He looks at me with gentle eyes. “Thank you for telling me. I mean that, but I—”

“Forget it, okay? Please?” My voice pinches higher and higher with every syllable, and I don’t know how much longer I can stand here.

This is so awful.

Then it gets worse.

Milo hugs me.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. His chin dips onto the top of my head, and we’re pressed so close that I’m sure he can feel the lump in my throat. “Come on, let’s grab another gelato. My treat.”

I don’t want a pity gelato, though. In fact, I’m feeling kind of nauseous, as if my body has been turned inside out, like my heart is on exhibit, beating and breaking apart.

“I better go,” I say.

“But . . .”

“I’ll see you later. Please don’t follow me.”

I get the hell out of there, dodging around the tourists until I finally find an exit. I manage to make it out the door before I crumple onto the stone staircase that leads down to the grassy lawn of the National Mall. People are walking their dogs and playing Frisbee, oblivious to me as I bury my face into my hands.

I sit like this for a long while, my arms hugging my knees to my chest. Milo doesn’t come looking for me, and I’m grateful for it. I don’t know how I’ll face him at school on Monday, and I’m seriously considering taking residence at the museum to avoid him. I’ll fit right in with Joseph Preston and his cats.

My phone pings. Is it Milo? I hate the burst of hope that rises inside me, that maybe he likes me after all, but it’s a text from Thea.

How’d it go? Did he say yes to spring fling?

I groan and write back: I took your advice. I seized the day.

Ahem?!

My feelings are too tender to spell out everything in detail, so I send her a single emoji—the broken heart.

She replies in three seconds flat. God, I’m sorry. Meet me on Constitution, and we’ll get milkshakes. By the way Milo is a bastard and I hate him forever.

Through my tears, I laugh, even though Milo isn’t a bastard. He’s smart and kind and cute and . . . he just doesn’t like me as more than a friend.

Miserably, I wonder if I’m more like Juliet Capulet than I’d realized, doomed to a life of Shakespearean tragedy, except that she had her Romeo’s love while Milo will never think of me that way. My heart hurts. Not metaphorically but physically. It literally aches with every beat.