I wanted to explain.
I wanted to go back to the beginning of summer and make better goddamn choices.
“Is Frankie here?” I asked.
She folded her arms, blocking the doorway like she was a bouncer. “Why? So you can humiliate her again?”
And there it was—that old, sharp hate-hate energy between us. Rachel had been the one who told Frankie about beinguntouchable.
“Rachel, please,” I said. And I must’ve sounded desperate, because her expression flickered for half a second. Then she sighed and stepped aside.
Frankie was standing in the kitchen. She looked… wrecked. Not angry—worse. Hurt in that quiet, exhausted way people get when they’ve cried too much and run out of tears. Her hair was damp, hanging past her shoulders and seemed dark, or maybe it was the room.
I swear the room tilted. Because I did that. All of it. The videos, the list, the look in her eyes that made me wish I could unzip myself and walk out of my own body.
“Frankie,” I said, my voice rough. “I—I didn’t?—”
She looked at me then, and it felt like getting punched. It was like getting hit with a montage of every mistake I’d ever made. There was no welcome in her green eyes, no soft smile on her lips that was just waiting for the punchline. She was staring at me like she had no idea who I was anymore.
“Don’t,” she said quietly. “Just don’t.”
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. Somewhere behind me, Rachel was muttering something under her breath, but all I could hear was the blood in my ears.
I wanted to say I was sorry. That I’d been an idiot. That the guy in those clips wasn’t who I was anymore. But how do you make someone believe that when the proof says otherwise?
So I just stood there.
Breathing. Breaking a little.
And realizing that maybe owning it means you don’t get to fix it. You just stand there, in the wreckage, and let her see what’s left.
“I just—” I swallowed, my throat dry as chalk. “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”
The question came out raw, unplanned. I sounded pathetic. Desperate. Which, fine, I was. Frankie just stared at me, herfingers tightening around the edge of the counter. The silence stretched so long I thought maybe she wasn’t going to answer.
Then she did.
“How much of it was true?”
That landed like a hammer to the ribs.
I could’ve lied. I thought about it for half a second. I could’ve saidnone of it, that Sharon edited everything to hell, that it was all fake, old, meaningless. But owning it—that was what my dad said, right?You have to own it.
So I stood there with the truth like a mouthful of glass.
“Most of it,” I said finally. “At least…the stuff in the videos. I don’t even know what Sharon added or twisted, but yeah, that happened.”
Frankie’s chin trembled. She didn’t look at me, just focused on some invisible point on the counter, like if she stared hard enough, she could disappear into it.
“I’m not trying to make excuses,” I added quickly. “I know it looks bad because itisbad. I just—” I exhaled, shaky. “I wasn’t thinking. I was stupid. I was so goddamn stupid.”
Behind me, Rachel made a small sound. Could’ve been disgust. Could’ve been satisfaction. I didn’t turn around to check.
I wanted to tell her to leave, to stop standing there like judge and jury, but I didn’t. Because if Frankie needed her there, if Rachel’s presence was the only thing holding Frankie together right now, then I’d take it. I’d take all of it. Every ounce of her disgust, every glare. I’d earned worse.
Frankie finally looked up. “What about the scores?” The words were soft, but they sliced through me. “The points. The lists. The—whatever it was you all did.”
My brain scrambled, looking for an explanation that didn’t make me sound like the asshole I was. But there wasn’t one.
