“It’s been two minutes and sixteen seconds,” clarifies Headset Lady.
“What?” I wail. Is San Diego actually worth this? “Hell. This is actual hell.”
“Did you two hook up or something?” says Rashawn, his voice low.
“No!” we both shout in response.
“OK, OK, just . . .somethinghappened. I can sense something between the two of you and it’s more than justchange.”
“She pushed me away and she pushed me out.”
“You didn’t need us any more,” I snap. “You had a whole football team of bros and dudes just waiting to worship you.”
“Becauseyou pushed me out. I literally had nobody.”
“Why’d she push you out, Charlie?” asks Rashawn.
“I didn’t push him out! I didn’t push you out, Charlie,” I snap.
“You ghosted me,” he says. “You ignored my texts and phone calls. You removed me from theFallsWhatsApp group. You blocked me on everything. I came round to your house and your mum said you weren’t there, but I could see the light in your room.”
“Becauseyoublankedme, Charlie. You ignored my messages; you wouldn’t answer my calls.”
“For, like, a week,” he says.
“It was one of the hardest measures of time I ever had to exist through, Charlie,” I say, my voice wobbling. “Doesn’t matter that it was just a week.”
I don’t mention the devastation of him choosing Vivian over me, and I don’t tell him that I spent way more than a week crying myself to sleep. Or that I didn’t tell Roxy just how deep the crack in my heart was because I didn’t want her to know that our friend had hurt me so badly.
“Charlie?” says Rashawn, his voice calm. “Do you want to respond to that?”
“I’m sorry,” he says, but I don’t know if he’s just saying it because of Dr Rashawn. “I freaked out, OK? I thought everything would change and I’d lose you, then it did, and I did.”
I lie in the darkness, the pain of his looks of indifference compared to his face lighting up when he saw me still squeezing my lungs.
“You broke my heart, Charlie. I knew it would get broken one day,” I say, clasping my shaking hands together, “but I never thought it would be you breaking it.”
“So, you feel like Charlie broke your trust. Is that right, Eliza?”
I nod, and somehow they both know.
“I fucked up; I realise that,” says Charlie Chamberlain. “Irealised, like, a week later but you wouldn’t speak to me. I tried to reach out to you, but you’d made up your mind and it was like we’d never happened. Do you know how that made me feel? Do you know how lonely I was? You had Rox, but I had nobody.”
“You were fine with your new friends,” I say.
“Because Ihadto be. Ihadto go and make new friends. The worst thing . . .” He pauses and I blink at Frank, wondering what he’s going to say. Charlie Chamberlain, not Frank. I haven’t got cabin fever yet. “I didn’t want to lose you as a friend but that’s exactly what happened. You punished me by taking that away because you knew how much itwould hurt.”
“Ipunishedyou?” I repeat, tears pricking my eyes. “How can you say that? How can you say I hurt you, Charlie? All you’ve done since then is make fun of me. How do you think that makes me feel?”
“It’s just banter, Eliza.”
“Using my favourite thing to make me feel shit about myself isn’t banter, Charlie.”
“I was just messing around?” It comes out as a question, like he’s not sure if he was or not. I’m not sure either. “It was the only . . . it was . . .”
“It was what, Charlie?” says Rashawn. “Tell her.”
“It’s the only interaction I get with you. We used to make fun of each other all the time . . . I just . . . I just miss messing around with my friend.”
