“I thought…” My voice trails off. I am defenseless, but suddenly I’m desperate to make him understand. “Reading that letter was like emotional whiplash, okay? At first I was happy, so happy. Then I saw the date. It felt like the punch line in the prank of all pranks. Like everything between us was all a big scheme too and I fell for it. Ha, you thought you could fall for Reid Callahan? Well, joke’s on you! I’m sorry. I’m really not defending what I did. I know I can’t. Only how I felt. Because my feelings for you? They’re real. So real, Reid, and the idea that it all could have been a lie? That scared me.”

Reid blinks back tears, but when he speaks his voice is fire. “The only person who contrives elaborate schemes is you, Natalie! It’s always been you. Like with the clarinet. You made everything a competition. You ruined your friendship with Madeline. You quit.”

“Because it was never about the clarinet!” The words burst out of me, from a place they’ve been hidden too long. “Clarinet was the only way I could fit into my dad’s world. But then you came along with your perfect technique and passion and my dad chose you. Every. Single. Time.”

I’ve never heard silence echo like this.

Reid finally speaks. “Your issues with your dad are not my fault.”

And those words shatter me.

Because he’s not wrong.

My entire life, I’ve been mad at the wrong person.

Reid pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a step backward. “Whatever. I just… I cannot keep talking about you right now. I need to go and, like, figure out how I’m going to beg for my audition back.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I say, reaching for his hand, but he flinches away from it. From me.

“I’ll figure it out.”

Reid exits scene and it hits me that if anyone has ruined Melted, ruined us—it’s me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Reid doesn’t show up to rehearsal on Monday.

When he comes over for lessons, he enters and exits through the studio door. No burnt scrambled eggs before school, no chai waiting on the table, no bantering text messages—nothing. In school, we get through an entire chemistry lab with a Bunsen burner in silence.

Reid’s presence has been a constant in my life that I always wished would go away.

Well. He did.

Now I miss him.

And also. What are we going to do about Melted?