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“What more do you want? What do you want to hear? What should I do? Should I dance or talk? What do you want from me?”

“Tell me why you think everyone would hate you if you were just yourself.”

“Because that’s how I feel, okay?” Now I’m yelling at him. My whole body is shaking. I want it to stop. I want all of this to stop, and at the same time, I want to keep going. Why?

“You hate yourself, and that’s why you think everyone else does too.” A statement, not a question. Just a repetition of my own words. But there’s something in his voice that seems vaguely familiar to me. As if he knows the feeling.

“Yes,” I whisper. “Does that help? I don’t think it does.”

“Then you’re wrong.” His fingers are back, brushing the back of my hand. I flinch.

“I’m wrong?”

“Exactly.” His gaze burns into mine. I hate it, and at the same time, I never want him to look away again.

“In what way am I wrong?” My fingers tremble. I want to reach for the necklace, to hold on to something. It’s not there. I want it back. I need it.

“You feel something, and you show it. You’re real. No one can hate you for that.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because I don’t hate you,” he says, his voice surprisingly gentle. My chest tightens. I want it to be true.

“You don’t even know me.”

He comes closer. Heat goes through me as he closes the distance that I just put between us. “I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m the only one who knows you at all.”

“Bullshit,” I say. Why can’t I just admit that he’s right? Because the truth hurts too much to say out loud. “You don’t know me. You have no idea who I really am. We fucked once, and that was it. Remember?”

He shakes his head, and a few fine dark strands of hair fall over his forehead. My fingers twitch, wanting to brush them back. My hands clench, my fingernails digging so deep into my palms that it hurts, to keep myself from touching him. This is all so twisted. As are his next words.

“I know exactly who you are, Ophelia.”

I snort. “Oh really? Who do you think I am?”

One more step and he’s so close that we’re almost touching. I have to tilt my head back to look at him because he’s taller than me. All at once my mouth is dry.

“You’re an actress. You do things because you think you have to. You’re friends with people who don’t know you at all, and don’t see you for who you really are, because you show them a version of yourself that you think they want to see. They just accept it, and they don’t even bother to try to see through you, do they? After all, it’s easier to pretend everything is fine than to deal with someone else’s real problems. And you have more than enough of those, don’t you? But you still pretend to be sweet, lovely Lia so that people will like you. You’re right about one thing, though. They don’t like you. They can’t because they don’t know who you really are. You always do what’s expected of you instead of what you want.”

I want to tell him that’s not true, that he can’t possibly know all of that, but unfortunately he’s been seeing me every day for weeks. With my friends, with my teachers, in class. Phoenix sees the way I am, and he also remembers how I was on the night we spent together.

He knows I’m not the same girl. He sees right through me; it doesn’t even take much effort.

“You’re envious and angry and just human, Ophelia.” He takes my face between his hands, his breath brushing my skin. I want to pull away and press myself against him, run away and beg him to hold me forever. My pulse is racing. This is wrong, so wrong. “You’re afraid of yourself and who you are. You think you’re alone in feeling this way, but you’re not. You’re just like everyone else. It’s normal to be envious and angry sometimes. It’s normal to be frustrated. But you’re so focused on not being allowed to feel anything at all that it’s eating you alive.”

I gasp. “That’s not true,” I say, almost choking on the lie.

“It is, and you know it.”

“No, it’s not.” I try to argue, but my voice betrays me, and I fail miserably.

“Yes, it is,” he replies simply. The certainty in his voice breaks my heart a little.

“How can you see that? How can you see who I am?” I blurt out, raw and unfiltered. Tears run down my cheeks, and Phoenix gently wipes them away. Way too gently. He shouldn’t be allowed to do that. But there are a few things he shouldn’t be allowed to do, like standing close to me and touching me, holding me, and looking at me the way he does. As if he can see right through me.

“Because I know that feeling. I know what it’s like to hate yourself. I know what it’s like to feel trapped, and what it’s like when someone thinks what you feel is wrong. But there is no right or wrong. Not when it comes to your feelings.”

“Yes, there is,” I protest weakly. I feel dizzy, and everything is spinning. “There are right and wrong feelings. What we’re doing here is wrong.” I put my hands on his chest to push him back, because he’s about to remember that I’m right. But he makes no move to pull his hands away. “Everything between us is wrong.”