“It was hard to fall asleep when you kept talking my ear off.” There’s a hint of humor lacing his voice, though. He was listening to me. Not everyone does. “Sit. Please?”
I do, toeing my shoes off and joining him on the blankets. The grass pokes through the fabric and tickles my feet. Dean sits with his legs crossed, facing me, his hands fluttering in his lap, twisting each finger and rubbing over the knuckles. His anxiety seeps through the short distance between us and makes my stomach flip. For the first time, I’m the one having trouble meeting his eyes.
“What is this?” I ask.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
The absolute opposite. I shake my head.
Dean pushes his curls out of his face as an excuse to do something with his hands besides fidget with them. When did I start recognizing that for what it is?
“It’s supposed to be an apology.”
“Those aren’t usually this intimate.”
“Well, yes, but I figured a romantic gesture is necessary when you’re asking a girl to take you back.”
My cheeks explode with warmth.
“Even if it’s just for a pretend relationship,” Dean adds hastily.
I bury my face into my hands. “We already hashed this out earlier. We’re back together. You didn’t have to do all this.”
“That was for the cameras. This is for you.”
My head whips up.
“I should have had your back. I should have stood up for you.” The lamp plays across the nervous, guilty expression on Dean’s face. “I was a terrible ally, and a terrible friend. I said some things I regret. I’m sorry, Seyoon.”
I didn’t expect this. The earnest apology takes me so off guard that it’s a few moments before I’m able to react. Shaking my head, I pull at the blades of grass that poke up through the threads of the blanket, my fingers quivering. “I’m sorry, too,” I mutter. “We needed those points, and I know you were looking out for us. For me. I guess I… I was upset that you didn’t think we could do it. Find enough artifacts on our own. It hurt because I believed in us, but you—” Oh Christ. This is humiliating. “But you didn’t believe inme.”
What he said after the challenge replays in my mind now. As much as I tried to ignore it, or pretend like it didn’t hurt, or that my confidence is bulletproof, it isn’t. And itdidhurt.
I try to salvage the mood with a laugh, but it just sounds pathetic and bitter. “Maybe that was egotistical thinking, though. Arrogance. You were right about that. And about a lot of things. It’s true, I’m not the winner I think I am. I’m not a lot of things. I’m not smart enough, good enough—somehow though, I’m stilltoomuch.”
Shut up, Seyoon.Shutup.But I can’t. And it’s not just my hands that are shaking; it’s my vision, jumping and blurring like letters on a page. Hot shame douses over me like it did when I tried to read thatriddle in the first challenge. The same way it does each time Appa sighs in exasperation upon seeing my report card. Guilt churns my gut in a manner I haven’t felt since the last time I saw Amelia, when I didn’t have the courage to tell her everything that was wrong with me, so I lied and said that I was okay, that there was no reason I had ignored her dozens of calls since moving.
Why am I like this?
I want to carve it out—the thing inside me, the thing that made Appa leave, the thing that pushed Amelia away—before it consumes me whole. Before Dean sees it and leaves me, too.
Something wet and weak gathers at my lash line. But then gentle fingers graze the thin skin below my eyes and wipe my tears before they can fall.
I look up.
28
CAN TUMS HELP THE BUTTERFLIES IN MY STOMACH? WHAT ABOUT PEPTO-BISMOL?
DEAN
I reach out and swipe Seyoon’s tears away almost involuntarily. Something draws me to her; something always has. I turn to her the same way a lost camper looks to the North Star to orient themselves.
She blinks, coming back to me, her eyebrows pinched and her lashes wet. My throat is tight. Does she really think of herself that way? Worse, she thinksIthink that of her?
“That’s not true,” I say softly. The pressure that’s been mounting in my chest all day starts to deflate with each word. I pull my hand back so I can scoot closer, close enough that our knees touch. “You’re not too much. You’re better than good enough.”
Her lips quirk up without humor, a self-deprecating smile I didn’t know she was capable of. “That’s nice of you to say.”
