I don’t even mention the fact that it was shitty for him to try to guilt me in the first place. I think this is more than shitty enough to make my point very clear.

“They’re not fine,” he says, but he’s deflating pretty fast, like he realizes he’s already lost the battle. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t want to lose you.”

“No, not okay,” I say. “And guess what, you just lost me because I’m not dating a goddamn liar.”

Drew shakes his head. “Oh yeah? And what about the Diary?”

My blood runs cold.

His eyes are narrowed as he says, “You need me, don’t you? To keep it afloat? What are you going to do if you break up with me?”

“How dare you!” I shout. “You’re seriously going to stand here and try to use the Diary against me? Seriously? I trusted you with that!”

Drew rolls his eyes. “Sounds like you trusted a lot of people with that!” he shouts back. “And I can’t believe I had to take a back seat in my own relationship to some bullshit blog.”

A voice in the back of my head says I need to listen to him, for the Diary.

But who am I kidding? The Diary’s dead. Half the world thinks it’s a plagiarized mess, and the other half doesn’t care either way because in all my attempts to “save” the Diary, I’ve strangled it until it’s just a ghost of what it was supposed to be. It’s not a trans haven anymore. It’s just a lie putting my shitty relationship on display to convince myself that I’m happy when I’ve never been more miserable.

There’s probably no way left to save the Diary, but even if there is, it doesn’t involve Drew. Hell, involving Drew was probably the biggest mistake I ever made.

“You offered to help. You don’t get to twist this around and make it about you.”

And Drew just crosses his arms, his brows pulled together. “Right, because it’s about you. Just like everything else. You can be mad at me for lying, Noah, but the only reason I did it was because you cared more about the Diary than you cared about me. That’s why our relationship dissolved.”

“You don’t get to lay out the buts,” I say between ground teeth, which was not my best choice of words, but I’m too angry to care. “I suggest you get back in that house before I file a restraining order.”