Chapter 12

• Allie’s [POV]
• In high school, there had been this girl, Gemma, that everyone liked. She was definitely tall and gorgeous enough to be a model, but she’d been way more interested in getting good grades and going to an Ivy League school, so she had basically sworn off dating. We sat next to each other in chemistry class junior year, so I was a firsthand witness sometimes to the ways guys would more or less throw themselves at her feet, only to be rebuked. Mostly, she was nice, if not a little cool about it; it wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the guys who were interested in her, she just didn’t have any desire to do the dating thing whatsoever.
• Though I didn’t use Facebook much, I knew that Gemma was now in grad school at Columbia, and she did have a boyfriend. She seemed happy, or as happy as someone could seem based on their curated social media page. But what I remembered most about her was not her perfect ski slope nose or how clothes just seemed designed to fit her body, but the way she was so completely detached about every single guy that had shown interest in her.