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“What happened?”
“I’m not going to tell you. She’ll have to tell you herself when you apologize for freaking out at her about Adam.”
“She told you? And you’re on her side? Is shewithAdam?”
My best friend and my brother. Kellan has a point. It’s hypocritical of me to be okay with us but not okay with them.
But it’s not the same thing, not even in the slightest.
“Again, it’s her choice to tell you what happened,” Dylan says, though his words aren’t harsh. I shouldn’t have expected Dylan to tell me anything; he’s loyal to a fault. “But what’s going on with you?”
I want to talk about what happened with Lori, but that’s best left for when I see her. Talking to Dylan about Lori won’t help, so instead, without looking at him, I whisper, “Kellan broke up with me.”
He’s so silent for a moment I think he didn’t hear me, but then he shifts, and I feel the full force of his gaze on me.
“He broke up with you?”
I nod, still refusing to look at him in case my eyes water.
“But I thought you weren’t together?” he says slowly, like he doesn’t want to offend me even though he’s stating the truth.
“We weren’t . . . but we were? It was so complicated, but whatever was between us is officially over.”
Dylan sits up and swings his legs over the side of the lounge chair to face me. “And how does that make you feel?”
“You sound like a shrink.”
He says nothing, just waits patiently for me to answer.
I sigh. “Like my heart’s breaking in two. I . . .” The words dry up in my mouth. I don’t want to tell Dylan I love Kellan before I tell Kellan, especially not now that I’ll never get the chance to. “I didn’t want it to end like this. I wanted to be with him.”
Now that the threat of crying has passed, I sit up to face Dylan, our knees almost bumping.
“You guys seemed all right at the party,” Dylan says. “What happened?”
It all spun out of control so quickly. “Lori and Adam were kissing, then I told Lori she shouldn’t be with Adam, then Kellan told me I’m a hypocrite and that I only think of myself and that I’m hiding him, and he doesn’t want to be with me.” The last part pours out of me in one breath.
Dylan blinks at me, processing, and I tell him what happened between me and Kellan last night in more detail. When I’m done, I wait for Dylan to deny it, to say I’m none of the things Kellan said. But the longer we sit in silence now that I’ve replayed the situation, the more Kellan’s words sink in. Lori said the same thing. So did Adam.
“I . . . Iama hypocrite. I do only think about myself.”
Dylan raises his hands, palms toward me. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one who said it.”
“But you’re thinking it, right?”
Dylan scrubs the back of his neck, stalling for time, before dropping his hand and saying, “Youarea bit self-absorbed, Faye.
You zero in on what you want and you’re on a single-minded mission until you attain it. Normally it’s not a bad thing to set goals and do whatever it takes to achieve them, but sometimes you forget about those around you while your eyes are on the prize.”
Is that what happens? I’m so obsessed with my target that I neglect my friends? “I don’t mean for that to happen.”
“I know,” Dylan says. “And Lori and Kellan know that too.
But after a certain point, enough is enough. Kellan’s been letting you do it your way, but he’s right when he said you can’t tell Lori who to be with, especially since you’re in the same situation with Kellan.”
“I don’t even think it was really about Lori and Adam. I think it was my own issues with Adam I was deflecting onto Lori.”
Now that I’ve said the words out loud, I can see the truth with absolute clarity. If Adam and Lori get together, it’s like Adam chose her over me. Not that I want to be with Adam like that—barf—but he hates spending any time at all in my presence. What does Lori have that makes her worthy enough to hang out with Adam that I don’t have? She’s awesome and my best friend and everyone loves her and always chooses her, but Adam ismybrother. I’m used to people falling over themselves to get to Lori, but not Adam—never Adam. If he hates me, shouldn’t he hate my best friend too? Is something inherently wrong with me? Or another thought that’s even worse than that, could Adam steal Lori and make her hate me too?
