I clear my throat. “Hello?”

His voice is clear through the phone. “Hey, Amelia. Have you talked to Charlie since last night?”

Charlotte fake vomits at the use of his affectionate nickname for her, then shakes her head to tell me to say no.

“Um, not really?” I flinch since it came out like a question.

“Oh,” he sounds sad, empty almost. “How mad do you think she is?”

“I don’t need to talk to her to know that she’s pissed, Chase.”

Charlotte hums her approval.

“I know, I just—I don’t know. I was drinking and saw her with that guy and lost it. That should be me. Not Noah or Marcus or whatever guy doesn’t know her like I do. Me.”

Charlotte’s nostrils flare and her leg starts bouncing.

“You can’t make that decision for her, Chase.”

Charlotte writes something on a piece of paper.

“I wasn’t thinking. I want her to know I love her and I was trying to look out for her.”

She holds up the paper that she was writing on for me to see and shakes it to make her point. He called me a slut!!!

“You were trying to control her,” I tell him, then add, “and you called her a slut.”

Charlotte overexaggerates her nod to let me know she likes that I worked that in for her.

“Well, she was upstairs with a guy she just met . . .”

Charlotte and I are both wide eyed. Oh, I am so ready to fight.

“But,” he continues, “I know I had no right to say that, especially not with how I act. I realize it makes me a hypocrite, but man, did seeing that piss me off.”

Charlotte’s furiously scribbling on the paper and I read her main points as she writes.

“Marcus wasn’t random, he’s friends with Jake and she’s known him for years. And even if he wasn’t, that’s none of your business. Plus, whatever she did or didn’t do with him isn’t any of our business. And you’re right. You were literally with a girl you barely knew that same night and no one called you a slut.”

Charlotte all but throws the pen down. This would be so much easier if she would just talk to him instead of pretending I’m not with her right now.

“I know, I know. I just wish I could talk to her and tell her—”

“Hey, Char! Your brother let me in.” Annalisa’s voice is loud and crystal clear as she walks into the room. “What the hell happened with Chase last night?!”

“Gottagobye!” I yell into the phone in a single breath and end the call as quickly as possible.

Charlotte and I shoot Annalisa a pointed look and she pauses. “What?”

For some reason I feel like laughing. This is what normal teenage girls do, right? Worry about boy drama and help their friends through it? Out of all my problems—Luke, Andrew Kessler, my mom’s affair, Tony—this one’s the one that doesn’t even affect me directly, but it’s the one I’m most glad to help out with. If only mediating phone calls between fighting friends was my biggest problem. But then I stare at Annalisa, really stare at her, and it all comes back to me. She’s Tony’s daughter. She doesn’t look like him, does she?