“Are you guys plotting something? Something like when you read my fanfic? Are you both using the game to embarrass me on the campus YouTube channel?”
She scowls. “How the fuck could you ask me that? Do you think I’m a monster?”
I wave a hand, and my tummy flutters at how flippant I must look to her. Like it doesn’t hurt that they would scheme to humiliate me. “You’ve done it before.”
“How can you equate that with embarrassing you in front of the whole school? Yes, I read your fanfic in front of a few people. Is it really that embarrassing?”
I grit my teeth. “You know it was.”
I can still hear her voice, and the laughter around us muffling it. It intrudes my thoughts when I write sometimes. I couldn’t write for a month after it happened.
Her lips curl into a snarl. “He’s always had a sick crush on you, and you loved it. You gave him your pen name so he could read your smut and fantasize about you. And you only did it to hurt me. It was your revenge.”
Bafflement expands within me like a balloon. “I had no idea Tristan would read it.”
She scoffs. “You tried to steal him from me from the very beginning. As if you even could. He might have a kink for girls like you, but he’d never make you his girlfriend.”
Oh fuck. That hurts.
She’s always known how to cut deep.
“I don’t want to be his girlfriend.” My voice is empty.
“You do. If only to take him from me. You never really cared about me. You picked me as your best friend because I likedJane Austen, who I now think is totally overrated. Especially compared to the Brontes.Andyou thought you were smarter than me. You’d never be friends with someone smarter than you.”
Her pettiness eases the tightness in my chest. “Harper, this is such a dumb conversation. I feel like we’re in high school again. Why don’t you just go? I’m sick of you.”
She hesitates for a moment before sticking her phone in her purse and walking toward the door. When she sets her hand on the knob, she turns to me. “Why didn’t you fight for me?”
I jerk back. Are her eyes glistening? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I was going through the hardest time in my whole fucking life. You didn’t give a shit. All you cared about was not having someone to watch fuckingPoldarkwith you.”
Even in my turmoil, I want to smile. Watching period dramas with her was one of the highlights of my teenage years. Even now, after all the ugliness that unraveled between us.
“I lost my dad, Amy. You have no idea what that’s like.” Now her eyes are sparkling with tears.
My chest tightens. “You’re right.”
“I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Not even my mom. Not even Nick. I just wanted to fall into a dark hole. Tristan was the person who got me out of it, because he didn’t force me to fucking talk. He was a quiet, comforting presence, because he knew it was what I needed.”
I let out a shaky breath. “He’s more sensitive than me, I think. Better at reading people.”
Which is how he knew all the right things to say to me.
Her eyes flash. “Yes, he is. But you know what? Nick didn’t just ignore me. Neither did my mom. They were there for me—grieving with me—even when I wished they’d both go away.” She wipes under her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “You just let mego, because you didn’t give a shit about my dad. Or me. I’ll never forgive you for that.”
I’m in a fog when the door slams behind her.
It isn’t true. I wasn’t selfish. And even if she did want me to fight for her, how could I have known that?
She chose Tristan.
But did I also choose myself?
I’ve learned that when I’m rejected, I reject back. Like when I concocted a ridiculous revenge plan to take down Tristan. An icy river of chills flow through my veins.
No.
