“Look, I just wanna have fun. I don’t want you to come because I don’t want you hovering over me all night,” she admitted. “You’d just be there, glaring at everyone and lecturing me about bacteria. Every time I drink something, you’ll ask if I got it from the bottle or if someone handed it to me. You’ll overanalyze every little thing, Blake. You’re going to make me feel like I’m being watched, like I’m not allowed to do anything without you second-guessing everything.”

I swallowed, trying to push the lump in my throat down. A rush of insecurities flooded my mind. I wanted to say something to make this better, but nothing felt right. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t want to lose her to the things I couldn’t control, but how could I explain that without sounding like I was suffocating her?

I couldn’t even look at her.

She wasn’t saying it, but I could hear it loud and clear: I was losing her. Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet, subtle way.

And that, more than anything, scared the hell out of me.

A cold silence settled between us.

The bustling mall around us suddenly felt distant, like I was hearing it from underwater. I tried to focus on something—anything—other than the way my chest ached. But all I could see was Beverly flipping through a rack of clothes like nothing had happened, like she wasn’t slowly slipping away from me.

“Okay, then.” I tried to keep the hurt from showing, to bury it under the armor of sarcasm. “Guess I’ll just read a book while you go have fun.”

Beverly frowned, her expression softening. “Blake…”

But I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want her to apologize.

I wanted her to want me there. To need me there.

But for the first time, I wondered if she needed me at all.

16

BEVERLY, 1998

16 years old

I was a liar. I didn’t want to admit it, not even to myself, but I’d lied to Blake. I didn’t care about “doing things on my own”. I wasn’t trying to “find myself”. I wasn’t proving anything.

Sure, everything I told him was technically true. He was overprotective. He had proved it at the piercing studio when he grilled the poor piercer like he was interrogating a criminal.

But that wasn’t the reason I didn’t want him here.

The real reason was that I knew exactly how the girls at school looked at him, how they all seemed to be secretly pining for him. They didn’t even try to hide it, their eyes practically undressing him. He had that face—like he could be some kind of model or movie star. And it made me feel... I don’t even know. Something between jealousy and insecurity.