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SEBASTIAN: …Come on. How bad could it be?ME: The last time you said that to me, prom happened.SEBASTIAN: And I want to explain everything to you so you know the truth. That’s hardly a secret. You just won’t listen.ME: I’ve moved on.SEBASTIAN: No you haven’t. If you had, you wouldn’t be like this. You’re not over it, Holley, and neither am I.I paused at that. He wasn’t over it? How could he possibly not be over it? He wasn’t the one who’d been hurt that night. He’d stayed in town for all of a week before he’d gone off for some junior baseball tournament and then to the Montana Bears’ yearly junior training camp.
He hadn’t tried then.ME: You didn’t try to explain it then. Why not?SEBASTIAN: My injury has put a lot of things into perspective. I’m going to be here for months, maybe even longer than that. We don’t know. You’ve always been a part of my life here. I can’t imagine living in White Peak and not having you around.ME: Imagine it, Sebastian. You’ve been here for a few weeks already and never tried.SEBASTIAN: I tried. Just couldn’t get the balls to walk through the door, to be honest.ME: That’s ridiculous.SEBASTIAN: You’re right. It is. But so is all this.ME: I just don’t see what good it does to bring up the past.SEBASTIAN: Well then figure it out. You’re the one living in it.Ouch.
That one stung. Not because it was untrue but because… he was right.
Annoyingly so.
I’d always hated that.ME: Fair enough.SEBASTIAN: Holley, please. Come to the stupid wedding party with me. I’ll make sure we get separate rooms, I’ll pay for everything, and when it’s all over, just give me a little time to tell you what really happened that night.I was so going to regret this.ME: Fine.SEBASTIAN: Really?ME: Yes, fine. I’ll do it. But I’m only there as your friend as far as everyone is concerned. I’m not pretending to be your girlfriend or anything stupid like that.SEBASTIAN: You won’t have to.ME: And definitely our own rooms.SEBASTIAN: Definitely our own rooms. I’ll call them first thing and book yours.ME: I’m not happy about this.SEBASTIAN: I am.ME: Oh, go away.SEBASTIAN: Now that I have your number again? You wish.ME: *middle finger emoji*His response was a string of the laughing face emojis, and I tossed my phone onto the sofa next to me. It landed screen down, thank God, and I looked back at my half-eaten dinner.
I pushed some spaghetti around the plate. What had I done? That hadn’t been why I’d texted him. Getting stuck with him in a hotel overnight was my idea of hell, and I definitely hadn’t meant to agree to let him tell me what had really happened.
So why was my heart beating a little faster at the prospect of knowing the truth?
I knew what happened.
We’d gone together to prom knowing we wouldn’t see each other again for a while. Secretly, I’d planned to admit to him that I felt more than friendship. Right toward the end of the night when I was gearing up to do it, I’d gone looking for him and found him kissing the girl who’d make my high school life hell.
You know the one. We all had her in our past. The pretty, popular, out-of-your-league girl who only liked you if you could do her homework for her, and even then, her friendship came with thinly veiled disapproval.
Except Iris had never given me any kind of friendship. Seb and I had always been the stereotypical jock-slash-nerd pairing, but we’d only been friends. She’d long hated how close I was to him and told everyone very loudly it should have been her.
At prom, she’d gotten her wish, and my heart had broken into a thousand pieces.
Of all the girls I could have found him kissing, it was her.
So I knew what happened. I didn’t know why I needed to relive that night from his point of view, unless—
Unless there was another point of view.
I froze.
Was there something I didn’t know about that night? Something I’d never let him actually tell me because I was too wrapped up in myself?
I dropped my fork, letting it clatter to the plate, and pushed the plate away.
Son of a biscuit.***“That would make sense,” Ivy said as I set a cup of hot cocoa down in front of her. “I always thought there was something more to what happened that night. It’s not like he’d ever shown any interest in Iris before.”
I took a seat on the opposite end of the sofa and cradled my mug. Her apartment was covered in boxes since her, Kai, and baby Tegan were one week away from move day. Since Kinsley was back, I’d come over to help her pack up a bunch of stuff, but all we’d done was snuggle Tegan and eat our body weights in chips and salsa.
