“Archer’s accident.”
For a second, time goes still. The breath halts in my lungs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Look, we don’t know the full story, but…” Odette heaves a sigh. “Right around the time you left for Switzerland, we found out Archer was in a pretty bad car accident.”
“Totaled his truck,” Ophelia jumps in.
“Flipped it right over.”
“Rumor was, that’s why he missed our commencement ceremony.”
“He was in the hospital for a few days, recovering from surgery.”
“No,” I whisper. The rejection comes out thin, a breath-starved sound. “No, that’s… it’s… Where did you hear this?”
Ophelia shrugs. “Chris Tomlinson got drunk at a party last year and told us about it. He said he wasn’t supposed to say anything, that Archer didn’t want people knowing he was hurt, but…”
“Can you blame him?” Odette grimaces. “If I was a star pitcher and I completely shattered my throwing arm right before my first college season, I wouldn’t much feel like talking about it either.”
His arm.
His pitching arm.
Shattered?
No.
There’s no possible way.
My mind spins, trying to process this information. Cycling through a million emotions at once. Even as I recognize the ring of truth in their story… Even as my mind presents a memory of Archer on the island, tucking his hand from my sight — fast but not fast enough to hide the surgical scars… Even as the mystery of him living in Gloucester, working as a lobsterman, finally starts to make sense… there is a part of me that cannot accept their words. Cannot process the magnitude of what they are telling me.
“No,” I say again. The only word I seem to be able to voice. “No, that can’t be right.”
Odette’s nose wrinkles. “I mean, yeah, there’s probably more to the story. We only got the SparkNotes version from Tomlinson before he passed out that night.”
“And the next time we tried to talk to him about it, he told us to butt out of other people’s business.”
“So rude!” Odette mutters.
“Totally.” Ophelia shakes her head. “We just, like, wanted to know if Archer was still in the hospital or not. We would’ve sent flowers or something.”
“I think he was there for a long time. A week or two, maybe? We definitely should’ve sent flowers.”
“Oh well. Too late, now.”
Nausea is stirring inside me, the champagne and gummy bear concoction in my stomach churning in a noxious cyclone. It takes all my strength to keep from retching all over their oriental carpet as I shake my head back and forth. “No. No, you’re… That’s not possible. None of this is possible.”
“It’s just what we heard.”
“Then you heard wrong!” I snap. “Archer can’t have been in the hospital with a broken hand on graduation day, because on that day… He came to my house. He left a note. It was his handwriting. It said—” I swallow hard, trying to get myself under control. “It said we’d made a mistake, sleeping together. That he just wanted to be friends. That he was going away for the summer, to an elite training camp, and that we should take some time apart.”
“He came to your house?”
“Yes!” I’m practically yelling.
“You actually saw him there?”
My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. “I… No. Not me. Not personally.”