Only If You’re Lucky

I barrel back down the stairs, mind spinning and knees weak as I thank Mr. Jefferson for the coffee and babble some excuse about needing to get home.

I had stared out that window for entirely too long: frozen with shock, hands on the trim, forehead practically pushed into the glass as I willed myself to blink my eyes and find Lucy’s face replaced with somebody else’s. Desperate for it all to be some kind of complex mirage, a trauma-induced delusion. A misunderstanding that could be easily explained—but it wasn’t. It’s not.

That’s Lucy next door. Lucy, with Levi, the two of them tangled together in a drawn-out kiss.

I’m rounding the corner of the driveway when the sudden sound of her laugh stops me in my tracks. I watch as Lucy emerges from his house, eyes lighting up when she catches sight of me in the street, mere feet from the door.

“Margot!” she yells, waving her hand. “There you are!”

Levi appears in the doorway now, too, hands in his pockets and his head ducked low. He’s wearing a T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, caught off guard and a little disheveled, though Lucy is acting like everything is fine. Like this is entirely normal, her being here. Walking toward me in Levi’s front yard, arms outstretched, the big reveal on some game show I didn’t even know I was playing. It’s like that very first day she showed up in my dorm, ruby-red bikini and sun-kissed cheeks as she leaned against the doorframe, messed with her hair.

The way she had sauntered in so casually, trailing her fingers across all my things as if claiming ownership over them, and me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, my eyes darting between them. Thinking about all the times she’s stepped into my room since, appeared out of nowhere, or was already in there when I walked in myself: scanning the pictures on my mantel, flipping through the books on my desk. Inserting herself into all the spaces where she shouldn’t have been and acting like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Lucy stops short, hesitating in the driveway like I reached out and slapped her.

“You said—” I watch as her smile fades slightly, her excitement at seeing me being slowly replaced with something that looks like shame. It feels strange, that expression on her. I’ve never seen Lucy ashamed over anything. “You said I could come.”

“What?” I ask, taking another step forward. Still trying to wrap my mind around seeing her, here. With him. “What do you mean?”

“For Christmas. You said if I didn’t want to be alone on Christmas … oh God, I’m sorry. You didn’t actually mean it, did you? You were being nice.”

“You came for Christmas,” I repeat, remembering that conversation on the porch. My offer, her decline. The sad smile on her face and the split second when I actually thought she might agree.

“I feel like an idiot.”

“No, don’t feel like an idiot. I just mean … why are you here?” I ask, gesturing to Levi, lowering my voice. “With him?”

“I went to your parents’ house earlier but your mom said you were visiting a friend. I saw Levi’s Jeep in the driveway so I’d figured I’d come by and say hi. Pass the time until you were done.”

I open my mouth, ready to confront her with what I saw through the window—but then I close it again, deciding that I don’t want either one of them to know I was up there watching. Even more, I want to see if Lucy will bring it up herself. If she’ll try to hide it or if she’ll come clean, tell me everything. Explain what she was doing in Levi’s bedroom, fingers wound tight around his hair.

“I felt weird just sitting at your parents’ house without you there,” she says at last, a hint of embarrassment in her voice. “They didn’t even know who I was.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, looking between Lucy and Levi, trying to force a smile. It’s true that I had kept her from my parents—the details, at least. The intimate things I didn’t want them to taint. It was nothing personal, just my own selfish desire to keep my two lives blissfully separate, but I can see now how that must have felt for her, showing up to her best friend’s house and being met with nothing but blank stares.

I glance over to Levi’s car next, a giant white Jeep with an Outer Banks bumper sticker peeling at the sides. It’s also true she would have recognized it. It’s noticeable anywhere, especially since she’s spent the last semester walking past it every single day. And I did invite her here. She never said yes, but it’s not unlike Lucy to show up unannounced. She does it all the time.

“I’m just surprised to see you,” I add.

“I’ll leave, if you want—”

“No, don’t leave,” I say, closing the distance between us, forcing myself to pull her in for a hug. “I want you to stay.”

Her arms hang limp by her sides until I feel them wrap slowly around my neck, squeezing me back, swaddling me in all those familiar smells: her vanilla perfume and warm coffee breath. The subtle smell of smoke always lingering in her hair. It’s tempting to fall back into the spell of her, to close my eyes and get swept away. Lucy never lets herself be vulnerable like this and I can just imagine her waking up this morning, the first hint of light leaking through the windows and the cold quiet of our house as she brewed a pot of coffee for one. I can see her curling up on the couch for the second week in a row, eyes glassed over as she flipped through the channels, read another book without registering the words. Pondering two more weeks of solitude and the last-second decision to jump in her car, make the drive here without asking permission or telling a soul.

Something selfish and impulsive that is, to be honest, the exact type of thing that Lucy would do.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I say at last, my nose nudged into her curls. Part of me means it, I really do, the idea of Lucy needing me enough to put herself out there like this sending a surge of something warm through my chest—but the other part of me can’t deny what I saw through that window.

I think about these last seven months, the way Lucy has slowly singled Levi out in almost every interaction. From the moment his eyes landed on her at Penny Lanes—the moment I heard her throaty whisper as she leaned into him on the floor, asked him that question that’s been ringing through my mind ever since—I had been afraid of this. Afraid of Levi swooping in and claiming another thing that was meant to be mine.

Afraid of Lucy leaving me like Eliza did for a boy who doesn’t deserve her.

I open my eyes, detach myself from Lucy’s grip, and notice that Levi is still standing there, observing us curiously from the porch. He seems to be turning something over in his mind, dissecting it slowly, and I watch as he runs his hand along his jaw, wipes what’s left of Lucy from his lips, before he turns around and disappears into the house, closing the door behind him.