“Thebestfriendly feelings,” I continue, because I can’t stop myself from making this worse. “Like, top-tier friendship. Premium buddy status.”
“Premium buddy status,” he repeats flatly.
“Exactly! We should get T-shirts made.”
Kill me. Someone, please kill me.
“Drew! Stop flirting and help me load this plywood!” Oliver calls from across the parking lot.
“Duty calls,” I say, already backing away like the coward I am. “Thanks for coming to help. Really good friend stuff. A-plus buddy behavior.”
Jackson nods, hands shoved in his pockets, feet turned slightly inward. “Yeah. Anytime.”
I escape, my chest feeling like someone’s reached in and squeezed my heart into pulp. Glancing over my shoulder, I watch Jackson walk to his car, shoulders hunched against a wind that isn’t there.
“You okay?” Oliver asks quietly.
“Fantastic,” I lie, hefting the plywood with unnecessary force.
“You know, if you push him away?—”
“I’m not pushing anyone anywhere.”
“If you say so.”
“I goddamn say so,” I bite out right as I drop the plywood on my thumb. “Motherfucker!”
I cradle my hand against my chest, the skin already blooming purple beneath my thumbnail as Oliver’s face swims in and out of focus through the tears I refuse to let fall.
My mother always said karma was a bitch. And right now, I think karma is going to be the death of me.
31
JACKSON
The thing about heartbreak is that it doesn’t have the decency to announce itself with trumpets and dramatic lighting—it simply settles into your bones and stays there. Forever.
It’s been two days. Forty-eight hours since Drew Larney looked me dead in the eyes and called me his “bestest friend” with all the enthusiasm of a golden retriever who doesn’t understand why you’re crying. Premium buddy status. Top-tier friendship. Words that should mean something good, but instead feel as though someone took a cheese grater to my chest cavity.
The worst part? I’m not even surprised.
I drag myself through Monday morning, attending classes I don’t remember, taking notes I’ll never read. Professor Abernathy calls on me twice, and both times I manage to string together coherent sentences through sheer muscle memory. The continued lesson on inverse relationships between interest rates and investment spending has nothing on the inverse relationship between my confession and Drew’s emotional availability.
Ryan notices, of course. He notices everything.
“You’ve been staring at that same page for forty-seven minutes,” he informs me over lunch, not even looking up from his astrophysics textbook. “Your sandwich remains untouched, and you’ve sighed exactly fourteen times.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re exhibiting classic symptoms of romantic rejection. Decreased appetite, difficulty concentrating, excessive sighing.” He finally meets my eyes. “Want to talk about it?”
“Nothing to talk about.” I pick up my sandwich and take a bite that tastes worse than cardboard. “Drew and I are friends. Great friends. The best of friends.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”
I am. It’s not working.
The thing is, I always knew this was how it would end. Drew Larney, with his easy charm and his roster of hookups, was never going to fall for the football player who stumbled into his fake relationship scheme. I’m not his type. I’ve seen his type—confident, experienced, comfortable in their sexuality. Not someone who spent an afternoon exploring his own body while fantasizing about possibilities that were never real.
