I hadn’t even been able to finish the word, because a different one stared back at me.WAITLISTED.
We would like to offer you a place on our waitlist.
My gaze had lifted, locking onto Jamie’s. He’d been staring at me, and I wondered if his portal hadn’t loaded, wondered if he’d been waitlisted too, or even rejected, because there had been something in his gaze that had looked so…crushed.
My pulse had slowed then, almost like it was about to stop completely.
“You got into NYU?” Dalton asked Jamie now, frowning. “You… applied with DD?”
“Daisy didn’t tell you?” Jamie took a bite of his corndog, readjusting so that his knee brushed my bent one. “It’s always been our dream to go to NYU together.”
“What does yours say?” Jamie had asked that day in April, voice low. “Did you get in?”
I hadn’t answered.
“Me either,” he’d tried to say, but Theo was too close to him.
“Nuh-uh,” Theo had said in his high tone, happy he could understand the screen he scanned. “Yours says ac-cep-ted. That means you got in, right?”
Jamie had planned to lie. One look at my face and he’d tried to lie.
And he’d continued to lie. To let me believe he’d accepted NYU’s offer. To believe I could live vicariously through my best friend come fall. To not tell me he’d thrown away our dream for something better.
“You know, now that you say it, I feel like I doremember something like that.” Dalton crunched his soda can a little beneath his curled fingers. “I remember you acting like you had a bond with my girlfriend. Now it makes sense—you said you’ve been in love with her since freshman year, huh?” Dalton stared Jamie down. “Were you just pretending to be her friend all this time?”
It wasn’t true, of course. I’d hit it off with Nellie almost instantly when we’d met, but even back then, Jamie had been reserved. Harder to pull his head up from his book and force into conversation. He’d barely met my eyes at first.
“Not pretending,” Jamie answered calmly. Dalton threw the questions at him quickly, but Jamie still remained cool, as if he’d prepared for each one. “When you love someone, you’ll have them in your life any way you can get them. Being her friend was more than enough. In fact, it was an honor.”
Something unfurled in my chest. Even though the words weren’t real, the devotion of them was something out of a novel. I tried to imagine Dalton saying them, but he never would’ve—not without cringing and breaking into a laugh.
But off Jamie’s lips, quiet and thought-through, they were… perfect.
Perfect, but a part of the act.
And they ticked Dalton off. “I knew I should’ve told her to cut you off,” he said, glaring venomously at Jamie. “I knew you were always a loser trying to break us up.”
The insult to Jamie had me flinching. “Hey, stop,” I told Dalton, trying to draw his attention to me. “Jamie wasn’t?—”
“And I always knew you were a piece of garbage Daisy needed to throw to the curb.” Jamie tipped his head to the side, offering a bland smile. “Guess we’re both good at reading the room.”
“Stop it,” I told them in a stern tone, slamming my sketchbook down on the blanket in front of me. I hated Dalton thinking Jamie had just been biding his time, and I hated that Jamie was feeding into it. The confrontation made me feel nervous, panicked. “Just… knock it off.”
Jamie finally looked at me, and at once, I watched as his eyes seemed to melt in the sunlight. “You got mustard on your chin,” he murmured, as if he hadn’t been wound tight a second ago. “I didn’t get any napkins.”
“I don’t need a napkin,” I began, raising my hand.
Before I could rub the condiment away, Jamie, lightning fast, beat me to it. He curled his forefinger and used the side of it to swipe the mustard off my skin, a quick and glancing touch. My breath caught, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just wiped his hands together, completely normal.
“I guess you’ll both be happy at NYU together, then, huh?” Dalton asked, glowering at us. “Living out your starving artist dreams?”
It’s a little silly to hear you talk about NYU like you’ll go. I should’ve tossed my hair and shot something back at Dalton—something sharp and witty—but the words stuck somewhere in my throat. His prediction had been right, after all.
“We’re going to make a graphic novel together,” Jamie said when I said nothing. “It’s always been our dream. I’ll be the author; she’ll be the illustrator.”
My blood ran ice cold.
Jamie didn’t even look at me when he said it, just leaned back and wielded our dream to sell our fake relationship.We’re going to make a graphic novel, present tense.
