“So… the fake part? Tori added that for dramatic effect, too?” Kaan asked carefully.
“There’s no way Tori could’ve knownanythingabout it. It was a lucky guess.” A heavy sigh drew from my lungs. “I’m stupid, alright? I fell for Alana like a goddamn fool. It was real to me.”
I sat back down, elbows on my knees, head in my hands. “Alana was waiting for me. After my exam. She looked like she’d been crying, and I didn’t know why. I thought maybe something had happened, like—fuck, I don’t know—family stuff or whatever. But then she just… looked at me like I was some stranger. Like I broke something. And then she walked away.”
I let out a dry laugh, except it didn’t feel funny at all. “I didn’t even get the chance to say hi. She didn’t say a single word.”
Kaan leaned forward. “You think she saw the post?”
“I know she did.” I sat back, my jaw tight. “I saw her holding her phone right before she looked at me like I murdered her entire family.”
“Maybe she read something else?” Sharma tried, but I could hear that he wasn’t convinced of his own words.
“Alana was already scared about getting too close. She kept saying we have to stop blurring whatever lines, and in theory, I knew that, too. You know, she was…” I sighed again, contemplating to tell them this. I couldn’t possibly tell my best friends about Alana’s fears. It wasn’t fair to her.
She trustedmewith them.
Kaan frowned. “Do you think maybe part of her thinks the whole thing was fake to you theentiretime?”
“I don’t know,” I said, then shook my head, harder this time. “Actually, no. Idoknow. That’s exactly what she thinks right now. And the worst part is, I get it. I fucking get it, man. She gave me a piece of herself she doesn’t give to anyone. She let me in. And now, she thinks I just used it like it meant nothing. And I swear, I swear to God, if I lose her because of this… because of Tori’s pathetic, attention-starved bullshit…”
I stood up again, pacing fast, like maybe if I moved quick enough I’d shake the panic out of my body. But it wasn’t leaving. It was climbing up my throat like I was drowning.
“She doesn’t even know the half of it,” I said, voice breaking. “She doesn’t know how hard I fell for her. When we started all this, it wasn’t real—I mean, not romantically. It was just a plan. But then she smiled at me that one night in the car, and I swear to God, I haven’t been the same since. It terrified me. How much I wanted her. How fast it all got under my skin.”
I turned back to them, eyes wide, desperate. “You know what it feels like to find someone who sees all of you and doesn’t run? Someone who couldn’t give two fucks about who my parents are. Someone who doesn’t care how I grew up, or any of the shit that usually defines me? She doesn’t care about any of it. She just… likesme.”
I let out a ragged breath. “And now she thinks I lied. She thinks I was playing her this whole time, like she was just some background prop in the Eden King Show.”
Neither of them said anything.
“She’s not a prop,” I whispered, hands in my hair. “She’s the whole fucking movie.”
Kaan blinked hard, looking like he wasn’t sure what to say.
“I was gonna tell her,” I went on. “I was gonna tell her everything. How it started, how I didn’t expect to fall for her, how every second with her made me feel like maybe I could be more than just… fake.”
Sharma rubbed his jaw. Kaan just looked like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to speak.
“She didn’t even let me talk,” I said again. “She looked at me like I was a stranger. Like I was a disappointment. And I swear, that look is gonna haunt me forever if I don’t fix this.”
Sharma finally sat forward. “Then go. Fix it. Be the guy you say you are. Tell her everything. Lay it all down, no ego, no excuses.”
Yeah.
I could do this.
I could tell her. Right now.
Yeah…
50
ALANA
Ididn’t cry again after I got home.
Not because I wasn’t devastated. Not because it didn’t feel like my entire chest had been cracked open. Not because I didn’t keep replaying that stupid blog post over and over again in my head until the words blurred.
