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All eyes were trained on us, the previously noisy room suddenly filled with stark silence and the occasional snicker that scorched my ears as I took a tentative step toward him. I tried to push down the embarrassment of being so exposed like this.

“We don’t have to kiss. It’s not a big deal,” I lied. “We don’t have to end the party.”

“Get out, Norah. I mean it.”

I could hear my pulse flying. My cheeks burned hot as I fought back tears. I refused to let them fall. I couldn’t let him see how much this was affecting me.

“Okay, you really don’t want to kiss me. Fine. Everyone gets it.”

In the second before I turned to storm out of there, I saw a look I couldn’t place flash across his cruel face. I didn’t let myself linger in it. I booked it right out of that room, with Frankie close at my heels. Not only did Henry reject me without an ounce of kindness, but he did so in the presence of twenty of our classmates. Soon our entire grade would know about my rejection, my humiliation. The way he spat out her at me like I meant nothing.

Sure enough, the wave of texts from people who weren’t even on this trip started before Frankie and I got to our own room two floors up. It hurt that he didn’t want me and that I finally had an answer to the question I’d wondered my whole life, but the public nature of it all was really what irked me. This was what other people would remember about this trip. This was what we’d come back to when we returned to Laketon. I’d never done anything significant enough to warrant being at the center of gossip, and I instantly hated it.

I didn’t sleep at all that night, even once my phone stopped blowing up. I was hurt and my head felt fuzzy from the one gross beer I’d sipped for hours, but pretty quickly that pain shifted into anger. How could Henry do something like that to me, in this way, after claiming to be my friend? After we spent the entire flight dreaming up our combined future. He didn’t have to kiss me, but the way he handled that all made me feel like he didn’t even want to be in my life anymore.

I could make that happen.

In the morning, I got ready for my interview. I did not knock on Henry’s door and make sure he was awake. I did not help him navigate the city. I went all by myself, figured it out alone, and honestly? I knocked it out of the park. I knew when I shook hands goodbye with the admissions officer that I’d done it. I was going to get into NYU. I was going to move here in less than a year and start my new life. I only had to make it through a few more months of high school, and then I could forget that any of this happened.

I managed to avoid Henry for the next day and a half, using Frankie as a human shield when necessary. I felt him glaring daggers at me the entire flight back to Chicago, as well as the bus ride from the airport back to school, but I didn’t let myself care. I couldn’t allow myself to slip back into feeling my actual emotions about any of this.

I was successful at this until we arrived back at Laketon Academy, and I remembered that Henry was my ride home. I honestly would have rather walked than get in his CR-V, but it was raining, and without a word, he yanked my duffel bag out of my hands, threw it in his trunk, and scowled at me while both of us got completely drenched.

“We have things to discuss,” he shouted at me as the rain pummeled his car. “We can do this now, or we can do this in half an hour when I show up at your house after you’ve walked home just to prove some fucking point.”

I’d never heard Henry curse before. It felt unnatural coming out of his mouth. Maybe that’s why I relented, shrugging into the passenger seat without a word.

We maintained a brutal silence on the ride home, both stewing, until he pulled into his driveway. He clocked me eyeing my porch and said, “Don’t even think about it,” before leading me into his house.

We barely made it through the front door before he started in on me.

“How could you do that to me? You know how important this trip was for me,” Henry said, stripping off his soaked coat and boots.

I shrugged, removing my own coat and heel-toeing off my boots at the door. “Oops.”

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Again with the cursing. This was not my Henry. This was some alien double. A body swap was the only explanation. “I can’t believe you would be this petty. This is my life, my future! It’s not some game for your amusement.”

“Oh, it’s not some meaningless game, Henry? Sure had me fooled. But you probably weren’t getting texts all night about how embarrassed you must be, how completely humiliated.”

“I wouldn’t know if I was getting texts,” Henry shouted, “because my phone is broken. You know that.”

My own phone started to ring but before I could reach into my pocket, Henry shot me a death glare.

“Do. Not. Answer. That phone. Norah, I am so serious right now.” He looked at me with such fury that I put my hands up like he was keeping me at gunpoint. It was the hold he’d always had on my heart, only suddenly, it felt sour.

He began trudging up the stairs and I followed, furious. When we got to his bedroom, he ducked into the bathroom and launched a towel at me, drying his wet hair and clothes off with his own as well.

“I needed you,” he continued. “I needed you, and I needed that interview, and I can’t believe you would be such a selfish asshole after everything we’ve been through together. It’s like our friendship means nothing to you.”

“That feels really genuine given how much you clearly valued our friendship the other night,” I said.

Henry dragged a hand over his face in frustration. “You know that’s not—”

“As for the interview,” I interrupted, “I’m sure there are other opportunities, so you don’t have to make such a thing about it. Julia missed the trip for her cousin’s wedding but she said there are still alumni interviews in the city, so—”

“No.” Henry’s tone was firm. “That was my only shot. It just was, Norah, and you ruined that for me.”

We argued in circles like teenagers do, carefully avoiding the issue of the non-kiss while throwing as many cheap shots at each other as we could think of. This was the part of knowing someone your whole life that I hadn’t accounted for—we had a lot of ammunition and knew how to fight dirty. Years later, I don’t even remember what was actually said at that point, but I remember the slew of calls that followed, my phone blaring repeatedly from my pocket until Henry finally shouted, “Just answer the goddamn phone, Norah,” as he stormed out of the room. I heard that one creaky step groan under the weight of his stomping feet.