19 Secrets (1/2)

Will hadn't told her secrets to Chance. She had told them to Gemma.

Gemma had realized the truth of it early on, even before Will had told Gemma her birth name, and before Brooke Lannon ever turned up at the Vineyard house.

It was the Fourth of July, not long after Gemma had first moved in. Will had found a recipe for pizza dough you made on an outdoor grill. She was messing around with yeast in the kitchen. She had invited friends, summer people she'd met a couple of days earlier at a farmer's market. They came over and ate. Everything was fine, but they wanted to leave early. ”Let's drive into town for the fireworks,” they said. ”We shouldn't miss them. Hurry up.”

Gemma knew Willow hated the crush of people at crowded events. She couldn't see over people's heads. There was always too much noise.

Chance didn't seem to care. He just got in the car with the summer people, stopping only to snag a box of cookies from the pantry.

Gemma stayed behind. She and Will left the dishes for the cleaner and changed into swimsuits. Gemma pulled the lid off the hot tub, and Will brought out tall glasses of seltzer with lemon.

They sat in silence for a bit. The evening had turned cool, and steam rose off the water.

”Do you like it here?” Will asked finally. ”In my house? With me?”

Gemma did, and she said so. When Will looked at her expectantly, she added: ”Every day there's time to actually see the sky, and to taste what I'm eating. There's room to stretch out. No work, no expectations, no adults.”

”We're the adults,” said Will, tilting her head back. ”I think so, at least. You and me and Chance, we're the effing adults, and that's why it feels so good. Oops!” She had tipped her seltzer into the hot tub by accident. Now she chased around three slowly sinking pieces of sliced lemon until she caught them. ”It's good you like it here,” Will said as she fished the last slice out, ”because there was a part of living with Chance that was like—being alone. I can't explain it. Maybe it's because he's writing a novel, or because he's older than I am. But it's better with you here.”

”How did you meet him?”

”In London I went to a summer program with his cousin, and then one day I was getting coffee at Black Dog and I recognized him from Instagram. We started talking. He was here for a month to work on his book. He didn't know anybody. That was that, basically.” Will trailed her fingers across the top of the water. ”How about you? You seeing anybody?”

”There were some boyfriends at Stanford,” said Gemma. ”But they're still in California.”

”Some boyfriends?”

”Three boyfriends.”

”Three boyfriends is a lot, Gemma!”

Gemma shrugged. ”I couldn't decide.”

”When I first got to college,” Will said, ”Vivian Abromowitz invited me to the Students of Color Union party. You've heard me talk about Vivian, right? Anyway, her mom is Chinese American; her dad's Korean Jewish. She was set on going to this party because some guy she crushed on would be there. I was a little nervous about being the only white person, but that turned out fine. The awkward part was that everyone was all political and ambitious. Like, talking about protest rallies and philosophy reading lists and this Harlem Renaissance film series. At a party! I was like, when are we dancing? And the answer was never. Were parties like that at Stanford? With no beer and people being all intellectual?”

”Stanford has a Greek system.”