Page 27 of One Bet

He chuckled and shook his head.

“Real. With her. That’s funny.” When I didn’t join in laughing, he sobered. “Oh, you’re serious. Wow. I’m sorry, Keats. It’s just she isn’t our…kind of girl.”

Sometimes his arrogance amazed even me, and I knew him better than I knew anyone else. “What’s our kind of girl, Ryder?”

“The kind we bet you could make her into. A Sigma. A Kappa. But hey, it’s good. You want to dabble in the dark arts, good on you. More Kappas and Sigmas for me.” He shrugged again. “But, no can do on the bet. I used the money to finance the party Friday. Whole school’s betting on this thing.” He shrugged as if he was powerless in the whole matter.

How had he managed to spread the word so far in less than a week without either Avery or me hearing about it? And how the hell could I make it all stop?

“Why would you do that?”

Ryder laughed. “Oh, come on. You can’t be serious. You like her? Really?” And I didn’t answer immediately. That was my fault, the first time I let her down. Thank God she wasn’t there to know about it.

17

Avery

I chose the pier where a traveling carnival would be leaving soon. This was the last place Alex and I had really been best friends before we gave into adulthood. Ten years ago. We’d drowned my embarrassment in cotton candy, dispelled my humiliation with funnel cake, and shot away my misery with little pellets aimed at metal ducks. Then he’d let me cry my eyes out on the Ferris wheel while he held me.

“Hey.” He smiled and hugged me like we hadn’t just seen each other two days ago. “Are you okay?”

No, I wasn’t okay. I didn’t want to have to tell him what I had to tell him because I wanted to buy time and maybe even soak up the nostalgia, I slipped my arm through his. “Let’s walk.”

He grinned. “I know what you’re doing, you’re leading me to the cotton candy.”

I wished a hankering for sugar was my only motive. It was chilly, fall had come to Maine and the place was almost abandoned. But the smell of the carnival, grease on the squeaking rides, food only available from carnies, childhood in one breath. It carried on the wind and made me smile. “How about the Ferris wheel?”

He shot me a side-eyed glance. “Alright.” But as we waited in line, our dynamic changed. He wasn’t waiting for me to break his heart. “I have to tell you something, Avery.”

“Okay.” And I let him go first because I didn’t want to. Because I didn’t want to be the one who made the hurt appear in his eyes.

He paused for a long time while we waited for the ride to stop. “I love you.”

We said it all the time before we hung up the phone, but curiously, we’d never said it in person. Probably because we didn’t spend time together in person. But then I looked at him. He didn’t love me the way I loved him. He was hearts and flowers, meet the parents and pick a hall kind of loving me. “What about Susie?”

My voice was a squeak. A half, no, third of its usual tone.

“She’s just…a friend I thought I was falling in love with until I saw you.” He sighed. “I know. Alright? I know. You and I are…we’re us.”

He shook his head. “I mean, what am I doing? Right? I love you and I’m sleeping with her.”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say.

“And now you’re back with Keaton…right?”

I didn’t have an answer for that either. If sleeping together didn’t mean Alex was with Susie, then how could it mean I was with Keaton?

“Of course, you are. Because he’s him.”

I couldn’t form anything coherent in my mind to get out of my mouth.

“Alex…” He’d seemed so into Susie. “You bought her a ring.”

“I didn’t give it to her. Because I saw you and I couldn’t. She’s not the one. You are.”

“Me?” But we hadn’t done more than talk on the phone in a decade. Although we did talk at least once a week. Alex loved me. In the way, he wasn’t supposed to love me.

And he deserved more than a lie. Deserved better than me. He deserved someone who loved him back, who wanted to take him to bed every night and wake up with him every morning and I didn’t. Not him. But admitting my feelings for someone else just to prove my point seemed cruel, so, I didn’t. But saying nothing seemed worse.