Page 54 of Offside

My chest ached, and I finally let the pressure crack, tears streaming down my face in hot streaks. I wanted to keel over and hide forever when Metal left, but now?

I wanted to just disappear.

Fuck–could I just disappear?

Chapter 24

Sam

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Ash huffed, arms crossed over his chest, and looking down at me on my couch like the sad sack I definitely was. “Why the hell did you redownload the app–that wasn’t the plan–”

“The plan wasn’t working–”

“You gave it a month!” he shouted slowly, dragging out the words like all of this should have been obvious to me. “Think logically here–would you have wanted Landon to be over you in under a month and onto someone else–if it wasn’t you?”

“No,” I mumbled, dropping my eyes to my lap and my lifeless hands. “I just thought it would be different because it was me–”

“Dude,” Ash said softly, coming to sit next to me. “He was probably devastated when you left–I mean, come on. You were devastated, and you were actually the one with all the information. He could be attracted to you and into you all he wanted, but if he wasn’t ready to let go of the other you yet, then that was that… Why didn’t you come to me when you changed the plan?”

Because I knew it was wrong.

Landon had every right to be mad at me for every single choice I made since I found out. I had every chance to change how this played out, but every choice I made just dug the hole deeper and deeper. I was banking on something that would have never worked in the end.

Because how on earth was I going to spend the rest of our lives pretending I didn’t know first?

The fact that our whole friendship was now being called into question was also fair. I wanted him to call and yell at me more, but he hadn’t answered even a text in over a week now.

Ash was only here now because he caught Landon trying to hide that he was crying in the locker room today.

So, in case anyone was keeping a tally, I’d failed at both having friends and a boyfriend.

“I just…kept picking wrong,” I mumbled, sniffling. “I wanted him so badly that I was settling for having half of him as Sam and half of him as Metal, but–”

“It’s okay, man,” Ash sighed, dropping an arm around my neck to let me cry to him.

What an odd thing…

I'd never cried to anyone who wasn’t my mom before.

It felt sort of nice.

And I was the last person who deserved that kind of comfort.

A harder cry coughed out of me and into Ash’s shirt, but not even for me this time. I wasn’t crying in that moment because I was sad or woe was me.

I was crying for Landon.

He had to be so lonely right now.

He didn’t have any friends, and he wouldn’t even be fully honest with his family about me when we were together, so I doubt that had changed now. I had Ash to cry to and be on my side, even if it was wrong, but who did Landon have?

Not me anymore–he didn’t want me.

No matter how much I tried to apologize or just be there for him, he’d still have preferred crying alone in the locker room to answering a single text from me.

And you know what–that was what I deserved.

Chapter 25