“So I’m not allowed to have a say in this?” She folds her arms over her chest. “You and Miguel both suddenly decide you wanna come out and I have to be on board and out myself, too?”

“No, Amber, you don’t,” I say on a sigh, and I’m not sure if I’m imagining it, but it looks like she might be flinching when I use her actual name. “You just have to be honest with the people you’re supposed to care about and not play us against each other because you’re too chickenshit to deal with the fact that you’re surrounded by assholes.”

She sucks in a sharp breath, like nobody’s ever talked to her like that before, and maybe they haven’t. Maybe she’s long overdue for a reality check that she can’t play the entire fucking world like puppets on strings. “Anyway,” I add before she can get a word in, if she’d even dare to open her mouth again with Cara in a fifty-foot radius, “looks like you got what you wanted after all—nobody left to care about but you.”

My parting shot doesn’t feel as good as I want it to, because I’m in the same boat. But it’s been a while since I’ve gotten to feel a shred of dignity in this town, and I’ll take it.

When my doorbell rings that night, I’m sure it’s Cheer Girl, come to apologize or at least talk shit out, but instead I get my second Miguel Santiago interaction of the day. “Something else you forgot to crush me with earlier?” I ask as I let him inside, watching him take in the small living space, the pull-out couch with my stuff piled next to it. Other than Amber, he’s the only person who’s been to my place in Atherton, and I wish I’d at least cleaned up a little or whatever.

But he doesn’t make any jokes about it being smaller than the locker room (which it is) or anything like that. There’s no smile on his face at all. Which makes me think he had his own confrontation with Cheer Girl, until he says, “I didn’t know about it when we talked earlier. Which is why I’m here now.”

My brain is still so squarely in Amberland that I’m caught completely off guard when it turns out she has nothing to do with why he’s there. “The guys are gonna throw the game. Word spread around that Terry Lawrence is finally coming to a homecoming game, specifically to see you, and the guys are pissed. I’m sorry. I know this was important to you.”