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The bathroom door inched open, followed by a face and a soft voice. “Are you okay?”
Madison poked her head between the bathroom door and found me in front of the sink, dabbing hopelessly at my soaked white shorts with a paper towel. With the blotchy stain, it looked like I peed cola.
I turned away from her, but despite shielding my puffy eyes, there was no disguising my voice. “Y-Yeah.”
“Are you crying?” I heard the door snap shut. “Maisie, it’s no big deal.”
“Why are you here?” I demanded, dabbing my jeans furiously. “I don’t need you to check on me.”
Madison’s bowling shoes clicked against the sticky linoleum floor as she came closer. “I’ve never seen you cry, you know. Not even when you broke your arm in the fifth grade. And you’re crying over your shorts?”
The callback to our friendship burned like a knife sliding between two ribs, a stinging pressure that left me breathless.
“Of course you wouldn’t understand it,” I bit out. “You don’t know what it’s like to be humiliated.”
“Oh, I don’t?” She propped her hands on her hips. “Sorry, Maisie, but you don’t have the market cornered on humiliation.”
“Andyouhave no right to tell me whether or not something’s embarrassing,” I said, and finally glared at her when I said it. Her brows were drawn together like how she used to do when trying to mask her feelings. “If it were just my friends, it’d be one thing, but it’s the fact that it’s you and Jade and freaking even Connor out there that makes it worse. And you know it.”
Madison’s shoulders squared. “Who cares what they think?”
“Hypocrite.”
The livid line between her blonde brows cleared as shock stole her expression. “Excuse me?”
“Youcare what they think. You always have. Don’t be hypocritical and pretend that isn’t the case.” I gave up on the fruitless attempt of drying my pants and lowered the paper towel, staring my ex-best friend in the eye. “You voted me as Most Likely to Marry A Math Book, didn’t you?”
I watched her expression transform from insulted shock to something more impassive. “Nobody knows who picks the names. It definitely isn’t me.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Now her defensiveness came in full-force. “Come on, Maisie. It’s not exactly a secret that you like math. You were on the mathletes team for the past two years. You’re always doing extra credit for Mrs. Diego.Andyou tutor. Whoever picked the labels had to have known that about you, which narrows it down to practically the whole school.”
“You were voted Most Likely to Peak In High School, right?” I swallowed hard. “I guess they knew what they were talking about, too.”
Her eyes flashed once, and this time, she didn’t try to disguise the hurt. It tightened the corners of her mouth. My stomach twisted, but there was no taking the words back. Both of our labels suited us, and we knew it.
Madison didn’t spare me another glance before she turned on her heel and stomped over to the bathroom door. As soon as she hauled it open, though, she revealed a figure on the other side, their fist lifted as if they’d been ready to knock.
Connor might as well not have been there as she brushed past him, and in the split second before the door began falling shut, I met his hazel stare.
He slapped his palm against the metal door, halting its movement. “Hey, uh, I found these in my backseat if you need something to change into,” Connor said, voice stiff with discomfort as he offered a dark bundle over the bathroom threshold. “They’re clean, I promise.”
I stared at the fabric in his grip with a new feeling stirring, something suffocating. Not angry, not happy, not sad. Just…complicated, like a piece of string twisted into a knot. I held the wadded-up paper towels in front of me, trying in vain to hide the cola stain. “What is it?”
“A pair of sweatpants. For you to change into.”
“Your friends are going to wonder why you’re being so nice to me,” I snapped, residual fire lingering in my veins. Madison walking out of the bathroom didn’t cool it, exactly like wiping away my tears didn’t erase all evidence of me crying. “I’d hate for you to risk yourdiscretionover a pair of sweatpants.”
Connor regarded the gray pants in his grip, as if thinking the same thing. In the end, he reached out and set them on the edge of the sink closest to him. “Put them on or don’t,” he said. “Up to you.”
And then he let the door fall shut between us.
I turned back to the mirror across from me, swallowing hard against the lump in my throat.
Madison was right—crying over pop spilling on me was ridiculous, but it wasn’tjustthe pop. It was Alex jerking away from my touch. It was the fact that I had witnesses. Not even just Top Tier, but everyone else at the bowling alley. Everyone’s eyes had been on me, some laughing, some pitying.
Ugh.
