“You’re different now,” she lamented. “And it’s all because of him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s true,” she said. “You never answer my calls. It takes you days to text me back. And last week we had a thing and you were just completely MIA.”

“What thing?”

“A Deadly Vipers thing,” she said.

I took a final drag of my cigarette before tossing it onto the concrete.

“Don’t lie, you were with Jack, weren’t you? I can’t believe you—”

“I wasn’t with Jack,” I said, annoyed. “I was stuck at home because my parents were tearing into each other again and I couldn’t get away.”

That stopped her. “Oh.”

“And for the record, I only met Jack because you ditched me, remember?”

“Is that what this is all about? You’re just mad about that?” she said, looking strangely relieved. “Oh my God. That really is it, isn’t it?”

“No—”

“You want me to fight for you, is that it? I can do that,” she said.

“That’s not it,” I said, growing agitated. “Stop. Just stop. It’s not a competition! I love both of you, okay?”

“You love him now?” she asked in shock. I was surprised too. I hadn’t known how I felt until that moment.

“I do.”

She scoffed.

I sighed. “You want it to be just the two of us forever.”

“And what is wrong with that?” she said. “Love makes you do crazy things. I don’t mean love like ours. I mean infatuation. What we have is true love, the way we feel about each other is real. The way I felt about Christian wasn’t. I was infatuated with him and it made me crazy. It’s the same with Jack. You’ll see. You’re just infatuated with him. One day you’ll do something in the name of love and you’ll regret it.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe the things she was saying. I wasn’t infatuated. I knew how I felt.

“What we have is real,” she repeated. “No one else has what we have. No one will ever love you like I do.”

“No one will ever love me like you? Are you kidding me?” Maybe I believed that too at one point. I thought Elise had swept into my life and saved me. I thought she was my one and only salvation. I thought we were each other’s salvation, but Elise wanted more. It was how I’d ended up meeting Jack in the first place. And now she was upset because I didn’t need her like I used to. “Do you even hear yourself?”

She looked like I’d punched her in the stomach.

“I want to go home,” I said, turning away from her. For a while there was just silence, the two of us sitting in the Pink Caddy in the middle of an empty gas station. Finally she started the car again and drove me home.

As we slowed to the front of my house, Elise grabbed my wrist and held on tight. “What, you’re just done with me?” she said.