“She’s off-limits.”
“Jesus Christ. Are you going to let me finish?”
She raises her eyebrows.
“If you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at the right person. Be mad at me. I’m the one pursuing her. I really fucking like her. Don’t look at her like she did this. She didn’t. I did.”
“I told you not to.”
“G, I’ve been telling you for years that I cannot keep walking on glass around you because of one mistake I made when I was seventeen.”
She goes still.
“Don’t bring that up right now.”
“I have apologized for what happened with Madeline a hundred times. I apologized to her. I apologized to you. I was seventeen. We were in high school. It was a mistake. I have been paying for it for far too fucking long.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“G, itiswhat this is. You think I haven’t seen it? Every friend you’ve made since high school you have kept on the other side of a wall from me. Every roommate. Every girl you’ve gotten closeto. You have built a moat around your friend group, and I am the moat. I am the thing you are protecting them from.”
“Benson.”
“You have done this, and I let you do it because I felt like shit about Madeline. But I cannot keep being the villain in your friend group. Lucy is twenty-one. She is allowed to make her own decisions. You don’t get to make that decision for her.”
She stands up and walks past me to the porch railing. Her back is to me. Her hands are flat on the wood. Her shoulders are tight.
“You don’t get it.”
“I’m trying.”
“You don’t get it, Benson.”
She turns. Her eyes are wet now. She is starting to cry. “You get everything.”
“What—”
“No, you’re going to be quiet and listen now. You wanted this to be a conversation. We’re having it. You geteverything, Benson. You are six-three. You take up the entire room everywhere you go. You have hockey. You have the team. You have Mom and Dad in a way I haveneverhad them. Mom calls you when she wants to know how she is doing in her own life. Did you know that?”
“What?”
“Mom callsyou. I am her daughter, and Mom callsyouwhen she wants advice. Dad lights up when you walk into a room. He does not light up when I walk into a room. He loves me. I am not saying he doesn’t love me. I’m saying I am the second child and you are the perfect son who is going to play in the goddamn NHL, and I have always —always— been the one in your shadow.”
“G.” I shiver.
“I’m only here at Camden U because you came here. I picked equipment manager because it was the closest I could get to yourteam without playing. I’m literally a person who has built her whole life around being adjacent to my brother because that is the thing I am good at. If you ask me who I am, the first thing I would say is that I’m Benson Reeve’s little sister. Isn’t that fucking sad?”
My mind races as I listen to her.
“And then I made friends here. Mara. Lucy.Lucy.Lucy is — Benson, Lucy is the best friend I have ever had. She is a once-in-a-lifetime person. She has held me together in ways I cannot explain to you in this conversation. She doesn’t care about hockey. She doesn’t care aboutyou. She doesn’t know who anyone is when she meets a person — she just sees them. She has been mine for a year and a half.My best fucking friend, Benson.And I have spent that entire year and a half waiting for the day you were going to walk into this and take her too.”
I watch a tear slip from her eye. “G—”
“Tonight you did. You took her. You took the one thing I had that was mine. And I am not going to apologize for being upset about that, because I have spent my whole life being told I should be happy with whatever scraps of attention I get from this family and from our friends while you get the whole goddamn meal.”
I don’t say anything. I stare at my hands. The knuckles on my right hand are scraped from Paxton’s tooth, and one of them is bleeding still.
“I didn’t know that,” I admit. Really, I had no fucking clue.
