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He finally looks my way. “Are you just going to sit there and stare?”
I swallow. “No.” I pull the flash drive and headset from my backpack and offer them with a shaky hand. “You don’t have to forgive me, and you don’t have to watch this, but I’d like you to do both. Mostly the forgiveness part because I just got you back and losing you feels awful.”
He ignores me long enough to save his photos and collect his things. “Bye.”
“Holden,” I say, standing when he stands. “Please.Please.”
“If I take that, you’re going to feel just a little less guilty about what you did.” He looks me up and down. “I’m not feeling generous enough to give you that relief today.”
He swings his backpack over his shoulder and turns to leave, but I grab on to his bag, unzip one of the many pockets, and stuff the drive and headset inside. It’s his to do with what he wants now, but if I know Holden—and I know Holden—he’ll be driven nuts by the thought of this thing in his bag, and he’ll watch it.Please let him watch it.
I’m met with a sneer when he pans toward me. “Even after everything, you’re still just doing whatever you want without thinking about how it makes anyone else feel. Maybe we were meant to stop being friends all those years ago.”
“That’s not true.”
“Did you ever for one second in your selfish life stop to think about what life was like for me when you stopped being my friend?”
The words hit me like a blow to the stomach. “You stopped beingmyfriend.”
He laughs harshly. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.” He starts counting on his fingers. “I texted you, I invited you to hang out, you were the only person at my birthday party that year who wasn’t from my new school—I fucking tried, Saine. Then you just left me, and I had to deal withsomuch on my own. It took forever for me to trust Taj because I thought he was just going to leave me one day when I became too much for him. You left me for no reason.”
“I was embarrassed. I thought you didn’t like me.” I rewind to his birthday party. The bottle lands on me and the horror on his face isn’t because I’m disgusting. It’s because I’m his best friend and he loves me and he’s twelve and doesn’t know what to do.
“My brother gets sick, my parents divorce. Do you know how that made me feel?” He cuts me off before I can say anything. “Pretty shitty, Saine! You know what would have made it better? You not running away from me.” He scrubs at the side of his face and his voice is weaker this time when he says, “You not making me trust you again just to have you pull the same shit all over.”
“I just made some mistakes.”
“It’s not a mistake when you knew what you were doing was wrong. Youchoseto do what you did. So why should I forgive you this time? You’re just going to mess up again and I’m just going to be the dumbass who lets you do it, over and over. I’ve always been that idiot who followed your lead. Well, I’m not doing that anymore, and I’m not going to forgive you. You have toearnit, right? Can’t let things be too easy for you just because you want it.”
With that, he pivots away from me and out the door just as the bell rings.
