“Nope.” I slammed the locker in his face and brushed past him, my shoulder colliding with his as I stomped my way down the hall and toward the parking lot. I wished I wasn’t wearing my old jeans with the faded knees. I wished that I hadn’t gotten salad dressing on my Evil Dead T-shirt at lunch. I wished I’d brushed my hair or done anything with it beyond putting it up in a clip on my head. But that wasn’t my reality. “Fake it till you make it” was in full effect. I might have felt like two pounds of garbage in a one-pound bag seeing him, smelling him, touching him, but I wasn’t letting him know that.

He fell into step beside me.

“Are you okay, Sara? For real. I’m worried about you,” he said.

“Don’t be,” I immediately snapped, though inwardly I was screaming. What had he heard? Who’d he heard it from? Was everyone talking about me? Maybe I wasn’t ready for this liberated sexual-being thing after all. I was only seventeen...

“That guy. Like, you don’t just go off with dudes. He didn’t do anything to you, did he? Like, nothing in your drink or—”

“I said I didn’t have a minute,” I interrupted him. “My business stopped being your business when you boned Samantha, remember?”

I thought that was the end of it because he stopped mid-hall, brow furrowed, his hands slipping into his pockets. I was almost free, my hand was on the door handle, when he said, “I get it. I screwed up and ruined a great thing. That doesn’t mean I stopped loving you, you know. If you went off with Rando Dude because you wanted a hookup, fine, but that’s not the Sara I know.”

I stopped in my tracks to eye him over my shoulder. He looked so earnest, like he’d just poured his heart out on the floor. His shoulders were tight, his lips tilted down into a frown. It’s how he’d looked on all the sobby Snapchats, too, and for a fleeting second, I wavered. I remembered what it was like to love this guy, to be with him, to smile with him, to feel him stroking my hair after a bad day. I remembered why we were good together.

Then I remembered Samantha’s thong-in-crack on his phone.

I am so, so glad to be getting away from this. From him.

Bring it on, Stonington.

“I said it’s none of your business,” I hissed, and before he could do anything else to hurt me, I ran to the Subaru. Bonus, I didn’t cry till I left the parking lot.

I did cry all the way to Devi’s house, having to pull over twice to blow my nose and wipe my eyes.

Screw you, Aaron.

Screw you and your girlfriend, too.