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chapter 8



The next day is Saturday, and I spend it eating ice cream, filming another vlog, and going over my conversation with Cat in my head again and again. I get nothing from it, though.

I don’t sleep at all that night or the next, and soon Saturday drags into Sunday which brings me right back to Monday. Before I know it I’m standing outside my high school, hoping like hell I won’t run into Cat, at least not yet. Even after two whole days of preparation, I still don’t know what to say to her.

As soon as I burst through the front entrance of the school I fast-walk over to my locker, keeping my head down, not meeting anyone’s gaze. Cat and I are not exactly the most sociable people so it’s not like she told any of them about what’s going on, but still, like with the strangers on the sidewalk, I can’t meet anyone’s gaze without getting that sinking feeling that they know what I did.

I glance around the hallway as I pull open my locker, checking to make sure no one is coming. When there’s no Cat in sight, I let out a deep breath. Thank god.

After another minute I’ve shoved all of my binders into my locker, grabbed my books, and have started to hurry to class. I still haven’t talked to Cat since Friday, but I really don’t know what to say. She just seemed so upset at the time that I’m… well, I’m afraid. Afraid that I might hurt her more than I already have. Afraid that I might ruin our friendship.

Well, at least I have more time to worry about it, I say to myself as I slam my locker shut and start down the hallway. But the second I turn around, I run into Cat, who also seems to be trying to slip past me. My book connects with her arm, and her backpack with my face.

So we stand there, eyes on each other, Cat looking angry and me entirely terrified.

Yep. Just our luck.

“Oh, sorry…” I mumble, staggering back. Once I’ve regained my balance I try to move past her again, hoping like hell to avoid conversation.

“Yeah,” is all Cat says. In that instant, I have an overpowering urge to keep on walking, to hurry up and get the hell out of here, but as I look at her, at the sadness in her eyes, I know I can’t leave her. I feel so wicked for not wanting to talk to her, but really what am I going to say? “Hey I’m sorry I rejected you but I guess I don’t love you like you love me. Screw that, though, let’s just stay best friends, kthxbye” would not play in my favor, and that’s the best I can come up with.

The thing is, though, it’s as simple as that: we are best friends. And she is hurt. I'm not going to leave her when she needs me. Sure, maybe we aren’t made for romance, but that doesn’t mean we need to turn this into something more than it is.

“You okay?” I finally say, withholding a sigh. This was a mistake. This was so a mistake.

“Oh, fine,” she says. “I’ve just pissed off my best friend and also made a fool of myself in front of him. So yeah, I’m splendid.”

I shake my head. Other students file by us, and the whole hallway is a blur of laughs, shouts and smiling faces. That is, except for Cat and me. I move toward her, dropping my backpack against my locker. “Cat, I’m sorry,” I say, because I can’t think of anything better. “I was an idiot before.”

“You don’t say?” Seeing her this wound up and knowing it’s all because of me sends a jolt of pain rushing through my body. Problem is, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix this. Tell her I’m sorry? That sure didn’t work. Give loving her a chance? But doing that would go against every fiber of my being.

“Cat, please. What do you want me to do? I really am sorry and you didn’t embarrass yourself. It’s my fault. I just… I’m just…”

“You’re just what?” Her hands are on her hips now, and it looks like she’s ready to walk out on me for good.

“I’m just confused,” I say, exasperated. “I don’t know what to do, Cat. I’m lost. You caught me by surprise, is all.”

“Well I’m sorry I ‘caught you by surprise’ and made you feel so lost. That was really selfish of me, wasn’t it?”

“You know that’s not how I meant it.”

“And you know I don’t care! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to class. We can talk more about this some other time.”

At that, she whirls around and starts walking in the opposite direction down the hall. More students rush in, and I can smell her vanilla shampoo unmistakably against the masses of people. “Cat…” I grab for her arm, but she shakes off my grip, giving me a disgusted look.

“Nope. I’m buuuusy, West.”

“Cat, c’mon, please.”

“Please what?” she says sharply, spinning back around to face me. Her eyes are wild, and her red hair flies everywhere. “Please stop loving you? Please ignore my feelings and let you have you want again? Please pretend none of this ever happened? Because guess what, West, it did. And this is one thing you’re going to have to face on your own.”

“Cat!” I say. “I’m not asking you to stop loving me. I’m not asking you for anything. I just want us… to be normal,” I finally say.

She backs away, laughing to herself. “You really think it’s that simple, West?” she says, shaking her head. “You think I can just put away my feelings for you, lock them in a box, and ignore them until you’re ‘ready for them?’”

“No, that’s not what I meant—” I start to say, but she isn’t listening.

She steps an inch closer. “Just ask yourself this, West,” Cat says, dropping her voice to a hushed whisper. “Will you ever be able to stop loving your mom? Because it’s the same thing with you and me.”

Before I can react, she turns back around, and for an instant all I see is her red velvet hair and the flash of deadly serious blue in her eyes.

“Cat, wait,” I choke out. “Please, just wait.” But she’s already pushing past me, rushing down the hallway, until she turns the corner and disappears out of sight.

I’m left standing there in the middle of the hallway, holding my overly-heavy backpack and wondering if we can ever go back to being normal again.

***

I don’t see Cat for the rest of the day, which I’m pretty sure is to both of our benefits. Another conversation with her would be… I don’t know. Bad. Just bad.

As soon as school ends, for once, I don’t wait for Cat to get out of class so I can walk home with her. I run the distance all myself, not once slowing. When I’m home, I trip up the staircase and stumble into my bedroom. I slam the door shut behind me, sit down on the edge of my bed, and bury my face in my hands.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit. What have I done? I want to cry again. In fact, I can feel the tears glistening in my eyes, but I don’t let them fall. I can’t let them fall. Not now. Not anymore.

Sure, Cat and I have fought before. Actually, we’ve fought a lot. Whether it be which color M&M is the best (blue, obviously), if one of us cheated at a game of FIFA, or even whether I should go out with Renne or Jessica (long story), screaming is not a rarity between us. But this fight… this one was different. It was too sad and desperate. It felt more like the end of something than a true fight, and I just hope this “something” is not our friendship.

God, I really screwed this whole thing up. I just want to punch something, or break down the wall, or whatever it is that will make me feel better and a hell of a lot less alone. Of course it had to turn out this way. Of course the instant I start to feel vaguely happy again after Mom’s death, things go to hell. I run my hands through my hair and kick myself in the ankle. Why can’t Harper just be real and Cat not love me and Mom come back to life and me and Cat to go back to how things were before? Why does this shit have to keep happening to me? I’d even give up my vlog for Cat. Hell, I’d give up anything for us to be back to normal again.

To me, Cat is the sister I never had. We know everything about each other; we mesh like fire and wood. So how did we screw this up? Because of love? Love? Aren’t we supposed to embrace love? People spend their whole lives searching for it and never finding it, so why is it that the instant I get a little taste of it, it screws me over? Isn’t it supposed to be a gift, not a curse? Not something that hurts this damn much?

The worst part is that I don’t know if I love Cat. I need her like I need a place to live, like I need a way to express myself. I can be myself around Cat, no judgment, and she can do the same for me. I’ve never smiled more than when I’m with her, and even when she was Harper, I still couldn’t stop smiling. Is that what love is? What Cat and I have? I have no freaking idea how to tell.

Then another thought hits me: how come I was so sure I was in love with Harper before I knew she was actually Cat, and now that I know she was my best friend all along, I’m suddenly not sure? She’s still the same person, right? So does that mean…?

I cut off the thought before I can let myself finish. It isn’t like that, and I know it.

I let myself slip back in bed. The truth is, I’m scared. I don’t know if I love her, but I also don’t want to love her, because loving her will mean losing her. And losing Cat… well, without her, I’d have nothing, be nothing.

“West!” my zombie of a dad growls from downstairs, interrupting my thoughts. “Dinner is ready! Hurry up.” Translation: “I’m hungry so go make me some f*cking macaroni and cheese while I sit and read this newspaper for the millionth time. I’ve had a tough day of doing nothing.”

I sigh, close my eyes, and stumble down the stairs. I walk into our old, falling-apart kitchen, and I’m sure the dark circles around my eyes are entirely evident. Sure enough, my dad sits at our tiny kitchen table, his feet on the counter, a beer in his hand, and no dinner ready.

“Make me something good,” he says and takes a drink. I can smell his disgusting scent, some mixture of alcohol and pure evil, from here.

“Of course I will,” I mutter under my breath, “because what else would a son be for other than to serve as his father’s slave?”

“You should be nice to me, you know,” he says, not looking at me. “My money is the only reason you’re alive.”

“Your money?” I laugh to myself as I walk over to the cabinet and pull out a pre-made macaroni and cheese. I pour into two paper bowls, one for me and one for him. “You mean your mom’s money?”

He doesn’t respond to that, and a glimmer of satisfaction races through me. Right now, I’m really too tired to even pretend to be polite with Dad.

It isn’t a lie, however. The only reason we still have a house is because of my night job at Starbucks, and also because my dad has convinced his loaded mother to send us money every month to keep us afloat in these “tough times” after Mom’s death. In reality, Dad doesn’t even seem to care about her death; he just wants his mom’s money. All he does is drink and sleep and ignore me. I’m not afraid of him or anything, but I just wish… that he could be normal. That he could not be so f*cking useless. That he could treat me like a real son and that he could be a real father. That maybe, just maybe, he could’ve been there for me after Mom’s death.

But he wasn’t.

He never even mentioned Mom’s name, or anything to comfort me, before or after the funeral. Not an “it’s going to be okay,” not a “this sucks,” not an “I’m sorry.” He never brought it up, so neither did I. When I’m with him, it’s like it never happened, like I never even had a mother.

He’s claimed to interview for several newspaper gigs since her death, but I know he threw all the interviews on purpose. As long as his mom sends in money every month and as long as I do all the housework for him, he couldn’t care less about getting a job.

My dad wasn’t always like this, though. He used to be an okay dad, with a well-paying lawyer job and a smile that never left his face.

I haven’t seen that smile in so long.

I miss it, honestly.

But all of a sudden, about a year ago, he just gave up. He stopped caring. He quit his job, took to smoking and drinking and enslaving his family members. Things got hard for Mom, for me, for all of us, and my dad acted like he was the f*cking king of the world. Mom should have left him then, and we all knew it, but her job didn’t pay well enough to support both her and me and we needed his money. Plus, both of us sort of secretly clung to the hope that Dad would get better again and we could go back to being normal, to being happy. To being a family.

I don’t really know why Dad stopped caring as dramatically as he did. I think it started off as depression from his and Mom’s marriage troubles, and then it just spread from there. Dad never said anything, never acted like he was any different than he used to be, and I didn’t have the courage to ask. So it was just that: a mystery.

I give him an annoyed look as I pour the water into the macaroni noodles, add cheese from the packet, and microwave both bowls. Dad doesn’t look at me; he never looks at me. It’s like the sight of his own son is too much “work” for him to undergo, and so he ignores my existence altogether. When the microwave beeps, I pull out the bowls, shove one toward him without meeting his gaze, and then bring my bowl to the corner of the kitchen as far away from him as I can possibly get. On today of all days, I am not getting into it with him.

We eat in peace for a few more minutes, neither of us saying a word—thank god—until Dad finally throws his spoon against the bowl and jerks back in his chair. “This sucks,” he says and slams the bowl against the table.

I roll my eyes. “That’s interesting, because you seemed to enjoy the exact same thing just fine last time.”

“I was being nice,” he says, tossing his newspaper aside. Finally, I look at him. Dad is tall, unshaven and thick-jawed, with a hard face, dark brown eyes, and a thin smile. He looks sad and rugged, his once jet black hair now thick and gray. In a way, I kind of feel bad for the man. He’s clearly lost, and whether or not that’s because of Mom’s death or his own stupidity, I have no idea and nor do I care.

“Wow, so generous of you,” I mutter. “If that’s the case, then maybe you can try being a normal grown-up for once in your life and—I don’t know—make your own dinner.”

“Are you calling me lazy?” he says, sipping his coffee cup which we both know is just hiding more beer.

“No, I’m just calling you useless. There’s a difference.” I take another bite of my macaroni, sighing to myself. I don’t like that this is what Dad and I have become, this empty, lifeless trading of insults, but what else is there? It’s better than screaming, right?

Even screaming, though, means we care. It means we’re fighting to find a way to be father and son again, for real. But this? This is like we’ve both given up, and I guess, in a way, I have.

“You’re a complete waste,” he mutters.

“Of what? Your precious free time?” I push my bowl to the side and hop off the counter. I’m suddenly not hungry anymore.

I can feel his gaze on me, dark and calculating. “You better shut the hell up and show me some respect, West. After all, I’m your father.”

I laugh lightly and walk toward the door. “Yeah. My father and respect aren’t words that seem to go well together.”

“They work fine for me. Much better than ‘my son,’ at least,” Dad says without looking at me. I can see his fists, though; they’re curled around his coffee cup. Tightly. It looks like he’s trying to squeeze the ceramic until it breaks.

I shake my head, wanting to punch him in the face right then and there but holding the feeling down instead. “Good to talk to you too,” I mutter, hop off the counter, and walk into the family room. I sit down, slamming the door shut behind me, with a bad taste in my mouth and a sick feeling in my stomach. The family room is a small room adjacent to the kitchen, complete with fading gray walls, a small sofa, and a TV sitting in the center. We used to spend so much time here, my mom and I, but now it appears to be more of a storage room than anything else, with bin after bin of random supplies stacked all around it.

As soon as I sit down, I turn on the TV to some random station, but I don’t pay attention. I just stare blankly at the screen, my eyes glazing over. F*ck. This is really what I’m reduced to. Running and hiding from everyone I know, and retreating to… what? The TV? To my own misery? I have no one now—not my dad, not my mom, not even Cat—and it’s all my fault: because I’m an idiot, because I keep telling myself that if I try to love anything else ever again, they’re just going to end up like Mom—dead, along with my heart. I can’t take that anymore.

For a minute, I just sit there and I think about Cat, who is probably off and making new friends and totally forgetting about me. I can’t push her away, not over something this stupid. I can’t screw up my life any more than I have.

Then, it hits me. I need to fix this.

Before I know what I’m doing, I reach for my computer, click over to my email, and begin typing. I click send without reading it over, and proceed to constantly refresh my inbox until I get a response, afraid I won’t even get one.

from: West Ryder <[email protected]>

to: Cat Davenport <[email protected]>

subject: (no subject)

Dear Your Highness of All Things Chocolate,

It has come to my attention that your subject, West Ryder, has been temporarily banished from your chocolate kingdom due to his “a*shole behavior.” I’ve recently been in contact with said criminal, and it seems he can’t stop thinking about how stupid he acted and now all he wants is to get you back. So he wishes for me to deliver you this real apology. He says that even if you don’t accept, Your Highness of All Things Chocolate, he wants to thank you… for everything you’ve done for him. Anyway, here it is:



Dear Your Highness of All Things Chocolate,

I am sorry for insulting your chocolate-centric palace and for leaving you so abruptly. I am sorry we fought over which chocolate is best—obviously dark chocolate—and I’m sorry it’s come to this. But more than that, I’m sorry for disappointing you. You needed me, and I… I wasn’t there for you. I regret it. I want to come back to your Chocolate Palace, but more than that, I want you, Your Highness. I want to be with you again. I want to be your friend. I don’t want to push you away any further.

I want to fix this.



With lots of chocolate,

West

(Seriously, Cat. I need you. I don’t care what anyone thinks. I need you.)



When I read over the email, I know deep down that I mean every word of it.

It feels like the longest time before Cat responds, but in reality I don’t think it’s much more than thirty minutes. I keep refreshing my inbox, though, my pulse pounding, wondering what Cat will think. Will she ignore me? Will she even respond?

Finally, my email dings, and I swear it’s the most beautiful sound in the world. I rush to click on it, and I take a deep breath. My stomach is tight as I start reading the email, and I swear I’m expecting to be disappointed, to be turned down and pushed away for good.



from: Cat Davenport <[email protected]>

to: West Ryder <[email protected]>

subject: (no subject)

Dear Servant,

First of all, it was my direct order for you never to email me again. For this offense, you shall be beheaded tomorrow at dawn. Be there, or we’ll just behead you elsewhere. I can wait. I have plenty of chocolate in this palace to last me.

Second, however, I am glad you sent me this email from that West Ryder character. (Though yes, you’re still going to die. You are incredibly needy. You say you “must have food and water every few days or else you’ll die?” Seems very rather greedy of you.) I remember him quite well; we used to be close, and I hope we still are, but we just… disagreed about something, and that was all. I banished him from my Chocolate Palace because I was angry in the moment, but I do hope he can return to the Palace soon. Point being, tell him this before you die:

West,

I need you too.



Without pity,

Your Highness of All Things Chocolate



By the end of the email my heart is in my throat and my whole body feels so light inside. I let out a breath of relief.

I need you too.

They’re just four words, but they’ve already sent my body into an episode of muppetflails, internal screaming, and excited jumping-and-down. The knot in my stomach disappears, and the sinking feeling in my gut is gone. In that moment, all I want to do is run around the house and jump for joy. A huge, lopsided grin spreads across my face.

Cat, we need each other, I tell myself as I start typing a response.



from: West Ryder <[email protected]>

to: Cat Davenport <[email protected]>

subject: (no subject)

Your Highness,

I am sorry to hear that. I will be at my beheading tomorrow. But before I die, West would like to know: what does this mean for him? Will you two stay friends and let him move back into the Chocolate Palace?

As soon as I send it, my fists clench. I half-expect her to say no, to say that this friendship is over and then never respond to me again

But she doesn’t.

My email dings a minute later, and I click on it, swallowing hard. Cat’s response is two words: We’ll see.