I suck in a deep breath. Hold it in my lungs until it starts to ache. And then, on a bitter exhale, I mutter, “Good fucking question.”
“Wow. I just…” She’s trembling with anger, vibrating with it from head to toe. “I cannot believe you’re being like this.”
“Like what, Jo?”
“This!”
I take another step toward her, forcing her to retreat further into the hall. She pulls the pie toward her body, arms jerking backward to accommodate my sudden nearness. With only the dish to separate us, our faces are no more than a few inches apart. We’re so close, I can see every freckle dotted across the bridge of her nose; every dark eyelash surrounding her furious blue eyes; every pillowy curve of her bow-like mouth.
Stop looking at her mouth.
“Why, Jo?” I loom over her, eyes never shifting from hers as venom leaks from my lips in an uncontrollable stream. “Why can’t you believe it? Because you can’t even fathom a world where something doesn’t go your way?”
“Excuse me? What has ever gone my way?”
“Oh, I don’t know — you mean besides the millionaire parents, oceanfront mansion, valedictorian status, world at your fingertips…”
“That’s rich, coming from you — All-Star pitcher, most popular guy in our graduating class, adored by one and all… not to mention the golden son of two parents who actually gave a shit whether he lived or died!”
“Is that seriously how you saw our time at Exeter? Is that how you’ve got it sorted in your head — you, the neglected wallflower, and me the metaphorical prom king?” I laugh, though I’m not finding any of this amusing. Not in the slightest. “That’s fucking hilarious.”
She’s stiff as a board, her spine ramrod straight with tension, her words icy with wrath. “No, Archer. That’s not hilarious. That’s accurate.”
“Right.” I laugh again, even more bitterly. “Okay. Sure. Whatever you say.”
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Laughing at me like I’m delusional, when you’re the one not making any sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
“I don’t understand where all of this is coming from! I don’t understand why you’re bringing all of this up, out of nowhere!”
“Of course you don’t.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Then don’t be so naive. Don’t you get it? In the real world, we never would’ve met if your parents hadn’t hired mine to scrub their fucking toilets and mow their fucking lawn.” My eyes narrow on hers. “We were never meant to be friends! We were never meant to be anything.”
“What does it matter how we met?” She blinks rapidly, like she’s trying not to cry. God, please don’t cry. Yell, scream, holler. Hit me. Do anything except cry. “All that matters is that we did. We did meet. We did become friends. We did matter to each other.” She pauses. “Even if you want to pretend otherwise.”
Fuck.
“Right.” I swallow hard. “Well. If we did… you said it yourself. Did. Past tense.”
“You—“ Her eyes, to my horror, fill with glossy tears of frustration. “You don’t get to just brush me aside like garbage! You don’t get to just act like this— this— this unrecognizable monster for no reason at all!”
But I do have my reasons.
My jaw locks tighter. “I’m sorry I’m not following the perfect script you apparently wrote for me in your head before coming here, Jo, but that’s not how life works. You don’t get to be angry with me for having the audacity not to recite the lines you were expecting to hear.”
“I’m not angry with you for that. I’m angry because you used to be my best friend in the entire world and now you can’t even look me in the eyes for more than three seconds straight. I’m angry because you were the only person I could confide in, about anything and everything under the sun, and now we don’t even speak. And most of all, I’m angry because I don’t understand why.”
Her voice cracks, the words breaking apart beneath the strain of her agony. Hearing it breaks something inside of me, too. I can’t breathe. The pain in my chest is an anvil, compressing my lungs. Her eyes hold a plea — for clarity, for compassion. For all the things I cannot give her, no matter how much I might like to.
“If you’d just…” She sucks in a breath. “If you’d just tell me what I did, maybe it would make sense to me. If you’d let me in on whatever it was that made you throw away almost two decades of friendship, maybe I’d finally have some closure. Maybe then, I’d be able to stop going over it and over it and over it in my head like a goddamned crazy person.”
She attempts a laugh, but there’s nothing funny about the noise that comes out of her mouth. It’s laced with so much grief, my stomach flips with nausea.
“Maybe I am crazy,” she whispers. “That’s the only real explanation for why I can’t let this go, after all this time. That’s why I can’t stop thinking there must be some better rationale for what happened between us last summer. That’s why I keep trying and trying and trying with you, when it’s so very clear you want nothing to do with me anymore. Right?”
She’s looking at me with pure desperation in her eyes. Heart in her throat, cards on the table. Setting aside all her pride to beg me — beg me — for the slightest confirmation.
Hearing her like this…
Seeing her like this…
It is a knife, straight to the heart.
And I know, this is it. This is the moment. The chance to rectify everything that went wrong. The long-awaited peace offering. The olive branch, extended outward with a shaky hand.
It takes every ounce of strength I possess not to take it. To stand there, an immovable statue, unyielding in my apathy. Meeting her desperation with incalculable coldness.
For a suspended moment, she simply stands there, waiting for me to say something. Waiting for me to explain things to her. Waiting for even a crumb of validation.
When I don’t…
When a full minute slips by without the smallest crack in my detached demeanor…
Her gaze changes. Shifts, along with the world beneath my feet, as Josephine Valentine — a girl who has loved me longer and better than anyone on this earth — finally sees what everyone else does: that I am not even worthy of breathing her air. As she releases her hold on the last shred of hope she was clinging to that things between us might get better… and finally….
Finally…
Finally…
Lets me go.
“Fine,” she says simply. I sink a little deeper into my own self-abhorrence as the hurt on her face hardens into grim resolve. “That’s fine.”
Just go.
Just leave.
I can’t take any more.
But she’s not finished. Her voice cracks. “You know… you were always cocky, Archer. Sometimes you were a little too blunt, the way you’d phrase things or respond to certain situations. Occasionally, you’d snap and show your temper. But you were never outright cruel. You were never mean just for the sport of it.” The shuddering breath she pulls into her lungs seems to steady her a bit, but it’s not enough to camouflage the depth of her devastation when she says the last words I’m certain she will ever waste on me. “If this is who you are now... If this is the man you’ve decided to become… then you’re right. Coming here was a waste of time.”