Before We Were Innocent: Reese's Book Club - Softcover

Berman, Ella

 
9780593099551: Before We Were Innocent: Reese's Book Club
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593099559 ISBN 13: 9780593099551
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

Reese’s Book Club Pick December 2023

A summer in Greece for three best friends ends in the unthinkable when only two return home. . . .
 
Ten years ago, after a sun-soaked summer spent in Greece, best friends Bess and Joni were cleared of having any involvement in their friend Evangeline’s death. But that didn’t stop the media from ripping apart their teenage lives like vultures.
 
While the girls were never convicted, Joni, ever the opportunist, capitalized on her newfound infamy to become a motivational speaker. Bess, on the other hand, resolved to make her life as small and controlled as possible so she wouldn’t risk losing everything all over again. And it almost worked. . . .
 
Except now Joni needs a favor, and when she turns up at her old friend's doorstep asking for an alibi, Bess has no choice but to say yes. She still owes her. But as the two friends try desperately to shake off their past, they have to face reality.

Can you ever be an innocent woman when everyone wants you to be guilty?

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ella Berman grew up in both London and Los Angeles, and worked at Sony Music before writing her first novel, The Comeback. She lives in London with her husband, James, and their dog, Rocky.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

2018

I know it's her from the moment I hear the knock at my door. After ten years, with no warning, somehow, I still know.


Over the years, I’ve begun to think of Joni only in photographs-reassuringly flat shots of her golden arm slung over my shoulders, eyes knowing, grin wolfish, face tanned and inscrutable, maybe careless in the wrong light. Now that she is inches away, I remember the full animality of our friendship. The clamminess of her skin as we slept side by side, matching leg hairs dusting our thighs, the keloid scar just above her left temple, the viscous blood that would trickle from her nose often and without any warning, although usually when she was being her worst self, as if her body wanted so badly to remind us that she was human.

Joni's short hair is wet, slicked back, and her lips are swollen in the flickering porch light. I remember that she used to chew her bottom lip when she was feeling vulnerable, and I never mentioned it because it felt like a waste of this rare insight I'd been given. Now I can see that her mouth looks painful, red raw where she's torn at it.

Joni doesn't attempt to hide her shock at my own appearance in return, and I stand rigidly as she takes me in-hair hanging limply to my waist, faded T-shirt thrown over flannel pajama shorts, pale skin that has seen less sun in five years than it used to in one summer. From afar, I've kept abreast of Joni's transformation from scrappy, magnetic teenager to overgroomed media rent-a-personality, but this is the first time she's seen me outside of my teenage state, probably seared as indelibly into her mind as it is my own (hip popped, pink tongue sticking out of lips coated in MAC's Rapturous).

"Jesus, Bess," she says finally. "You're a little fucking young to retire to the desert, aren't you?"

As Joni's openers go, it could have been a lot worse, but I still feel my perspective shift. I wonder if she can already sense the stifling flatness of life next to the Salton Sea-a wasteland or a kingdom, depending on how you ended up here.

"I need your help," Joni says next.

I think of the ghost between us. The three of us sticky with sweat, sunburned bodies loose from cheap beer as we danced to our favorite song underneath a palm leaf canopy, or lying on our stomachs on a hotel bed, dirty soles of our feet in the air, as Joni and I competed over who could shock Evangeline into laughing first. Then, inevitably-the unnatural angle of Ev's neck under the skinniest moon I've ever seen. Ten summers that have felt like ten seconds and ten lifetimes all at once.

When Joni takes a step toward me, I move away and she pretends not to notice, just like how I pretend not to notice that her hand is shaking as she plays with the button of her white linen shirt. I think about the last time we were together and the cruel things we both said, knowing they could never be undone. I think about everything I lost while Joni elevated our shared existence, upgrading her life like a company car. I think about the end of that summer and feel the shame trickle down the back of my neck. There are ten thousand reasons why I shouldn't let Joni Le Bon inside my house tonight, but still, I take a step backward.

"Follow me," I say.

Two

2018

I lead Joni into the kitchen, walking carefully around the saguaro cactus that shoots through the center of my house like a missile, causing the tiles around it to crack and cave. When I look down, I realize I'm wearing the humiliating pair of bunny slippers my ex-boyfriend Ivan gave me as a birthday present, and I wonder if I can slip them off before Joni notices.

"You are aware you have a strikingly phallic cactus," she says, more at ease now, "in the middle of your house."

"I had noticed," I say as I open the fridge. "Do you want some water?"

Joni frowns. "I'd prefer wine."

I rifle through the cupboard under the sink, coming up with a bottle of California chardonnay that Ivan must have bought before he decided I was unsalvageable. It has to be a shitty bottle for him to have left it behind, considering he unscrewed all the halogen lightbulbs on his way out.

I pour two glasses, watching as Joni takes in the surroundings-the slate gray blinds pulled down; the peeling shiplap walls and mismatched furniture; the stark print of sunflowers hanging on the wall above the TV, an image so bland that my brother once asked if it came with the frame. If I see a flicker of approval on Joni's face, I think I know why-my home is the diametric opposite of the Calabasas McMansions we both grew up in, with their acute angles and surfaces designed so that you can never quite escape your own reflection, because why would you want to when you've spent thousands of dollars on tweakments to not only maintain but elevate your own face?

"You live here alone," Joni says.

"Does that surprise you?" I ask, leaning against the cabinet, waiting for her to tell me what she wants from me. Nine years ago, I spent my dead grandmother's inheritance on this cabin beneath the San Jacinto Mountains precisely because of its isolation-so that people from my past wouldn't just show up one day because they were "in the area."

"Are you off the grid?" she says instead. "Are you generating energy from compost or something?"

"Joni."

"I'm just trying to understand," she says.

"Why are you here?"

Joni nods and takes another sip of wine.

"It's my fiancée," she says. "Willa."

"Your fiancée," I repeat, even though I already know that "Willa" is Willa Bailey, semifamous influencer and activist-information I have gleaned from Joni's Instagram account, which I follow from an anonymous burner profile: @pizzancacti23. I can already picture Willa's face in my mind as clearly as I can any celebrity's-wide easy smile and thick, expressive brows that tend to cave inward when she talks, like the Sad Sam dog I kept stuffed down the side of my bed for the duration of my teenage years-but I would never give Joni the satisfaction of knowing it.

"Trouble in paradise?" I ask.

"I guess you could put it that way," Joni says carefully, and it throws me. Is Joni careful now? Does she deliberate over each perfect word instead of letting them fly out of her mouth like a swarm of wasps?

I watch as she bites down on her lip, hard.

"A few weeks ago, Willa found out that I slept with someone else," she says after a long pause. "And, while I promised her it was a one-night thing, it wasn't exactly as simple as that . . ."

"You're still cheating on her," I say.

"I didn't say that," Joni snaps back like a snake before she catches herself, smiling a little.

"I may have been keeping a door open that I should have closed," she says, and I don't know why I'm surprised at how little she's changed.

"But, earlier tonight, Willa found a . . . photo that this person, Zoey, sent me, and I knew that it had to stop. So, I drove over to Zoey's apartment and I ended it. For real this time."

I stare at her, still unsure exactly what she wants from me. The Joni I knew always owned her choices unequivocally; surely she doesn't need me to tell her that she's a good person, that Willa probably doesn't deserve better, that she's only human despite all the praise and fervor and adulation claiming otherwise in the years since we were friends.

"The thing is, Willa thinks I came straight here," Joni says. "To give her some space."

"And why would she believe that?"

"Because every time I was with Zoey, Willa thought I was with you," Joni says levelly. "I told her we were planning something to mark the tenth anniversary. A celebration of Evangeline's life, since we obviously didn't make it to her funeral."

I swallow, wishing I hadn't asked, because what would a...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593099559
ISBN 13 
9780593099551
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
49078
Deutschland

Weitere beliebte Ausgaben desselben Titels

9780593099544: Before We Were Innocent: Reese's Book Club

Vorgestellte Ausgabe

ISBN 10:  0593099540 ISBN 13:  9780593099544
Verlag: Berkley, 2023
Hardcover