“Stan,” Rowan warns.
Stanley puts a hand up. “So what are your intentions with him?”
I look at Stanley again. I let the words sit in the air for a second, and I laugh. Accidentally. I can’t help it. I have warmth in my chest that Stanley is for Blue like Mila is for me, and now that the roles have reversed, I actually think I appreciate this so much more. And it shows that Blue hasn’t talked about me all that much. Otherwise, Stanley would know Blue Golding has been the boy I’ve loved since forever. Stanley’s question is so gentle and absurd and kind that my body has to do something with the kindness and what it does is laugh. A real laugh. The kind that has my whole chest.
Stanley looks confused. “What’s funny?”
I catch my breath. I press my fingers to my mouth for a second to get my face back. “It’s nice,” I say. “That Blue has his team looking out for him. But…”
“But?”
I look around the room. “Do you guys really not know who I am to him?”
The room goes still.
Stanley looks at Rowan. Rowan looks at Percy. Percy looks at me. Nobody answers.
After a second, Stanley looks flustered. He shrugs. He squints. He morphs his face into something I’ve never seen before.
“Should we know?” he questions politely.
I smile, and I cannot stop it. I feel it grow on my face. I am, against everything I came here intending, beaming at three men I barely know in the living room of a house I should not be standing in.
Blue hasn’t told them about me.
In two years at Camden U — in two, going on three, years of living in this house, of eating breakfast at that island, of getting drunk on porches and at bars and on team planes — he has not said my name out loud to a single one of them. He has carried me in private where they couldn’t see it, couldn’t ask about it, couldn’t chirp him about it, or have an opinion.
He’s protected what we are for all these years, and a large part of me always thought he’d tell everyone that he had a crazy lunatic girl from high school who would stalk him and obsess over him. But he didn’t. I might not be as crazy as I thought. Maybe. Maybe not.
“You don’t have to worry about my intentions with Blue,” I say. “He knows. He’s always known.”
Stanley opens his mouth.
I keep going. “But maybe talk to him. I don’t think he even knows what his intentions are.”
Stanley’s hands go up. “Oh. So you’re saying it’s vice versa.”
I offer him a polite grin. “If he hasn’t told you who I am, then I’m sure you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
Stanley scoffs.
A small laugh comes from the kitchen archway. Percy. It’s the first sound he’s made.
“Damn,” Rowan says with a big smile. “Okay.”
I shrug. “Just saying.”
I turn for the door.
“So that’s the real reason you broke up with your boyfriend, huh?” Stanley says from behind me. I don’t turn around. My hand is on the knob for a second time.
“It’s a long story,” I say, looking over my shoulder.
“Okay. Well. Guess we’ll see you around,” Stanley says.
I smile. “I highly doubt it.”
I look at Blue’s hoodie and shirt, wishing I could keep them forever. I’d keep them in a box for the rest of my life as a reminder of the boy who had my heart and didn’t know what to do with it. There’s a looming thought in my head right now that’s screaming he didn’t tell his friends about me because he’s actually done with me, and he stopped caring two years ago. And maybe that’s the reality I needed to face. For once, I’m okay with that fate.
