She couldn’t agree to that. Daisy was her best friend. She needed to be the one to tell her.
Ali gently shook her head and simply said “I feel like it needs to come from me.”
She all but fell into her Chevrolet Malibu. And with a gentle smile and wave, she was off to face her best friend. She wasn’t even sure what she was nervous for; it just felt like a weird line had been crossed and she was unsure of how Daisy would react.
Bad Blood
Ali
“Unreal. You really played the victim, didn’t you? God, you’re so manipulative it’s disgusting. I… I just never thought in a million years he would fall for your stupid, pathetic, damsel act.”
Ali stood frozen in the doorway of their dorm suite, stunned.
Daisy was livid— face red, voice shaking, rage spilling out like gasoline.
“What a joke,” Daisy sneered. “You’re a joke.”
Ali blinked. “Daisy… I didn’t—”
“God, you look like an oversized wallflower with stage fright. Say something already.”
But Ali had no words. Her throat felt like it had closed up. Daisy shoved past her, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the frame. Ali stood frozen, stunned. Her ears rang from the echo. Then finally—like muscle memory— her body moved. She went straight to her room, crawled under the blanket on her twin bed, and let the tears fall.
She cried until her chest ached, until her body took over— shaking, gasping, dry heaving sobs that left her breathless.
When it got to be too much, she stumbled to the bathroom. And there, in the harsh white light, she stared at herself in the mirror. Skin blotchy. Eyes wild. Arms wrapped around her middle like she could physically hold herself together.
She didn’t want to hurt herself. Not really.
She just wanted the hurting to stop.
The ache. The shame. The way Daisy’s words echoed like truths she’d always feared.
She sank to the floor, back against the cool tile, and buried her face in her knees. That was the first night she locked herself in the bathroom to fall apart.
She wouldn’t tell Dylan.
She wouldn’t tell anyone.
Not ever.
The weeks that followed were a blur of whispers, glances, and a thousand little wounds Ali couldn’t prove— but felt all the same.
Daisy and her sorority sisters didn’t let up. They just got more creative. Insults disguised as jokes. Exaggerated sighs when Ali entered a room. Group texts filled with side-eyes and gifs that weren’t technically about her— but always arrived the second she walked by. Sometimes it was worse— overheard conversations in the student union, laughter that cut like glass, snide comments muttered just loud enough.
Ali adapted.
She started wearing long sleeves. Oversized sweatshirts. Layering her favorite Magnolia Bluff tee under zip-ups even when the coastal sun still burned into October. She wore rubber bracelets around her wrists and claimed it was a “throwback” trend. No one asked questions. They never do when you’re quiet and smile enough to make them comfortable.
Daylight
Ali
She stopped going to parties. Dylan asked— he always asked— but she found reasons not to. “Too much reading,” or “headache,” or “just tired.” She didn’t tell him that the thought of stepping into another Greek house, another room full of girls who hated her just for existing, made her chest cave in.
So instead, he made new plans.
Drive-in movies where she could lean against his shoulder with a bucket of popcorn between them. Walks at the marina where he pointed out which boat he was going to buy her “one day when he signed his rookie contract.” Late-night fries and milkshakes at the 24-hour diner she loved. And long, quiet hours in his dorm room— where they worked side by side or binge-watchedThe Vampire Diaries(even though he claimed to “hate drama” and “already knew who she’d choose”). He never complained when she hit pause for the fifth time to talk about Damon and Stefan. He just smiled, reached for her hand, and let her ramble.
