Might as well go ahead and get this over with. Wyatt can go back to sleeping on the couch; we can make it through the wedding tomorrow, fake an emergency, and they can spend the last days of spring break with their parents. And when we get back to school, it’ll be like this week never happened. They’ll hate me again, and I’ll let them, because that’s the natural order of these things.

We walk around the corner of the banquet hall, closer toward the elevators where no one seems to be. At least, if anyone does walk by, they don’t have to be in our business.

“Do you want to go up to the room?” Wyatt asks when things are a little quieter. I can already feel my heart slowing down a bit. Maybe it was just the dining hall. The heat of the lights, the constant talking.

“No, I can’t. I just … I needed some space.”

“Okay.” Wyatt puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Please stop touching me.”

They take their hand back. “I just thought …”

“I don’t need you to think right now, okay?”

Their brow furrows. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I just—I need some time. And you breathing down my neck isn’t helping me.” I cover my face with my hands and let out this low groan.

“Is something wrong?”

“What was your first clue?”

“Why are you acting like this? You were fine yesterday. What happened?”

“The kiss,” I blurt out, my mouth not moving quickly enough to stop the message from my brain. “And the sex, and everything, Wyatt. Everything happened.”

“I don’t … I don’t get it. Was it bad?”

No.

And that’s the problem.

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” they say. “If there’s something going on, I want to talk about it with you.”

I take my hand back. “Don’t you get it? I fucked up. I shouldn’t have brought you here. It was all a mistake.”

I can hear the elevator as it opens and closes, people riding to their floors, getting off in the lobby.

“It was a mistake to bring you here. It was a mistake to plan this entire act. What the fuck was I thinking? What does fake dating you earn me? Clearly Josh has already moved on; he doesn’t give a fuck that you’re here. What are we even doing?”

“Neil.”

“No, just, get away from me. Please?”

I try to steady my breathing, but my chest feels tight. It’s like the short period when I wore a binder, before I did the proper research, when I put myself in danger by binding too tightly for too long.

That constriction.

“I made a mistake,” I tell them. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into this.”

“What are you saying?” they ask me.