Ryan had seen Lia in the parking lot of the Safeway and had longed to get out the car and call, “Hey Lia, wait up,” but shame and fear had kept her motionless behind the safety of tinted glass.
Having been born with the preternatural look of a woman in disgrace had been punishment enough, so that Ryan never imagined that Neil would have outwitted her or done her a bad turn, or that her lark would have ended so disastrously. Her plan of returning to Coronado, brazen and triumphant, to show them all—Elizabeth Cole, Lia, Megan Hamilton—what real love really looked like, had been one appalling fiasco. Chastened by the error of her ways, Ryan dressed modestly, lightened her makeup, and spent most of her time indoors, pining away for a normal boy her own age, and remembering wistfully her days,
