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“And that gave you the right to yell at us?”

“No, I just—”

“No, you don’t just. I get that you’re used to being unquestioned by everyone, but Jesus, Aves, you were a jerk in there. And until you figure your shit out, I’m out.”

“Harper, wait—”

“No.” Harper looked at her, and Avery wondered if she’d ever truly known her friend. This wasn’t the Harper she knew, who was unfailingly kind and forgiving. “Figure your shit out first, then apologize,” Harper said, and climbed into her car without another word.

She peeled out of the Pancake King parking lot, leaving Avery there, frozen and confused.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Theo

His stomach in knots, Theo pulled up to the Nielson house. He always wanted to call it a mansion, even though it really wasn’t; it was just a single-family home that happened to be at least three times the size of every house he’d ever lived in. He’d been flying high all morning, the buzz of having been with Avery for real, no holds barred, had been better than anything he’d ever felt.

But then he’d gotten the text from her. It wasn’t anything specific that set off his anxiety, but he knew Avery better than he knew literally anyone else on the planet, and her message had felt—off. It just said Can you come over this afternoon? but his senses had been tingling ever since, like he was marching to his doom. Perhaps that was overly melodramatic, but as Tommy was fond of pointing out, Theo had a lot of Brontë-esque tendencies.

He knocked, waited, and then let himself in. If her mom was home, she’d probably be pissed, but Theo was used to bearing the brunt of Dr. Kelly Nielson’s disappointment. “Aves?” he called. The house felt empty, cold. He wondered if maybe he was supposed to meet her someplace else and was about to check his phone to see if he’d missed something when he heard her call from the bowels of the house. “Back here,” Avery said.

Theo followed the sound of her voice to her dad’s study, where she was sitting curled up on the dark green couch, a blanket on her lap, looking forlorn. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his heart rate spiking.

“What was Tommy going to say?”

His heart rate hit the stratosphere. “What are you talking about?” Theo asked carefully.

“The other night. Tommy was going to say something about you, and you got all weird. And I keep asking you about it, but you won’t say.”

Theo sat down on the chair to her left, thinking fast. They’d had this conversation several times already, and there were only so many ways he could dodge it.

“What do you mean?” He wanted to buy time, but had a sneaking suspicion his time was running out. Maybe he had been right before, and he really was coming to his doom.

Avery looked annoyed. “Cut the shit, Theo.”

Irritation flared, temporarily extinguishing his dread. “If you’re looking for a specific answer, why don’t you save us both the time and tell me what it is?”

It was, not surprisingly, not a great way to respond. She bolted upright and fixed him with a look that would have chilled a lesser man. “According to Tommy, you’ve had feelings for me for a while.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “And if I did? Why is that so bad?”

“Because. You should have told me.”

“Yeah, because you would have taken that really well,” he snapped.

“Don’t you dare get mad at me,” she retorted. “You kept something from me.”

“So?” Theo said, doing his best to keep the flare of anger out of his voice. She was right on the facts—he had kept it from her—but it wasn’t like he had deliberately tricked her or anything. His feelings about her before this week were entirely irrelevant.

“So? So? When I suggested this, you said—you agreed that it didn’t matter, because we didn’t have feelings for each other. You lied, Theo.”

“Technically, we were already agreeing to lie to everyone else,” he argued. He knew it wasn’t the right way to win her over, but he couldn’t let the hypocrisy go without pointing it out, not if she was going to be mad at him about it. Theo had a bad habit of not being able to back down from a fight, a trait he shared with Avery. It usually worked in their favor, but now he was noticing some downsides.

“You lied to Izzy too.”

“Wasn’t that the point?”

Avery sent him a disgusted look. “I don’t mean now, I mean before. How long have you had feelings for me?”