Alex is silent for a full ten seconds, then thunders, “Are you kidding me?” Light floods the room—he’s standing on the other side of my bed, face tight and shadowy in the glare of the lamp.
“It was stupid.” I roll out of bed, back to the wall, defenses rising even though I know I’m in the wrong here. For this bit, anyway. “You sure paid me back, though.”
We stare at each other, gazes burning.
My palms are sweating. I clench my fists, unclench them. “I didn’t move on as fast as you think, Alex.” My voice weakens. “I didn’t date anyone seriously the whole time I was in college. But you did.”
Three days later, he posted:POLL: Our Little Secret or Half Moon Mill for a first date?
When I saw it, I stopped breathing for a solid minute, then let out a horrible, inhuman scream. I can still remember my mother passing by in the hallway, how she’d snapped at me.“It’s good you and that boy are over with. You were attached to each other more than was healthy.”
“I can’t believe you took another girl to Our Little Secret.” It’s asinine to still be stuck on that after all this time, but the imagery of him and a random girl together in our favorite booth still threatens to burst a blood vessel. And I know that Our Little Secret feels like “our little secret” to everyone, to all the local couples who get lovey-dovey there on anniversaries, but whenyou’re a teenager in first love, it really does feel likeyourlittle secret. “That’s where we ate dinner before prom, both years, you asshole.”
“So, you’re telling me,” he winds on faintly, “that you posted that picture to make me jealous.”
“Yes.”
He just stares at me for a beat, crazed. Then, all at once, the fight leaves his body.
“I posted the restaurant thing to make you jealous,” he blows out in a ragged rush, then slides down the wall to the floor. “I made it up, too.”
No.
“No.You didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”
His lets his head thump gently against the wall.Tap,tap. “There was no girl.” His eyes are tortured. “Of course there was no girl. You were always the girl.”
A fuzz creeps into my ears. “But that. That’s why I...”
“Please.” He shakes his head. “Don’t. That makes it worse.”
I can’t speak. I sit down on the bed as the room spins around us.
After he posted that update, I lost it. Went on a five-day bender, engaged in some destructive behavior that was very unlike me, including a one-night stand with some guy called Rob I barely remember aside from the fact that he had black lights and a ton of iguanas and was skinny as a yardstick. I left Alex a voicemail telling him everything, half-shouting, half-crying. I never heard from him again. That night, that voicemail, so many other decisions I’d made, ate away at me for a long time.
He gusts another sigh. “I wanted that to be me.”
I can’t bear to look at him, my fingers reaching out to snatch up a pillow, clutching it to myself for something to ground me.
“That should have beenus. I shouldn’t have waited so long...that night when we almost... I wish...” His voice breaks. “I just wanted it to be special. For our first time. I thought you were worth better than the back of a truck. I wanted to give you more.”
This quiet pain is unbearably worse than cursing, shouting. There is nothing more awful than Alex rolling up his sleeves to show me all the wounds I left on him, and him reckoning with the ones he gave to me.
“Please don’t,” I whisper. “I can’t believe you lied.”
“I can’t believeyoulied.”
“I can’t believe neither of us suspected the other lied.”
“We were stupid,” he says after a while. “Our brains weren’t fully developed yet. Lying just to make the other person jealous? Stupid.” He can’t stop shaking his head. “I am so ashamed of myself. My only excuse is that we were young and dumb, but... Christ, what a way to treat the one we loved.”
My gaze snags on the empty side of the bed where Trevor’s been sleeping, and I hear an echo of Morgan’s words drift in from a few days ago:Let him see what could’ve been his. Make him sorry for what he lost.
My heart breaks all over again for us. I now know, without a doubt, that he’s sorry.
It doesn’t feel as satisfying as I’d imagined.
Chapter Nineteen
