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“Nothing about you is innocent, nemesis.”
I both hated and loved my nickname. I hated it, because he picked it up to point out we were never going back to being normal around each other. We would always be enemies. But I loved how the word rolled off his mouth. It had a meaning, a deep feeling behind it. And I heard it every single time he called me that.
“Maybe if you tell someone what happened, you would feel better?”
I heard the irony. I sounded like Hannah when she was talking to me. But again, I was curious. I was allowed to use every trick to find out what was happening. A dark painful chuckle escaped his lips.
“You’re the one to talk,” he murmured, and I was thinking he would just shut down, but he surprised me. “You want to know what’s wrong? Take a wild guess,” his words were like a whip. It sounded like he was mad at me too. But what could I have in common with Chase?
Then it hit me. The kiss.
“You’re mad at him because he kissed the girl in front of her boyfriend.”
“Ding, ding, ding.”
For a moment, we both just stood like statues, looking away from each other.
“Are you still mad at me?” I heard myself asking.
“What’s your guess? You’re obviously good at this game. Would I spent the last four years pretending you didn’t exist if I wasn’t mad at you?”
“Are you going to forgive him?”
Are you going to forgive me?
He looked at me like he heard my second question as well. For a second I felt like I was about to cry. Ask him to forgive me. I knew he would. He was good. Not like me. And that was the reason I stopped myself from asking him. I didn’t deserve his forgiveness. But my inner demons couldn’t just leave me alone and made me say the stupidest thing.
“We weren’t together, you know. You have no right to be mad at me. And I don’t need your forgiveness.”
His disappointed look was like a knife to my chest. He needed my apology. Why couldn’t I just say the fucking words?
“I’m not mad at you because you owe me something, you fool. I’m mad at you because you didn’t even like him. I know you didn’t. You blew it all up for nothing. And you never even tried to explain what happened.”
He took a step closer to me. I lifted my hand in the air to stop him.
“Don’t do this,” I pleaded.
“Why? Everything is already fucked up anyway. Just tell me why you did it.”
I couldn’t. I was ashamed. Ashamed of what I did and why I did it. He was right. I never wanted Dylan. Never liked him like that. Lucas hated me for I what I did, but at least he didn’t know the reason. I couldn’t come clean. It was too much for me to bear. So I did what I always did. I lied.
“You’re wrong. I liked him then. And I like him now.”
Chapter Twelve
Clementine
Three weeks from my mother’s rehab program had passed, and we hadn’t spoken once. I felt great being away from her, and I could only imagine how happy she was, now that she didn’t have to deal with me.
I had one pressing issue. It was with Elizabeth, and it was related to my birthday.
She wanted to throw me a big party. I wanted to be left alone.
She wanted to bake me my favorite cake. I wanted to go out with Hannah and eat waffles, drowned in chocolate, like we did on both our birthdays ever since we were nine.
“But you’re turning eighteen, that’s huge,” Elizabeth protested after my tenth refusal. “You have to have a party.”
I rolled my eyes, which had become like a breathing to me these days. It was necessary for my existence. This place was like a never-ending shrink session. Elizabeth was always trying to make all of us talk about our freaking feelings. I needed something to unwind.
