“Maybe I ... at first, maybe that’s what I wanted. But not anymore.”
“Why not, Luke? I’m still the same person. I still destroyed everything. But we kissed, so everything’s fine now? We both know that’s not true.”
“I’m not going to deny that I was angry,” Luke says, his jaw tight, and I can tell that I’ve unleashed something in him. He’s about to tell the truth. “I was, and I am. Because my younger brother is dead. He’s gone, okay?”
His voice breaks and his eyes well. “When he died, we were fighting over agirl.”
It stings the way he says it; I’m a girl. I’m any girl.
Not family, not one of their people, like Mel said a while ago.
Just a girl.
“He probably thought I hated him,” Luke said. “And I did. For a minute, I really, really hated him. He took you from me. He was fucking you right under my nose.”
“We never—”
“I thought you did. I see you in the water like that, what am I supposed to think?” he says. “And things hadn’t been bad with him for only that one night. They’d been bad for months, maybe even years, because of you.
“But then you and I happened. You kissed me, and I liked it. And you know what the worst thing is? I fucking knew it. I knew how he felt about you.”
I blink at him.
No. That’s not possible.
“Maybe I even knew before he did. Which is why that first night when you kissed me, I backed away. All that shit about trying to be a good guy? All a joke. I was the worst kind of person, and I knew it.”
He looks at me. “But, God, I wanted to be with you. I couldn’t stop thinking about you or dreaming about you. And eventually I broke. I had to come and find you.”
I blink hard, not sure what to make of what I’m hearing.
“So when you say all this crap about how everything is your fault and you’re the reason and ...”
“Iamthe reason. You just said so yourself!”
“You’reareason. The other fucking reason,” he shouts, “is me. I’m the reason he’s dead.”
I shake my head.
“You know it’s true. I don’t steal his girl? None of that shit happens. I’m not at his party, or I’m there on time unlike the selfish prick I am? None of that shit happens. I see him with you and accept that you were always his? None of that shit happens.”
“I wasn’this,” I say.
“Well, you sure as hell were never mine,” he spits back.
“I was in love with you.”
“Not enough.”
It’s not true. I was just stupid and tipsy and horny and flattered and caught off-guard and stupid and stupid. But I loved Luke. I always did.
“I’m sorry,” I say now because I’ve never said it to his face. “It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. And I hate myself just as much as you hate me.”
He doesn’t deny that he hates me, that even the slightest bit of him hates me. “I could never hate you as much as I hate myself,” he says.
He runs his hand through his hair and leans against the wall. We appraise each other for several seconds.
“So what now?” he says with a small, tired smile. “Now that we’ve yelled at each other in front of the whole neighborhood and any illusion of romance is ruined.”
