“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping closer. “It’s just … it’s so…” He meets my eyes. “I’m embarrassed, okay? I’m embarrassed that I was right there when it happened. I thought you and I—”
“I didn’t know!” I argue. “You didn’t tell me!”
“I was going to!”
“When? Before or after you got me in bed?” I pretend to laugh. “Oh wait, I was there all the goddamn time!”
He lets out a roar and turns away, his hands balled. Suddenly he draws back and punches the window frame, leaving bloody knuckle prints on the wood. It obviously hurts a lot more than he expected. I wonder if he ever actually punched anything before. He let Andrew do all the real fighting. “Just talk, for Christ’s sake!”
He stomps down the stairs. Good. This is a conversation we should have on the ground. But he keeps going when we reach the floor and the sight of him walking away makes me lose control. “Why couldn’t you just be my best friend?”
Matt whirls around. “I wanted … more, all—I don’t know!” he yells. “The whole thing, not a hookup!” He grabs his hair with his uninjured hand. “I just wanted you.”
I don’t want to hurt him more, but I’m not willing to be the only bad guy anymore. “You let me sleep in your bed believing you didn’t.” I step so close I could poke him in the chest. “And I was glad! I thought you liked me for who I was, not…” I gesture at my body.
His forehead wrinkles. “I did! I do. So much that I wanted us to be more. I just kept … waiting for the right time.”
“That’s messed up.”
“No, what’s messed up is that I loved you, Raych.” He takes a deep breath. “I loved you.”
Our faces are inches apart. And for one long moment, two futures stretch out before us again. His head tilts almost imperceptibly, but I know what it means: Matt still wants me. Or thinks he does.
There is one more way to salvage this situation, and it would be so easy. If only I wanted him too.
But I don’t. Mrs. R. is right: I wanted Matt’s family. I wanted his life.
But I don’t want to be his life.
His mouth approaches and mine responds. “No.”
He exhales and steps away, looking lost. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see. When I open them, he’s inside the house again, leaning out a window in the back. “I hate him!” He grabs the top of the frame and leans into the open air, tiptoes on the wet sill, like we’re still on the second story. But there’s nowhere to go from here. “Do you hear that, Andrew?” he yells. “I hate you!”
I’m past all tears. They’re burning. Vapor. “And you hate me too,” I say, standing in the front doorframe. “You wish I had died instead.”
He doesn’t turn around. And he doesn’t deny it.
“What if it was me?” I demand. “Would you still be mad if I was dead?”
“Shut up.”
I’m right. In ways I never wanted to be. “If I had died, your life would be fine,” I say, “and so would his.” My words are weapons, and each one strikes with precision, driving straight into his back. “You’d be mad, but you’d forgive him eventually and you’d both remember me sadly in twenty years as your shared long-lost first love.”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t die, Matt!” My throat hurts. “I’m still here, and you still have to deal with me!”
“Shut up!” he screams, and I’m horrifyingly happy to see him cry, so happy that I turn around to escape myself. I have to get out of here.
“I don’t wish that!” he yells, following me. I pause at the curb but don’t turn back. “If I had to choose…”
He leaves it unspoken as I walk away. It’s the worst thing I’ve never heard.
MATT
She walks away.
After everything, Raychel’s the one who leaves.
I stay in the unfinished house for hours after she’s gone, flexing my hand to keep the pain fresh. I meant to have a very different conversation. I meant to tell her that she’s right: it’s messed up that I never asked her what she wanted, and that I assumed I knew what was best for everyone when it was really just what was best for me. What I thought was best for me.
I meant to tell her that I forgive her. But it’s not even true. Getting to the point where I want her again isn’t forgiveness. It’s just more messed-up bullshit she didn’t ask for.
As much as I hate to admit it, she and Andrew could have been something.
But I underestimated him so much that even after she told me point-blank that she liked him, I didn’t believe her, or even ask why. Just like I didn’t ask whether she liked Carson. Or if she wanted to be my girl.
Even today. She told me no when I went to kiss her, and I listened.
But I didn’t ask first.
And the fact that I thought the answer could still be yes is the most messed up of all.
RAYCHEL
Tuesday morning, Keri catches me in the hall after second period. “So did you hear?” she asks.
“What about?”
“Carson Tipton,” she says. “Somebody taped NO MEANS NO flyers all over his car this weekend.”
“Yeah,” I say slowly, and a grin spreads over my face. Dealing with Matt made me forget the good part of my weekend. “I did, actually. How did you hear it?”
“Rosa Gallegos lives next door to him.” She leans in conspiratorially. “His mom was so pissed, she’s making him take a women’s studies class at the university next semester.”
My eyes widen. “They’re going to eat him alive.”
She smiles sweetly. “We can only hope.”
*
I keep waiting for my final fight with Matt to come crashing down on me, but I’m more relieved than crushed. We’ve said our respective pieces and he can leave. If Andrew and I burned a bridge when our lips touched, then Matt and I napalmed one when ours didn’t.
So the last thing I expect to get is a package with his return address. But the handwriting is Mrs. R.’s. I tear it open, not sure what I’m hoping to find, and I’m slightly disappointed when it’s just a few paperbacks I’d loaned her and some sealed envelopes—letters of recommendation from her, each labeled with the schools Dr. R. knows I’m applying to.
Nothing else. No notes. No explanation. Just one last boost on my ladder out of here.
For a petty moment, I consider burning them. I don’t want to accept her help. I don’t want to need her help. But then I realize that this is the only apology I’ll ever get from Mrs. R. And it’s the only one I’ve gotten that’s worth accepting.
MATT
My Senior Seminar project was finished a month ago, but a week before finals, I finally finish reading The Handmaid’s Tale. Raychel, however, ends up presenting Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and does a good job. I give her almost-perfect scores on my peer evaluation, and hope she’ll recognize which one’s mine.