I scoff. “Try the other way around.”
She smiles. “You’re my twin flame. I’m so excited for tonight.”
I eat a fry and look at her across the table — her hair still damp from the pool, her mascara holding up better than mine, her grinthe size of the whole diner — and I think, not for the first time but maybe the most clearly, that I wouldn’t be alive in this life without her.
“I wish I could be more like you.”
She scoffs at that. “And I wish I was more like you. Are you kidding?”
“At least you’re not dragging people around with your indecisiveness.”
“Yeah, well. You could be worse.”
“I guess, but it still doesn’t feel good.”
She dabs a fry in ketchup. “I’m happy you’re single,” she says. “It’s honestly going to be good for you. You relied so much on Chase.”
I nod. “Yeah. I did.”
“I think he liked it, though.”
I freeze.
The fry in my hand goes back down to the plate.
“Do you think he’ll find someone else?” The thought arrives before I can stop it, and the second it’s out of my mouth I am ashamed of it, but I am also too curious to take it back. “I mean, he got with me right after Haylee.”
Mila shrugs. “I hope you don’t care if he does.”
I think about it. I think about Chase going to his friend’s Halloween party tonight and finding someone to hook up with. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
“I feel like crap,” I say slowly. “But I also feel like a weight has been lifted off my chest. I knew it wasn’t good for me, and I still stayed.”
“You romanticized the hell out of him, Melly. I think you can do better.”
I look at her.
The sentence lands the way a key turns in a lock, and then suddenly the whole door is open.
You romanticized the hell out of him.
“What?” she says, searching my face.
I point a fry at her. “You just named my exact problem.”
“It’s not entirely a problem,” she argues.
“No. But it is.”
I think about Chase. The way I talk about him doesn’t exactly match what I got in real life. His text message:fuck me then. Is that something someone would say if he respected me? I’ve thought of him as someone who was too good for me, but is that even true, or was I romanticizing the hell out of him? And for what reason?
I think about Blue.
I’ve spent what feels like my entire life assembling a version of him out of seven looks across a high school cafeteria and two nights with him.
I’m a girl who romanticizes things.
This is my one consistent problem.
