“Can I help? Ice, or…?”

“No.” Something about the tone of his voice told me to leave the subject alone.

“Brougham?”

“Mmm?”

“Can we please be friends again?”

Now he opened his eyes, though he didn’t lift his head. “We never stopped.”

I gave a dry laugh.

“Okay, fair,” he said. “You’re right. We stuffed up there, and it’s been weird. I’d really like to be friends.”

Thank god. Thank god I had Brougham. Knowing that I hadn’t destroyed our friendship beyond repair didn’t fix everything, but it did make me feel like I had something to hold on to, where before I’d been treading water. “Cool.”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Oh, you know. Been better, but at least I’m not throwing up in my underwear in my teacher’s bathroom.”

I got a small smile out of him at that one. “I’m sorry about the locker.”

“Well, so am I. But maybe my mom was right. Maybe some of my advice was good, but I probably got it wrong all the time. I’m lucky I didn’t really screw anything up.”

I thought about what Brougham said about me not having enough information from one letter. I thought about my impression of Brougham at the beginning versus now. How my perception of him, and his issues, had changed. My success rate had always been such a source of pride for me. But how could I have been at such a high percentage? Really?

“You probably did get it wrong sometimes,” Brougham said, his voice weak from straining. “But that was never the point.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean maybe some people genuinely needed advice. But I’d bet you anything a good chunk of those letters were just people who wanted someone to listen to them without judging them, or to give them validation. It’s really powerful to have a safe place to just … let everything out.”

“Are you saying all I was good for was listening?” I asked, straightening where I sat.

“No. I’m saying you’re a genius who gave awesome advice a lot of the time, but the pressure you put on yourself to get everything perfectly right isn’t necessary.”

Huh.

There was something special about being seen the way that Brougham seemed to see me. Maybe Ainsley understood me in a similar way, but that was different, because she was my sister. This was someone who was a total stranger to me only months ago, sizing me up and listening to what I said—and listening harder still to what I didn’t say—and somehow correctly piecing it all together to understand me. And maybe he could do that because in some ways, we mirrored each other. We shared cracks in complementary places.