The next morning, I gear up for the day by spending some quality time with the sweet note Dad sent with my birthday flowers. I try to convince myself that I am a decent person. That’s why I keep the note on my bedroom bulletin board: for just such emergencies.
It doesn’t really help.
However, since Oliver is a decent person, he shows up in front of my house, just like every other weekday morning.
“I didn’t know if you were going to come,” I say as soon as I climb aboard the behemoth.
“I honor my promises,” Oliver says, backing out into the street. I appreciate that he didn’t add the words “unlike you.” Still, he doesn’t look at me.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“I know.”
“What can I do?”
Oliver is quiet for a while. He finally says, “You can explain why.”
“It’s high school, remember? People just know when you’re dating; people just know when you break up.”
“Friends know before the random people know,” he says. “Friends tell each other when big life events happen. I thought…”
He stops and I fill in the rest of the sentence for him. “You thought we were supposed to be friends.” Oliver nods. “We are,” I say.
Snowy fields go by in silence. The highway happens in silence. Main Street is nothing but painful, empty silence. I can’t think of the right way to break it, to make this okay. All the sentences I write in my head seem flat and cliché. All apologies, all excuses. They don’t make any sense, because…
Because I don’t make any sense.
That’s what I realize as we drive onto campus: I, myself, June Rafferty, don’t make any sense. So that’s what I tell Oliver.
My friend Oliver.
As he pulls into a spot, I set my hand on his arm. “Wait.”
Oliver puts the car into park but doesn’t turn off the engine. He keeps his eyes pointing straight ahead through the windshield and does what I ask. He waits.
“There was no reason. Itch didn’t do anything wrong. He was exactly the same as he always was. I just…” I stop as guilt washes up and over and through me again. “I just didn’t like him anymore. Not like that. It all went away and was gone, and no matter what I did, it wouldn’t come back.” My words tumble out faster now that I’m giving voice to my confusion. “I hate that I did that to Itch, but it would have been worse if I’d continued on with it, if I’d kept putting one foot in front of the other, moving in the same direction when all I wanted to do was jump to a different path and—”
“What path?” Oliver turns to look at me. The morning sun is brilliant behind him, blazing his white-blond hair into a halo, and just like that, I’m speechless again. Oliver leans closer. He stares directly into my eyes. “What different path did you want to jump to?”
I swallow. “I didn’t…I just knew this one was wrong.”
Oliver gazes at me for a long, long moment. I go warm inside and he finally pulls away, settling back against the window. “You did the right thing.”
“I did?”
“Not the part where you didn’t tell me. That sucked. I mean breaking up with Itch.” He pulls his keys out of the ignition and twists in his seat so he can retrieve his backpack from the floor behind him. “It would be worse to stay with someone because of convenience or because senior year is halfway over or something. That would be worse.”
Before I can answer, he opens his door and swings out of it. “So you’re forgiven,” he says. “But from now on—”
“No secrets.” I cut him off. “Promise.”
“Good,” Oliver says, and slams the door.
Ainsley is standing in front of my locker when I arrive to switch out one science book for another. Her eyes are extra sparkly against her light brown skin. “Dude!” she says, wrapping an arm around me. “You are at the center of some very epic drama. What happened with you and Itch? Did he cheat on you with Zoe?”
Oh, good. Now I get to deal with this.
“Did someone tell you that?” I ask to buy time, twirling the combination dial.
“Several someones.”
“Well, they’re wrong.” I pull away from her so I can open the door and toss my environmental science textbook inside. “Itch didn’t cheat on me. I broke up with him and then he started dating Zoe. Completely legit and no big deal. It was all a misunderstanding. Oliver shouldn’t have punched him.”
I turn to find that Ainsley has a startled look on her face. Her eyes lock on mine and her brows slowly move toward each other. “What?”
Whoops.
I didn’t tell Oliver I had broken up with Itch, and Oliver didn’t tell Ainsley he had punched him. She heard about the breakup from someone else (or, rather, several someones), but it hadn’t gotten back to her yet that her boyfriend had roughed up my ex-boyfriend, probably because how do you tell someone that?
Suddenly, it’s really awkward up in here.
“Oliver hit Itch?”
“Uh, yeah?” It comes out of my mouth like a question. “Oliver saw him kissing Zoe and thought he was cheating on me. From what you’re saying, it sounds like he wasn’t the only one who thought that, but I guess Oliver got a little…overly zealous.”
Ainsley doesn’t say anything. She studies me, like she’s trying to figure something out. If she succeeds, I hope she’ll let me in on it. “Why didn’t Oliver know you broke up with him? You’re with him every single morning.”
Ah, the million-dollar question.
“Oliver and I don’t get personal.”
It’s not exactly the truth, but it’s not completely a lie, either. How are you supposed to tell someone you’ve pledged a friendship of honesty with her boyfriend? It’s on the up-and-up…but somehow, it doesn’t sound like it.
How did this get so complicated?
Ainsley keeps staring at me, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking. There’s a long pause, during which I can’t help wondering if she has any inclination toward violence. After all, her boyfriend did just throw a punch. Maybe they were brought together by their shared love of physical savagery?
Ainsley makes a move toward me and I flinch backward, but she’s fast. In a second, her arms are around me. “You poor thing,” she whispers into my ear. “It’s so embarrassing.”
Embarrassing? I think other words are more appropriate, but I’m not about to quibble over semantics. I just go with it. “So embarrassing.”
“I mean, Zoe Smith.” Ainsley says it with a shudder. “You know she only passed chem last year because she let Mr. Welch look at her tits.”
I try to imagine Zoe doing such a thing. She’s artsy and quirky, but an exhibitionist? I don’t know.
“Don’t worry,” says Ainsley. “You’re way prettier than her.”
Where I fall on the beauty scale in relation to Zoe is actually the least of my worries, but given the weirdness of this whole situation, I’m willing to let Ainsley think that’s where my concerns lie. “Really? You think so?”
“Totally,” Ainsley assures me.
“Awesome,” I say, even though this conversation is anything but awesome.
I manage to catch Oliver alone as he’s going into the cafeteria for lunch. “Heads up. Ainsley was a little surprised to find out about the whole Itch debacle. You might want to tell her that you have a thing about cheaters or something….What?”
Oliver is grinning at me. “It’s all good, Rafferty. Ainsley is into knights in shining armor or something. She thinks it was chivalrous.” He sees my look. “Don’t worry. I’m not about to make it a thing, where I go around hitting people. I’m just saying that in this one scenario, this one time…it ended up just fine.”
“Except for the part where Itch got a fat lip for no reason.”
At least Oliver has the good sense to look uncomfortable. “Right, except for that,” he says.
God, I can’t wait to get out of here.