“Time out.” Kiana stops me. “YOU KISSED?!”
“Please don’t make a big deal out of this. I don’t think it meant anything to her.”
“But it meant something to you?”
I shrug. “Did I catch feelings—a little, I admit it. But it’s over now, Ki. Done. She’s going through her own mess, and I don’t have time to deal with her lashing out at me.”
Kiana’s mouth is set in a line as she picks a piece of lint off of the floor. Finally, she looks at me. “OK, let me get this right. You were fake dating online, but come on, you’ve both had crushes on one another this whole time, everyone could see it. So, you finally admitted it, you kissed each other, she said some dumb emotional shit, and now it’s just over?”
“She basically called me broken and damaged.”
“Ouch. OK, that’s not cool.”
“It’s whatever—I’ve had worse things said to me in my life. It was more so the way she got cold, distant. I could just tell it wasn’t going to work out for us. That she was going to leave me. Everyone does.”
Kiana scoffs.
“What?!”
“It’s just you always say that, but I’m here. Ms. Mills is here. Yourgrandma. Robbie adores you and your sense of fashion—seriously, you should see if they’ll hire you at Stella’s one day. Listen, sometimes you do exactly what Juniper did to you.”
“Ki—when have I ever said mean shit to you like that?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. You just disappear, or push people away, ghost. Like—I’ve been texting since we left on our trip, and you’ve barely given me anything. I was worried. You didn’t even tell me you didn’t have heat! We could have figured out how to get you into our house to stay here even earlier. You don’t have to go through everything alone, you know? And then with Jamison, you—well, I just don’t want you to repeat that toxic pattern with Juniper.”
“Jamison! Jamison is a dick. He’s had it out to ruin this thing between me and Juniper since day one!”
“Lyric, be fucking for real. Didn’t you grab Juniper for that initial photo under the treespecificallyto make Jamison jealous? Get back at him?”
“I mean, yeah, at first. But he—”
“I’m going to stop you right there. But ‘he’ nothing. You did want him to notice and be jealous—and then when he is jealous, you don’t take any ownership for your actions. Come on! You are both participating in this. Admit it. I don’t think you even love him—I just think you love the power you feel playing games with him.”
“Ouch,” I say quietly.
“Well, sorry but not sorry. You need to squash this competitiveness with him. So both of you can move on.”
“He has moved on!” I say.
“Lyric—he was in love with you. He tried to tell you, and you just didn’t hear it, or want to believe it. And then you cheated that first time, and it kind of broke something in him. He tried to playthe off-and-on game with you, but—well, he’s really happy with his new girl. But he wanted to be happy with you. I think seeing you with Juniper, fake dating or not, has been hard for him.”
I am speechless. “No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did. Accept it. You’re totally lovable, Lyric. You just don’t seem to believe it.”
“I don’t know why it’s so difficult for me to accept that,” I whisper, looking down into my glass.
“Well, I’m also no expert,” Kiana admits. “Just better at giving advice than taking it myself, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
Kiana is silent for a beat. “Holden and I had sex.”
“WHAT?!” I scream.
“Shhhhhh, I don’t want the whole house to hear.”
“I will not. Spill the tea, now. I can’t believe you let me talk first. So are you and Holden together together?”
