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“Why?”

She laughs once. “Why?”

“Ella.”

“No, please.” She folds her arms. “Let’s pretend you don’t know.”

I grit my teeth. “I want you to tell me.”

“Fine.” She takes one step closer to me, but only one. “I didn’t take the town car because I felt bad.”

“About what?”

“About sleeping with you.”

My body reacts before my mind does, a sharp pulse of memory and need so immediate I almost despise myself for it.

I force myself to remain still. “You shouldn’t feel bad,” I say.

She stares at me. “Is that your apology?”

“No.”

“Good. Because it’s terrible.”

“I’m not apologizing for wanting you.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“No. But you’re essentially apologizing for wanting me back. Saying you feel bad about it.”

Color rises higher in her cheeks. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” Her voice sharpens. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to kiss me the way you did and then turn cold afterward and then come here this morning acting like I’m the one making this strange.”

I take one step toward her. “That’s what this is about?” I ask. “My behavior afterward?”

“Of course it’s about your behavior afterward.”

“I found out you were a virgin after the fact.”

“So that made it acceptable to speak to me like I was trash?”

Her words strike me hard. Harder than I expect. “I didn’t speak to you that way.”

“You did.”

I can’t deny it again. She’s right.

“I was angry,” I say.

“At me?”

“At myself.”

“That’s not how it felt.”