I want to think I did anything but sulk all weekend, but I didn’t. After dropping Lo off at the bus stop on Saturday morning, I went back home and didn’t do much else. I went over what happened between us in the last couple of weeks on a loop, wondering if this is even a good idea. If trying to be friendly to each other, but nothing more than that, is going to work. I feel like I broke into a thousand pieces, and it took me all weekend to get myself into some shape that resembles me, the me I’ve been for years. To be able to face the world again.

I do feel like I deserve some praise for not drowning myself in booze, for getting through this with a clear head, but that would be empty praise because not harming myself shouldn’t be harder than keeping myself protected. But it’s not been easy. The whole apartment still smelled like the one girl—no, the one woman—whom I love more than anything and whom I can never get close to again.

At least this time I got to actually tell her goodbye. This time we were able to make a clean break from each other. No matter how much it hurts... I just know it’s for the better. It should never have come to this, but this is the most adult thing we could do. And we are. Adults, that is. We’re adults now, we’re no longer kids. This should not be a surprise for us. We’ve not been kids for a long time, so why didn’t we behave like adults? Why?

So when I make it to class on Monday morning, and on time even, I do the adult thing, and I dive into the staging work with the rest of the group. There is nothing that’s going to keep me from working. I’m one hundred percent sure. There is no reason for me to get distracted.

Of course, that calculation never took into consideration Lola walking into the room, her steps steady, but her eyes darker than before, and how much that darkness would hurt and make me worry.

She doesn’t look my way, and I’m pretty sure that by now the whole class is expecting some sort of blowout to happen between us. Apparently, people have started to notice how we’re always acting towards each other and rumors have begun circulating. It’s not that much, and I guess we’re lucky that while I’m on social media a lot and you can find all sorts of things about me, there are none of our relationship details online. Most of my social media postings have been from after I started college, my image all playboy and stuff. And sure, you can find some mentions of me working together with Hunter on projects and winning some prize. But none of that involves Lo, so at most, they can guess about a potential past between us, but the rest will all be baseless rumors because nobody knows the real story.

Damon taps my shoulder, his eyes serious. “Eyes on the work, thanks.” His voice is tired, or maybe just fed up with my behavior.

“Yeah, yeah.” I look at the plans in front of us. We’ve gotten the details for the gym, and are now trying to decide between a couple of different ways to organize the sets in the space. We’re going to have to build a lot of different parts for the décor, but there isn’t enough space in this room to do that, and I know that we can’t get back to Tamara’s workshop. Which means we’re going to have to get another room for us to build things in, which will be good, as it means I won’t be in the same room with Lo as often.

“B.” I jolt when Lola is suddenly standing next to me.

“Yeah.” I blink, not sure why she’s here.

“I’ve got the story.” She puts a stack of paper in front of me on the table. “The outline is mostly done, exact details and script will be written in the next couple of weeks.” She rubs her neck, like it’s stiff, her eyes never meeting mine. “There is a copy for each of you. You can read the script this week, and then we can get together and decide which parts will need to get done first. That way we can focus on those so that you can make sure we get all the filming locations we need.” She looks at each of the others in the group, but never at me. “Let me know when you’ve read the story we have now, and we can set up a more detailed plan for the next weeks. Thanks.” And with that, she’s gone again. She was here, and now she’s gone. Starts to feel like a pattern.

The guys all grab a copy off the stack in front of me, and I sit down, grabbing the final booklet.

“She’s such an ice queen.” One of the guys, Julian, who is normally pretty quiet, lets out a laugh. “I always thought she was just not that good with people. But now...”

Cole also laughs. “Yeah. Fuck a guy, and then treat him like that.” He looks at me. “Was she at least any good?”

I ball my fists under the table, trying to come up with the right thing to say, but I only want to hit him in his stupid face. Make him shut up. Make him stop saying stupid things about my... about Lo.

Instead, Damon leans forward, his eyes sharp. “I’d shut up if I were you.” His voice is low, threatening. “She’s Lizzy’s sister. Lizzy, you know, Hunter’s girlfriend?”

“Oh.” Julian pales, and while I’m not exactly surprised by his reaction, it’s still interesting to see. Hunter may have a temper, and I’ve been on the receiving end of it enough times to fear it. But he’s not going to punch them over a stupid comment, although I’m not so sure that Lizzy wouldn’t do it instead. But I guess that H is enough of a bad boy, a fighter, that just his reputation will be enough to make them stop being sex-obsessed pigs.

Damon now looks at me, raising his eyebrows. “Right?”

“Yeah. You don’t want to anger him.” Though, looking at Damon, the guy knows just as well as I do that H wouldn’t do a damn thing to them.

“Do you know what I heard?” Cole leans in again. “Hunter got stabbed last year. Like, actually stabbed. Have you seen the patch on his jacket? On his upper arm? That’s supposedly where it happened.”

Wait, what?

“Probably happened after he got kicked out of a bar again.” Thomas seems really excited about this. “I know this guy who actually saw one of those fights. He said that Hunter just goes insane. Like, becomes demonic. And he’ll hit anyone and everyone, even guys trying to protect him.” They seem delighted by this, and all I’m thinking is how the hell I’m going to talk to H, check if it’s true. Fuck, he got stabbed?

“It’s true.” Damon speaks up again. “The getting stabbed part. It didn’t have anything to do with bar fights, though. It was his dead girlfriend’s younger brother.”

“What?” Cole asks the question I have too.

“Yeah. The kid blamed Hunter for her death. So he tried to kill him.” Damon shrugs, like this is supposed to be common knowledge or something. “Just sliced him on the arm. The police caught the guy not long after. I don’t know what happened after that.”

Thomas finally closes his mouth long enough to form a question. “How do you know all these things?”

“Hunter is part of Tamara’s group. I see him often enough to know at least something basic like this.” Damon stands up, putting the copy of the script in his backpack. “And on that note, I’m off to the workshop. I’ll read this, and I’ll be back later this week.” He goes over to Lo, talking to her for a moment, and she nods, then he leaves the room.

The guys stare at me like I’m now the one who is going to encourage their stupid stories. “I think he’s got the right idea. We need to read this story and come up with some plans of our own. We’ll meet up again on Wednesday and make sure you’ve read the thing. I expect actual plans. I’ll also make sure to talk to Tamara about getting us an extra room to start making props and décor and shit. Yeah? Good.” I stand up too, not waiting for them to decide anything on their own, or to ask me any more questions.

My eyes immediately go to Lo, but she’s still working with her own group and doesn’t look up. So I grab my bag and leave.

Once I hit the outside door, I find Damon standing in front, smoking. I almost walk past him, but then something that he said won’t get out of my head. “Hey. Is it true what you said? About Tessa’s brother stabbing H?”

Damon nods. “He came all the way here hoping to find him. Guy was out of his mind.”

Well, yeah. But I guess that happens when you lose a sister, or when you lose a brother, it seems. “Expected.”

He shrugs. “Doesn’t mean he had to try to kill Hunter.”

“Very true.” I step back. “You know if Tamara’s in today?”

“She should be at the workshop.” Damon stubs out his cigarette. “I’m going there too.” He sighs, and starts walking.

I don’t always get Damon. He’s got the same playboy image as I do, though, probably even worse, with multiple girls per week, but he doesn’t seem to enjoy it. When we’re at the college during class hours, he’s always on his own, or he’s at the workshop, but there’s almost always a different girl waiting for him when he gets out at the end of the day. And no matter how hard he plays, he doesn’t seem to not care about it all. It’s like he can’t get the whole playboy vibe of being uncaring down, like he’s trying to pretend that it holds no significance for him, that the girls are just interchangeable, another warm body, but that it’s not true. I just can’t seem to get a read on him.

When we enter the workshop, I already hear H and Tamara loudly talking to each other. And as I step into the main hall, I get why. Hunter is sitting somewhere near the ceiling, attaching something to a beam as Tamara is standing just a bit off, staring up at him. She looks a little worried, but above all, she looks amused.

“I’m not moving it again. It should be fine here.” Hunter attaches one last cable of some construction he’s probably made and then slides back on the beam until he reaches the edge and can climb down to the floor again.

Only then does Tamara realize I’m here too. “Hey.” She comes over. “You looking for someone?”

“Yeah. Eh... The staging group is going to need extra space to start building things. Since we’re going have to make them in advance, we don’t have the time to make them in the gym if we’re also going to have to film there. We only have a couple of days there.”

She frowns, then nods. “I’ll get us another room. I should have more news at the end of the week. Yeah?”

“Sounds good.”

“Anything else?”

I shake my head. “Nah. Not that I know. The writer group has most of the script done, Lola just handed out copies.”

“That’s quick.” Tamara smiles a little now. “Nice work.”

Then we’re interrupted by a screeching sound and I cover my ears as I try to find where it comes from. In the middle of the room, Hunter is the first to recover from the sound and tries to pull a plug from the contraption he just hung up. Once it’s disconnected, the sound stops.

“Sorry,” he yells as he goes back over to the contraption. “That wasn’t the plan.”

I walk over to it too. “Sounded mechanical.”

Hunter nods as he frowns, grabbing a stepladder and getting on it, unscrewing one of the sides of the thing. “It worked fine earlier. Must have moved something.” He takes a light and looks inside.

“Electricity all still in the right spot? Any cables that could get mixed up?” It’s not like I can see much from here, but at least this is something I know how to troubleshoot—electrical stuff is my thing.

“Cables look fine. All the cogs seem to be in the correct place.” He closes the side and then opens another side.

“Cables to the speakers?”

“Yeah, checking now.” He reaches inside, frowning as I hear a couple of sounds. He pulls back. “Okay. plug it in again?” He closes the side and steps back down as I plug the contraption back into the power. For a couple of moments, things seem to be fine, then the horrible sound starts again and I unplug it.

“Fuck.” H looks up, and then at me. “I know what it is.” He lets out a deep sigh.

“What is it?”

“Something.” He moves his hands in rotating motions. “One of the cogs must have gotten in wrong, or some setting somewhere. It’s trying to run the program the wrong way around. That’s the sound. The system fighting something it should have to do.” He sits down on the stepladder. “Whatever. I’ll fix it later. Worked on it all night. Don’t have the energy to deal with it right now.” He lets out a laugh. “Now I wish I hadn’t stopped smoking. Oh, fuck it.” He stands up again and goes over to Damon. “Can I get a cig?”

Damon laughs, but hands him his pack. “I don’t think Lizzy would approve though.”

“She also wouldn’t approve of me fucking up the damn contraption.” He shrugs, then steps out the back door. On impulse, I follow him.

Hunter stands to the side, lighting a cigarette, and looking off into the distance. He also looks exhausted, more than would be normal from just a night of working.

His eyes go to me, and I feel like we’re kids again, that look of disappointment, of worry, of having something to say and not wanting to say it. “Why are you doing this to her?” His voice is tired, exhausted, and he shakes his head as he takes another drag of his cigarette. “Why are you messing with her?”

“I’m not...” But I stop. What Lola and I are doing... I guess it could be seen like that. “I try not to. I... I try to stay away from her.”

“Like she told you to.” There is an odd tone to his words, but he’s no longer looking my way. He’s staring off into the distance again, taking a drag of his cigarette.

“Like she told me to?” Lola and I have said many things, but why would she tell H that she told me to leave her alone? We didn’t say that, we agreed that we would try to just act normal to each other.

“At the hospital. She told you to leave.”

It’s like someone has punched me right in the chest, hitting all the air from me in one go. Yes, she did. But that was years ago. Why is he talking about this now? How does he even know? This was just between Lo and me. Nobody was supposed to know. This was...

“She came home on Saturday and told us everything. Including that. It seems she couldn’t live with the secret anymore.” He now looks my way, his eyes dark, pained, but also something else in them. “She has no idea what you did. She’s still upset with me because she still believes that I abandoned her too that night. Your stupid actions didn’t just lose you your future wife, they lost me my best friend. And now she wants me to forgive you. Now she wants me to be okay with you seeing her again.” He throws the cigarette to the floor, then comes over, his eyes challenging me.

That makes no sense. “Why does she believe you left her?” How could he? He wouldn’t. H wouldn’t do that to Lo. The last time I saw H was when he left me with a very painful jaw and a black eye in the hospital parking lot.

“Because someone had to look after your stupid ass.” He steps even closer, grabbing my arm, pulling up my sleeve. “Or did you think that you bandaged that wound yourself?” He reveals one of my most ugly scars, a jagged edge, the skin having grown back together at an odd angle. I remember being somewhat surprised to find it, especially seeing it wrapped up nicely.

“How...”

“You don’t remember anything, do you?” There is anguish in his eyes that surprises me even more.

“I remember drinking.”

“Spending all your wedding money on booze, yes.”

I swallow hard, nodding. That too. “Being in a hotel. Having no idea what day it was. And then the booze ran out, and I sobered up. And I found my hand all wrapped up. I don’t like to think back to that time.”

“Maybe you should.” He pushes me back against the wall, his arm against my chest, waiting with his next words until I look at him, until I can see the pain and determination in his eyes. “Because maybe you can tell me why I found my best friend surrounded by glass and broken bottles, with a cut on his wrist. Maybe then you can tell Lola why I had to stay at your side, all bruised and beaten by your fury, just to make sure that I wouldn’t lose two friends in a week. Maybe then I’d understand why I cared enough for you to look after you, but you obviously never cared enough to talk to Lo, or even reach out to Tess or me in the years since. Because from where I’m standing... You’re not worth her one bit. Not after all of that.” He pushes off me and gets back into the workshop, loudly closing the door behind him.

My mind reels. I knew I’d drunk myself stupid, the days a black hole in my memory with just a few dots, generally when I was getting too sober and needed more booze. I have no memory of those days and nights, none. I pull my sleeve up again, looking at the scar. But what if there is more in those missing memories than just a shitload of expensive booze to numb my pain? What if there are many more darker things hidden in those days?

I always thought that H hated me because I walked out on Lo. But his words open the door to a part inside me that I haven’t dared to look at before.

What if this is all my own fault? All of it? What if I’m the one who did this to myself, and my memories are just too twisted?

Fuck.