“Oh, was itobvious, Noelle?” she asks mockingly. “Should I have read your fucking mind?”
There’s a sudden pounding in my ears as every muscle in my body flexes. “Yeah, I think it’s prettyobviousthat you wouldn’t make your ‘girlfriend’ look like an asshole on national television.”
“Well, I wouldn’t make my ‘girlfriend’ look like an asshole on TV if she didn’t act like an asshole in real life.”
“Oh, I’m the asshole?” My voice rises as I tap my chest. It reverberates through my body. “I’mthe asshole?”
Her mouth twists, but she doesn’t back down. “Yes, Noelle. You’re the asshole.”
Angry tears gather at the inner corners of my eyes. “Tell me exactly how I’m the asshole here, Yumi. You stopped talking to me. You ignored me. You left me. You made me feel like shit, you weren’t there for my dad. Your life got to just go on, and mine fell apart. But I’m the asshole, right?”
Yumi’s face turns red, her jaw working. “Right. Because youbroke my heart. Did you expect me to apologize? Was I supposed to be your fuckingbestieafter that?”
I can’t breathe. “What?”
She turns away from me so that I’m just looking at the white letters on the back of her varsity jacket—Panganiban. “Nothing, Noelle,” she says, exasperated.
She takes a step toward the bathroom, but I grab her sleeve. “No. What?”
Her jacket is coarse and scratchy beneath my fingers. She doesn’t jerk it away, though, just stands there, turned away from me. “I’m not saying it again.”
“I broke your heart?” The words feel wrong in my mouth. That’s not how it happened, right? The only heart I broke was my own, wasn’t it?
Watching her profile, I see her eyes close. “Tell me if this sounds familiar.” Her voice is strained. “You spend seven years acting like you’re in love with me.Ispend seven yearsbeingin love with you. You fall asleep with your head in my lap. You come to all of my swim meets, and you stay the whole time, even after my events are over.Youask me to prom.And then the day I finallywork up the nerve to k—” She pauses. A sharp inhale. “I kiss you, andyou leave.” She rolls her lips inward, eyes staying closed.
I’ve never felt like this before. It’s almost…calm? My thoughts have stopped racing, falling silent so they can hear what Yumi has to say. “I…I didn’t want to lose you.”
“You lost me the second you walked out,” she spits. I don’t think I could feel any worse, but then she says, “You h—” And her voice cracks. “Hurt me, Noe.”
“Oh my God, Yumi,” I breathe. Then she’s wrapped in my arms. It just happens. I don’t even think I move. Reality just glitches, and suddenly I’m holding her, and she’s crying into my shoulder. “No, no. No, please don’t cry. I’m sorry. I’m so…”
I don’t know if I should explain or apologize or keep whispering soothingly. I just don’t know. I hurt Yumi?IhurtYumi? That’s what happened? That’s not what happened. Is that what happened?
You know how people talk about an unstoppable force and an immovable object? Yumi Panganiban is both. I’m taller than her, but she’sbiggerthan me. She always has been. But she’s so small right now, tucked against me, sobs racking her body.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her hair. I don’t inhale her pineapple-and-melon scent—it’s not mine right now.
She shrugs.
I squeeze her tighter. “I was…”
“Stupid?” she supplies.
“Scared. And stupid,” I concede.
She takes a step backward. Every cell, every molecule, every atom of my body wants to pull her into me again, but I just standthere, uselessly. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s right.
“If you were scared, you should have stayed. You should havetold me,” she says, wiping at her eyes and smearing mascara on the cuff of her jacket. She stares at the black smudge for a moment before shrugging off her jacket and tossing it carelessly in the direction of her bed. It falls short, landing in a heap on the floor.
“I—”I can’t change who I am, I almost say. But I can. I have. I’m not the person I was a year ago, and I won’t be this person a year from now. I want her to know that, I just don’t know how to tell her. “I tried. To apologize and…explain. I texted you,” I say limply.
“If you think I didn’t block you the moment you left, you’re out of your mind.”
I’d suspected as much, I’d even accepted it, but I didn’t know that this was on the other side of that stone wall. I didn’t know that Yumi was…sad. “I’m sorry.” In the history of the world, has there ever been a sentence more inadequate? “I needed time.”
Yumi scoffs a mirthless laugh, sinking onto the edge of her bed. “Yeah, well, I neededyou.”
“If…” What I really want to say isIf we’d tried it and broken up, and I lost you forever, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it.But it feels too close to an excuse. Does it really matter why I left? Or does it just matter that I left. “If I could change it, I would.”
