“Of course I get it!” Anam says, waving her hands. “But it doesn’t change the fact you’ve become so obsessed with California that you’ve left the rest of us in the dust. How is that fair, Apu? Do you not care about us anymore? Are we just stepping stools on your journey to success?”

My pulse is beating almost painfully in my neck. “If you really think that low of me, I have nothing to say to you.”

With shaking hands, I open the door to my room and close it on Anam, trying to forget the hurt written across her face.

My phone buzzes in my hand and I stare down at it. An Instagram post notification from uscadmission. I don’t even click into it, instead throwing my phone onto my bed.

I can’t think about what will happen if I don’t get into USC. I can’t be stuck here.

California is where my future is. It has to be.

45

I start to ignore Rosie. I don’t have any other choice. I think my heart would rip itself apart if I had to talk to her again, to have her look at me like I’m some kind of selfish monster.

Emmitt watches me throughout Italian and statistics, but he doesn’t say anything until we’re walking to film club together. “So how did it go between you and Rosie?”

I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, shrugging.

His eyes are too quick, too aware to not know what that means. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

I shake my head.

Emmitt sighs, running his hands through his hair. The roots are starting to grow out, hints of black bleeding through the blond.

I stare at him for a beat too long, tracing the lines of his face—the angle of his jaw, the line of his nose, the curve of his cheekbone. I like him. I really, really like him.

But I can’t do anything about it, at least not right now. And I’m still unsure where we stand—what if he doesn’t return my feelings, not to the same extent? What if this means more to me than it does to him?

There’s so much we have in common that sometimes I wonder if it’s not the same heart beating in our chests.