Page 137 of To Love or to Lose
“What?” I look around, gauging everyone’s reactions. They are all acting as if this is old news. “Who?”
“Just you wait,” Winnie says under her breath.
“Her name is Valerie, she goes to NYU,” Luke admits.
“Oh, my God.” I almost laugh. “Valerie Mason?”
Luke looks at me like I’m a mind-reader. “How the hell do you all already know her name?” He looks between Winnie, Eloise, and I.
“Because we’re friends with her, you moron.” Eloise smacks him in the shoulder.
“Is Valerie the girl you were talking about in the lobby on the first night?”
“I didn’t know you knew her!” Luke grits through his teeth. “And you weren’t even there to save me when she showed up!”
I blink a few times, barely able to comprehend the fact that the girlLuke was telling me about in the lobby the first night of the ski-trip is my best friend. “How do you even know Valerie?”
“I snuck into her lab over the summer, and I got an email a few weeks later—a very threatening email—warning me off her lab. Then, I gotanotheremail with similar threats the morning we got to New York, so it was safe to say I was scared for my life.”
“She knew you’d be in New York because she’s friends with us,” I realize. “All she needed to know was what school you went to, and she would have connected it from there.”
“Yeah, I figured that out when she showed up at my hotel room, and you weren’t there to save me.” He points his gaze at me as if I’ve committed some type of royal betrayal.
“Valerie is not that scary.” I can’t even make the lie sound believable.
“No, she’s absolutely terrifying,” Winnie says.
“That’s what I thought when she showed up at my hotel room at nine o’clock at night,” Luke replies under his breath, just loud enough to where we could all hear him.
“I cannot believe this,” I gasp. “That’s why she was asking me about you!”
“She asked about me?” Luke looks thrilled.
“Woah.” I hold a hand up. “I thought you were terrified of her.”
“Well, I was until I invited her into my hotel room and we–” He cuts himself off.
“And you had sex.” Logan fills in the blanks after a moment of silence.
“Oh, my God!” Winnie puts a hand over her face, like she can’t believe what she’s hearing.
I’m still baffled at this entire situation. Luke,the LukeI've known my entire life, coincidentally snuck into one of my best friends’ lab, then got threatened by her over email, andthenhad sex with her.
Unbelievable.
“It wasn’t like that,” Luke sighs.
“I don’t care to know what itwaslike.” I grimace. “Let’s put a cork in that conversation before I have an aneurysm thinking about my two best friends coincidentally meeting and fraternizing.”
“I found out today that Briar Hart is dating Noah Sommers,” Winnie interjects.
Eloise is quick to follow, “How about we talk about the reason we’re here in the first place?”
“How about we don’t?” I state, already knowing where this is going.
“We’ve given you time to mope, and now we are looking for resolutions,” she continues anyway. “You have to go to school tomorrow, and even though it sucks that Jameson left, there’s nothing we can do to change it.”
“It’s okay to be upset, but it’s not okay to make it your life's mission to be miserable over a boy,” Logan says in agreement.
