Imogen crosses her arms in front of herself, feet planted shoulder-width, chin jutting forward.

She’s serious. I can’t believe that here, after all this time — months — she’s serious. For fuck’s sake, I’m not even wearing a shirt, and she comes in here with this?

“No,” I say, crossing my own arms, leaning against the hotel room’s dresser, mimicking her stance.

“If you don’t, I will,” she says.

I just laugh.

“I will,” she insists, her chin jutting out a little more. “I swear to God, Wilder.”

The fire behind me crackles. Jesus fucking Christ, there’s a fire and everything, even though it’s a warm May night. Relatively warm, anyway, warm for northern Idaho. The room’s free because the skiing season is over, so I can have my run of the place again.

Fuck, I can’t believe I finagled this room just for Imogen to come in here and act like she’s the morality police, for her to give me this bullshit ultimatum out of nowhere.

She thinks just because we’re fucking she can tell me what to do?

I just laugh at her, putting every ounce of scorn and derision I can manage into the sound.

“And you think she’s gonna believe you?” I ask. “You think that, if you, Imogen Gustavo, tell literally anyone in the whole school that you’ve been screwing me, they’ll believe you?”

She swallows hard, and I can practically hear the gears in her brain grinding, trying to think of some proof she has.

But I don’t think there is any. It’s more an accident than on purpose, but we only ever texted or emailed about class stuff, and we spent plenty of time together in public, studying.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she finally says, looking at the floor. “I can’t—”

Her voice cracks and she turns around, paces to the door, into the bathroom, paces back out, still won’t look at me. Instead she stares at the wall.

Here she is, tearing my heart into pieces and she won’t even fucking look at me.

“I can’t watch you be with her and know that she doesn’t know about us,” she finally tells the wall. I think she’s crying, but I look away instead of at her. If she won’t look at me I won’t fucking look at her, that’s fine.

“She doesn’t care,” I insist, even though I’m pretty sure I’m lying.

“She doesn’t care because she doesn’t know!” Imogen says, and starts pacing again.

Still no eye contact.

“Melissa likes you,” she says. “Like, she really likes you, Wilder, the other day she was telling me that she hoped you guys went to the same college and stuff—”

I snort, and finally Imogen shoots me a look. It’s tear-stained and acidic, but at least she looks at me.

“—And that she really sees you together in ten years, and how sweet you are for never pressuring her about having sex, and how that’s why she’s thinking of maybe letting you do stuff with her, because you’re such a fucking gentleman.”

“You’re jealous,” I tell her, letting a smirk settle onto my face.

I’m determined to stay cool, stay calm in the face of Hurricane Imogen. She doesn’t get to decide what happens here, I do, and fuck her for thinking she can make me do what she wants.

“Of course I’m jealous!” Imogen yelps. “Everyone thinks you’re with her! You hold hands in public! You kiss her in the cafeteria, you tell people she’s your girlfriend, she’s met your parents…”

“No,” I say slowly. “You’re jealous that you might not have this to yourself anymore.”

I gesture at my dick.

Imogen makes a very unladylike snort.

“You’re not going to fuck her,” she says, and she’s so certain and so cocky about it that it makes me want to prove her wrong.

“Why not? She’s my girlfriend. That’s who most people fuck.”

Imogen opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again and looks away like she’s hoping for backup from somewhere, but obviously no one’s coming to her rescue.

“No,” she says, like she’s astonished. “If you fuck her we’re over. Are you kidding me? No.”

I just shrug.

“I didn’t know it was an option until now,” I say.

I’m being deliberately cruel and I know it, but it feels good to watch Imogen cry after she came in here, all high and mighty, demanding that I tell Melissa the truth about us.

Imogen thinks that this is how she gets me. She thinks I’m going to break up with Melissa — my picture-perfect cheerleader girlfriend — for her, the weird nerd.

And it’s not even that. She thinks she can fucking tell me what to do and how to do it.

She swallows, shakes her head, crosses her arms in front of herself again.

“If you don’t tell her about us I will,” she says again, stubbornly. “She doesn’t deserve you doing this to her.”

“She won’t believe you,” I warn, still smirking at her. “I’m telling you, Squeaks, no one’s going to fucking believe you.”

Her mouth settles into a hard line as another tear drips down her face. The sight of her in tears pleases me in a terrible, hard, bright way. At least I know I have this power over her, even if she’s got the power to rip my heart out of my body by basically telling me we’re over.

I’m not stupid. We’re not going to survive this fight. Imogen and I are fucking done for as of tonight, even though she clearly thinks that I’m going to roll over and break up with Melissa to date her.

Hell no. Imogen can barely string two sentences together when she’s in a group of people. I can’t tell my friends that she’s my girlfriend, I can’t take her on dates and shit. No one would ever talk to me again.

“Yes, she will,” Imogen whispers, and then she turns on her heel, grabs her backpack, and she’s gone through the door.

I just stand there, staring at it, long after it closes. I’m still shirtless because my plan for tonight was to light this fire, wait for Imogen on the plush faux-fur rug, and then have her sit on my face for as long as she wanted.

It didn’t fucking happen, clearly. It’s never going to fucking happen again, and that fact twists my stomach into a pretzel of regret and sadness and ten thousand other bad feelings I can’t even begin to identify.

But it won’t work. She can tell Melissa all she wants, but I know about Imogen’s reputation in ways that she doesn’t, and she’s a quiet, strange, off-kilter girl who’s super smart, a little delusional, and has an enormous crush on me, the guy she tutors in biology.

I haven’t done much to dissipate that reputation, for the record.

So she can tell Melissa anything she wants. It doesn’t matter. At worst, Melissa will come to me, crying prettily, and ask me if it’s true and I’ll say of course not. I’ll wipe away her tears and it’ll be everyone’s word against Imogen’s, and in a couple of months maybe I’ll get up her short little cheerleading skirt.

Done and done.