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Her eyes snap to mine. “I don’t hate you,” she says quietly. “But you made it pretty clear there’s absolutely no friendship left between us.”
My stomach twists. “How did I make that clear?”
“I’d say blocking a person is a pretty effective way to get that message across.”
My stomach drops. How does she know that? Has she tried reaching out? The pain in my gut is like the jab of a knife.
“What?”
She shrugs as if she couldn’t care less, but, based on the way her lips flatten, it’s a pretense. Even after all this time, I recognize that look.
“I found out when I…when I called you by accident,” she rushes out. “A couple of months after I moved to Boston. The call didn’t go through, so I figured I’d send you a quick message. But I couldn’t.”
Sweat breaks out on the back of my neck, and I fight a wince. “I didn’t… I just…”
“You did. And you deleted everything,” she adds. “Years of messages. Every stupid meme and gif. Every late-night rant, our voice memos. All of it was gone.” Her voice wavers, just barely. “You don’t erase memories like that unless you want to erase the person they’re attached to.”
My throat burns, but I swallow back the bile climbing up my esophagus. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“That’s convenient.” She nods. “Running away is always easier.”
“Oh,” I snort, “that’s rich coming from you.”
She bristles, her shoulders tensing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You ran away.” My voice cracks despite my efforts to hold it together. “You left without saying anything. You didn’t even—” I stop myself, jaw flexing. On an exhale, I say, “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
“It mattered enough for you to delete me.”
Silence stretches between us, weighing me down once again. I feel like my feet have sunk into the floor. The party is still raging on the other side of the door, but the sounds are muffled, a million miles away.
“I was angry, okay?” I force out. “You moved to Boston without saying goodbye. What was I supposed to think?”
“As if leaving home was so easy for me.”
“It was easy enough to say goodbye to Ash and Turner, but not to me.”
Her eyes get glassy, but she just straightens her spine. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” I step closer—close enough to hear her suck in a breath. “You think any of this was fair to me? To know my best friend had moved all the way across the country without saying a damn word?”
“What best friend?” The words are sharp, like pinpricks. “You stopped talking to me after the Harvest Ball.” She pokes me in the chest with her index finger. “You erased me from your life, Michael, long before I left.”
Rather than a pinprick, that accusation is like a dagger to the heart. I take a step closer, and she doesn’t move.
“Believe it or not,” I say softly, “deleting those messages didn’t make me forget a single thing.”
Her pupils dilate and her lips part. My focus falls to her mouth and gets stuck there. The air between us becomes thicker, the whole atmosphere charged.
“I thought we were almost becoming m—” She cuts herself off, shaking her head.
The words “almost becoming” lodge in my chest and refuse to leave. I inhale, her peach and vanilla scent sweet and familiar and heartbreaking. We’re so close, I can feel the heat radiating off her body. It’s hot enough to set me on fire.
Seven minutes is all I have with the only girl who’s ever made me feel anything real.
She swallows, the delicate column of her throat twitching. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” I ask hoarsely, my attention darting between her eyes and her lips.
