gonna head out to that chocolate shop he took me to last year for my birthday.”

“Of course you have plans with Noah,” he said dryly. He dropped his pile in the garbage and unearthed a laundry basket from under a bunch of throw pillows and started gathering up the clothes instead, snatching them up one at a time.

I gulped, seeing Lee’s face all scrunched up. He was angry, sure, but it was worse than that—he was plain old upset. I really couldn’t cope if he started to cry.

I’d thought forgetting about eighties mini golf had been shitty of me, but this…thisreallytook the biscuit.

“Noah,” he snapped, “who you’re gonna see, like, literallyallthe time next year. Noah, who you can hang out with any other day aside from tomorrow. It’s just really…It’s real fucking rich, you know, Elle? You gave me shit for applying to Brown because of Rachel and then you went and did theexact same thing,only worse, because you kept your Harvard application secret from me.”

“Lee—”

“I honestly thought we were done with all that after I found out about you dating Noah behind my back. But, nope, you did it again. And you’re doing it again now.”

Here it is,I thought. The anger that had been simmering away since I’d told him about Harvard, that he’d been working so hard to crush down and ignore in favor of an epic, fun summer.