“I don’t know,” I said. As hopelessly pathetic as that was, it was also true. “We were idiots. It started as a joke—just some dumb, bragging rights kind of thing—and then it wasn’t a joke anymore. We got caught up in it. I got caught up in it.”
“Caught up,” Rachel muttered. “Nice euphemism for ‘thoughtless jerk.’”
I didn’t look at her. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “That too.”
Frankie’s eyes glistened, and I felt the floor tilt again. She wasn’t yelling. I almost wished she would. At least anger would’ve been something I could hold onto. This…this quiet ache in her voice? It was worse.
“Was I on it?” she asked.
Her voice cracked halfway through the sentence.
“No,” I said, easier with that answer than any of the others. “You wereneveron it. You wouldneverhave been on it. “ Honesty might be the only currency I had left.
“Why not?”
“Because you matter…” Fuck. I closed my eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. “Those other girls just—didn’t.”
I didn’t think this could get worse and somehow, it just had. I heard what I said, heard the truth in it, and I couldn’t take it back. Laura. Sharon. Maria. Patty. None of them had mattered. I liked Laura fine, but none of them had been Frankie.
Noneof them.
She blinked slowly, like she didn’t know what to do with that.
The room went quiet again. Rachel’s sigh cut through it like a blade, and for a second I thought she might tell me to leave. Maybe she should’ve.
But Frankie said, “Why’d you even need something like that? The scores. The competition. What were you proving?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew. Maybe I thought if I had the numbers, the attention, it’d matter more, maybe. It’d make something happen. Before you ask, I have no idea what.”
It sounded small when I said it. Smaller than I’d expected.
Frankie didn’t respond. She just looked tired. Bone-deep tired. Like she’d been carrying too much for too long and this—me—was the last damn thing she could take.
“I know sorry doesn’t fix it,” I said, because the silence was unbearable. “But I am. More than I’ve ever been sorry for anything.”
Her eyes finally met mine. For a heartbeat, I thought I saw something—pain, maybe. Then she blinked and it was gone.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “You should be.”
That was it. No yelling. No closure. Just those three words and the hollow thud of my heart trying to keep up.
I nodded. “Okay.”
Because what else was there to say? Owning it didn’t mean getting forgiven. Owning it meant standing there and realizing you’d built the wreckage you were buried under—and that maybe, the best you could do, was not dig anyone else into it with you.
Frankie didn’t say anything else. She just stood there for a second, arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to hold all the broken pieces in. Then she turned, slow and quiet, and walked down the short hall toward her bedroom.
The door clicked shut behind her.
That sound—it wasn’t loud, but it echoed. Rachel exhaled, low and sharp. I could feel her eyes on me, the judgment radiating like a heat lamp. Still, I couldn’t even muster anger anymore. I just felt hollowed out.
When she moved toward the door, I followed automatically. My legs felt mechanical, like they’d forgotten how to move ontheir own. She opened the door wide, and the hot air hit me like another slap.
I hesitated in the doorway. My throat was tight. “Can you—” I started, then stopped. Tried again. “Just…look after her, yeah?”
Rachel’s brows shot up, incredulous. “What the hell do you think I’vebeendoing?”
Before I could even nod, the door slammed in my face. For a long second, I just stood there, staring at it. Then I turned, and slowly walked away, her silence trailing after me like a dark shadow.
