‘Yeah, you have,’ I said. ‘At least Jac told me the truth.’
‘No, she fucking did not!’ Dylan said, dropping her hands. ‘She told you horrible lies about the kind of person you are!’
‘Don’t,’ I said shortly. ‘I don’t want to hear how great I am. I don’t want another set of affirmation cards. If you believed any of that, you would have had enough respect for me to tell me thefucking truth.’
I blinked furiously. Why, why, why did I have to be one of those people who cried when they were angry?
‘Mandie, I’ve gone about this so poorly,’ she said. ‘You deserve so much better. You mean the world to me, and—’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to hear that either.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes!’
‘Okay, fine,’ I said. ‘Leave with me. Go down to the Convent with me. Right now.’
Dylan froze.
‘Well?’ I demanded.
‘I can’t.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
The tears kept welling up. I wiped my hand angrily over my face.
‘Mandie, it’s not what you think,’ she said. Tears were beading in her eyes too, and her voice was shaking. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘No, it’s not,’ I said.
I leaned against the wall next to the shower. I was getting wet, but I didn’t care. I just needed something to hold me up.
‘It’s this simple, Dylan,’ I said. ‘I believe you like me. I believe you are attracted to me.’
‘Yes,’ she said, a tear rolling down each cheek. ‘Yes, Mandie.’
‘But it is not fair of you to do this to me,’ I said. ‘It is not fair of you to make heart eyes at me, or to make those little comments at dinner, and it is definitely not fair of you to kiss me. Because what you actually want is him.’
She didn’t say anything.
Maybe it was just because I was so unused to being exploding-radiant-heater angry, but the fact that she didn’t say anything made me really happy.
At least she respected my intelligence enough not to deny it.
15
We didn’t talk for a week.
I should have packed up, dusted off my ‘I’m leaving’ speech for Romeo-Dylan and gone to the Convent, but I didn’t. I’d always thought of myself as a nice person, but that radiant-heater anger had burned away some layers and unearthed my petty bitch core.
I wasn’t going to make this easy for her. I wasn’t going to just go away. She was going to have to look at me and choose him anyway, and I hoped it made her feelterrible.
I played into it for Murray. ‘Dylan G and I had a falling out,’ I said in an ITM. ‘We’re not friends anymore.’
‘Did your feelings for Dylan JM get in the way?’
