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“Sounds like Tommy took care of explaining everything to you already.”

“I still want to hear it from you.” Avery crossed her arms, eyebrows lifted as she waited.

“A while.”

“A little more specific than that, please.”

“Fine. Homecoming.”

Avery blinked. “Homecoming?”

Theo crossed his arms. “Do you mean to tell me you had no idea? You were there too, you know. We almost kissed.”

“I thought that was a fluke.” She seemed unusually flustered, and he couldn’t tell if it was because she had felt what he did, or because she hadn’t. And he couldn’t decide which would be worse.

“It wasn’t.”

“And you just kept dating her?”

“You got back together with Cameron approximately three days later.” It was a low blow on his part, but he was drowning.

“Yeah, but I thought—I don’t know what I thought, but I didn’t think what happened was—I didn’t have feelings for you. Not the same way.”

“You didn’t, or you didn’t admit it to yourself?” Theo argued.

“You knew, though. You knew how you felt about me, but you stayed with Izzy.”

She had a point, he knew that, but it didn’t mean he was going to let it go. “That’s not how it was, okay? I knew there was something there, that I might have feelings for you, but I didn’t think there was any point in giving in to it, because it wasn’t like you felt the same way. How I felt about you? It didn’t matter, not really. And what would you have done if I told you?”

Avery was shaking her head, looking impossibly sad. “It’s not about if you should have told me, it’s about not telling Izzy the truth.”

“And what good would that have done, Aves? All it would have done is hurt her, and anyway, I didn’t—I wasn’t sure, not then.”

“You still should have told her at least,” Avery said, arms crossed. “As soon as you realized it for sure.”

Theo couldn’t get his head around the directions this argument was going in. “Since when do you care about Izzy so much? I don’t think you two ever had a conversation without me.”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Theo. You were with her, and you were lying to her about how you felt because of me. You don’t know what it’s like, having someone lie like that.”

Theo narrowed his eyes. “Did Cameron do this to you? Is that what this is about?”

“Cam? What? No, I don’t mean—it hasn’t happened to me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t say it’s shitty.”

“Well, if it is, it’s between me and Izzy, not me and you.” Theo crossed his own arms and tilted his head to the side, waiting for her to respond.

“You still shouldn’t have agreed to my plan,” Avery said, apparently deciding to move the goalposts halfway down the field again. “If you knew you had feelings for me, you should have said so, or at least not agreed, because God, Theo, you were risking everything.”

“What the hell, Aves? What exactly is your problem here? Yes, maybe I should have told you, but like you said, it would have risked everything. Losing you as a friend—I can’t even think about it, okay? That would break me, and I thought I could keep it from you for a few fucking days because, again, it’s my goddamn problem. If we”—he stumbled, realizing what he was about to say and how much it sucked to realize it was true—“if we stayed together, I would have told you, I swear. I just didn’t think it needed to be handled right now. It was just supposed to be for a few days, and it wasn’t like I could fall more in love with you.”

“What?” she said, all the fight draining from her. “What did you just say?”

“I didn’t mean for it to come out like that,” he said, all his fire extinguished too.

“If you—if you felt like that, why did you suggest hooking up?” she asked, sounding desperate.

Theo dropped his head into his hands. “Because I thought I could handle it, okay? You were helping me out, so I figured I’d help you out. But I’m not going to apologize for this, because I still don’t really get what I did wrong. I get that you don’t like it, but that isn’t the same thing as me, like, deliberately lying to you or tricking you or anything. I just didn’t tell you something. I just didn’t think what I felt for you was going to make a difference. It was something to get over.”

“But when I kept asking about what Tommy knew, you lied,” she countered.