Page 69 of On the Edge

“Hey,” I say as I answer Petra’s video call. I slide the lock into place, turn and lean against the door, and wonder again if I should have asked Nate to stay.

“Are you alone?” she asks. Her hair’s up in a high bun and she’s already got her makeup off and a hoody on. The only place Petra gets causal is at home, otherwise she pretty much struts around like she’s on a runway.

“Yep.” I nod. “Nate just dropped me and all my stuff off.” I glance at my pile of luggage on the floor of my already tiny entryway as I navigate around the items and head to my living room.

“Good, spill the tea. I want all the details. Hold nothing back.”

“Details about what, exactly?”

Sierra spent most of the six hour drive from Big Sky shooting daggers at Nate’s head from her perch in the back seat of his pickup. Petra, on the other hand spent most of the drive quietly watching what was happening in the front seat, her eyes moving back and forth between Nate and me like she was analyzing a crime scene.

“First of all, thelooksthat man was giving you in the car when you weren’t looking ...” she says and fans her face as I walk to my living room and sink onto my velvet couch. “And you spent the night at his house, and who knows what’s happened while you two have been in Colorado and Europe together? Something is clearly going on and you probably need someone to confide in, so start confiding.”

I could rationalize everything, because nothing inappropriate has happened between us.Yet. But she sure as shit is right about me needing someone to talk to. I think of Marco. Would he be okay with me telling Petra that our relationship is fake? Petra can keep a secret, and as long as I don’t give her too many details I don’t think Marco would object to me telling her.

“I need you to know that nothing has happened,” I tell her and she nods before taking a sip of wine. “But also, it feels like we’re always on the edge of crossing that line.” I’ve already told my friends about the flight home from Paris when I learned the truth about Nate leaving me. Now I tell her about Levi and how Nate turned me down yards from my hotel room door.

“Did you take nothing away from our conversation last time we talked about this? You were supposed to let himlookso he could feel all that regret about leaving. You weren’t supposed to offer yourself up to him!” She doesn’t sound mad or judgmental, just like she’s trying to understand where my head was in that moment. “Andhewas the one who stopped it from happening?”

“I am such a mess, Petra,” I say as I thread my fingers together and twist them around each other. “In that moment, I was just thinking that I needed to get him out of my system. Plus, it’s been areallylong dry spell.”

“But Marco was in Levi. Did you ...” Her mouth drops open as her eyes go wide. “Did younotsleep with him when you saw him there? Isthatwhy you were so ready to get down with Nate?”

“So here’s the thing,” I say, and take a deep breath. I’ve never said this to another living soul. “Marco and I aren’t really dating. It’s like ... we’re just ... it’s just convenient to pretend that we are.” I tell her enough that she can understand my motivations for agreeing to this fake relationship, without giving her any details about Marco’s reasons.

“Is this like one of those fake relationship or marriage of convenience romance books that Sierra’s always reading?” She is forever teasing Sierra about her love of romance novels, which Petra insists are pure fantasy.

“Except I think in those books the fake relationship always turns real, and that’s the opposite of what’s happening here. Anyway, I just need you to know that I’m not cheating on Marco. He knows almost everything that’s happened with Nate since he’s been back. Sometimes ...” I pause. “Sometimes it even seems like he wants me to get back together with Nate.”

“What?” Petra squeals. “I thought they hated each other!”

“I mean, Nate hates Marco,” I say as I pull a blanket over me. “But not because he thinks Marco’s a bad person, he just has always been jealous of our friendship and now that he thinks we’re dating ...” I trail off because I realize I don’t really know how Nate feels about Marco. “But Marco doesn’t hate Nate. He just likes to give Nate shit because it’s so easy where I’m concerned.”

“Because after all this time Nate’s still in love with you,” Petra clarifies and I can feel the heat creeping into my cheeks. “Oh my God, he is, isn’t he? Has he said that?”

My cheeks are practically fuchsia at this point, so much so that I almost turn the video off on our call. Instead I reach over to my coffee table and grab the remote for the fireplace, turning it on and hoping it helps take the chill out of my space.

“Do you feel the same way?” she asks, her voice rising like a tea kettle.

“I don’t think I could ever trust him enough to feel that way about him again.” I tell her about Blackstone and the NDA.

“Can you really hold that against him, though? I mean, legally he can’t tell you.”

“I don’t know. I just don’t like that he’s keeping this big secret from me. Secrets were what almost ruined our relationship when we were teenagers, and we promised each other complete and total honesty after that.”

“So you’re telling me you never kept secrets from him?”

I think about the secret I just revealed to him last night. At first it just felt like I’d be jinxing my chances of winning if I told him, and I wanted that crystal globeso bad. After that, it would have just been pathetic to tell anyone I had been planning to retire for my boyfriend who left me. Maybe things would have been different if I’d have told him up front?

“Hmm,” Petra says, eyes crinkling as she analyzes my face, which seems to be giving her all the details that my silence is not. “Like I thought. You had your secrets too.”

“The thing is,” I say, working this momentous conclusion out for myself for the first time, “if I’d told him my secret, things might have turned out very differently.”

Her eyebrows are so high they look like they’re launching off her forehead. “Jackson, have you ever thought that maybe your dad was right?” Normally I love Petra’s straight-shooting approach, but this question is like a shot to the stomach. “I mean, maybe you guys wouldn’t have made it if he’d stayed back then. Maybe he really did need to leave in order to find himself. I mean, you did kind of ... well, he sort of ...” She bites her lower lip like she doesn’t want to say what she’s about to say.

“Just spit it out, Petra.”

“I mean, it was obvious who wore the pants in your relationship, and I imagine it must have been hard for him to always be in your shadow.”

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