“No, I haven’t seen the post yet. But it’s three A.M., and you have to be quiet.” I curse myself for not walking him home when he was still upright. He flops over, wetting the cushions with his sweaty face and hair.
“I thought about going to her house tonight,” he moans, ignoring me as I try to hand him the tissue box we keep on the coffee table. He swats my hand away. “But she wasn’t replying to my texts and she didn’t come to school, so I thought she might be cranky if I just showed up, you know? Plus, I’d wake up her sisters and her mom, and so I told myself tomorrow was fine, tomorrow could still work.” He clenches his fist and raises his voice. “But then fucking Wesley—”
“Sammie, you really have to keep it down,” I say again, looking toward the stairs. “My mom and I are barely talking again, and I’m running out of leniency here.”
“You and your mom weren’t talking?”
“I will tell you all about it tomorrow on the way to school, when you’ve had time to think and calm down.”
“Calm down? Are you kidding me?” he yells. I give up. “First of all, I’m not going to school tomorrow! Not to see that, that guy with his nice car and fancy sweaters and pretty face be with my girl.” He gets up and starts sloppily pacing the room. “I loved her! And this? This is the thanks I get for years of yearning and—and wanting and trying? I get to watch this fucking guy take away the girl I love and my best friend? Fuck no … Fuck no.”
“Sammie…” I sigh. “I’m sorry, but Wes didn’t do anything wrong here.”
“Oh, of course he’s Wes now.”
I ignore that. “You knew it would come down to one of you. You can’t be pissed that he stepped up before you did. I love you, Sammie, but you missed your shot.” I hope my honesty will ground him, but instead his eyes widen, startlingly big.
“Who are you?” I open my mouth to answer, but he stops me before I get the chance. “No, seriously. Who are you? You of all people are going to try to tell me to just—just get over this? Little Miss Romantic, Little Miss Cried Over Lucas For Months? You sob over guys you barely even know! I loved her for years. But I get it, Wes and O are BFFs now, so fuck the rest of us, right?”
I swallow the burning feeling in my throat. “You’re hurt right now. I’m giving you the chance to stop.”
“It only took him a few months to steal Linds away from me. With the rate you fall for guys, I bet you won’t even know my name by the end of the week.”
“Samuel Yadid Nasar.”
He storms up to me, sloppily pushing damp curls out of his face. “She was mine, and he took her away.”
I don’t shove him, don’t knock him away like my anger begs me to. But I do explode.
“Lindsay was never yours! And breaking fucking news: She liked you too! For years! But you never did anything about it. You sat around making googly eyes across a lunch table and threw food at her and played with her hair, but you weren’t brave enough to be honest for once in your life about how you really felt, so don’t you dare come to me expecting pity over this!” My voice is dangerously loud, but my mind is buzzing with years of being overlooked, being teased for my foolish crushing heart by two people who didn’t have the gall to step up and confess their truth either. I learned the hard way that I wasn’t and never would be enough for the people I fell for, but at least I had the guts to admit it.
He throws his head back, laughing once—sharp and bitter. “This is rich relationship advice coming from you. When was the last time you were actually honest about your feelings with anyone but your parents or me or Ags? Huh? You think you’re better than us because you can fess up about love when there aren’t any consequences? You’ve never taken a risk in your life! You couldn’t even go away to college without me! Face it, O, you’re a coward.”
“You know what, asshole? You’re right! You’re so fucking right! In fact, I kissed Talia, who will never love me back, by the way, and I’m such a goddamn coward that I kept my mouth shut about it this whole time! How’s that for bravery? How’s that for being fucking honest?”
“What?” His voice softens so quickly that my words are still echoing.
“You think I don’t know about consequences, Sammie? You think I don’t know what it’s like to feel your heart burning a hole straight through your chest because you know if you open your mouth, if you let yourself admit the truth even for a second, that everything will change? I know what that feels like. I will never forget what this fucking feels like.”
The satisfaction of seeing the confusion in his eyes as the realization settles that he didn’t—doesn’t—have me all figured out is so visceral, so satisfying, that it takes me a second to notice he’s no longer looking at me. He’s looking behind me.
I turn my head slowly, catching my reflection in the mirror above the sofa. In the fuzzy darkness, I swear my reflection winks at me, of all things. Like Mirror Ophelia is saying, “Well, what did you expect?” The words I kept hidden inside for so long, finally free. But the relief from Sammie’s reaction a second ago is absent. I’m still panting, but cold dread floods my entire body. My joints beg me to drop to the ground. But I complete my rotation and face my parents where they stand in their pajamas in the doorway.
Mom clears her throat. “Samuel. I think it’s time for you to go home.” She extends a hand, which Sammie hesitantly accepts. She drags him from the room, the image reminding me of when we were kids and she’d chaperone our class field trips, dragging us from exhibit to exhibit with maternal certainty of where we needed to go next. I crave that certainty now.
Sammie stops at the front door. His eyes are sadder than I’ve ever seen them before. “Ophelia…,” he starts. “I—”
“Let’s go, Sammie,” Mom says, softer now, coaxing him out of the house.
Dad and I stand there, listening to me pant, as I try to process what just happened.
They didn’t hear; they couldn’t have. And even if they did, surely they assume they misheard me.
Dad places a hand on my shoulder, the warmth of his palm scattering my thoughts. “?Quieres hablar? Should we talk?”
My hands are shaking so much, I feel my skin vibrating. “I … um … Sammie just showed up and I didn’t know what to do and he was so upset and—” I’m cut short when Mom comes back.
“We will talk about this in the morning,” she says, brushing past Dad and me on the way to the stairs. I watch her leave, the way I both did and didn’t expect her to. The way I hoped she wouldn’t. I look at Dad.
“She’s just tired,” he says.
“I am too.” I choke back a sob. My eyes are glistening, and I’m ready to open up, let it all out, when I hear a beep come from my pocket.
No. No, not her too.
I pull my phone out and check my call log. My call with Agatha ended less than a minute ago. I never hung up the phone. I never took her off speaker.
“Ophelia?” Dad asks.
I go back to my room. I don’t sleep all night.
TWENTY-TWO