Diaz disappeared between the trailers without looking back.
Matty stood there alone, breathing hard, staring at the spot my ex-roommate had just vacated.
I stepped out of the shadows. “Matty.”
He flinched when he saw me. “Shit. Oh, shit. You heard?”
“Yeah.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, looking exhausted. “Please don’t say anything to the guys.”
“I won’t.” I paused. “You okay?”
He laughed, bitter and hollow. “No. Not even close.”
I nodded. “Want to talk?”
“Not here. I just, um, need a minute to process all of this.”
His eyes met mine, and something in them cracked open. “He was the guy, Ben. All those months of texts. It was him.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I kind of put that together.”
His voice broke. “I don’t know what to do with this.”
A knot formed low in my gut. I wanted to fix it. Say the right thing. But this wasn’t something that could just be patched up with a few comforting words.
“You don’t have to decide tonight,” I told him. “Just . . . breathe. Sit with it. And know that I’m here if you need to talk to somebody.”
He nodded slowly, eyes distant. “Thanks, man.”
“Anytime.”
He gave me a small, tired smile. “Go back to your girl.”
I stood there for a second longer after Matty told me to go, the music from the reception drifting faintly between the trailers like it belonged to another world entirely.
Then, I turned back toward the lights.
Rejoining the reception felt wrong at first, like walking into a warm room straight out of the cold. Laughter spilled across the gravel, bodies swayed on the dance floor, and someone whooped loudly enough that a cheer followed. The party didn’t stop.
Bella found me before I fully found my footing.
She slipped into my arms, hands coming around my neck, grounding me instantly. Her brows knit together when she looked up at me.
“You okay?” she asked quietly.
I hesitated. Not because I didn’t want to tell her what had happened—of course I did—but because it wasn’t my story to tell.
“One of my friends is hurting,” I said finally. “And I’m not sure what to do about it.”
She squeezed my hand. “That’s hard.”
“Yeah,” I said. Then, silently, I corrected myself.
Twoof my friends were hurting.
I couldn’t shake the look on Diaz’s face just before he’d jogged off—gutted, like someone had ripped the ground out from under him—or the sudden realization that he had been writing explicit fanfiction about Matty, about all of us, for over a year.
