I lost, and that’s that.

*  *  *

I don’t know what time it is that night when I’m woken by the knocking at the door.

I slip out of bed, disoriented, and I can feel a headache forming. I pull on a sweatshirt while the knocking continues.

“I’m coming. Hold on.”

I don’t even register that I should check the peephole to see who it is. There are a lot of people in this hotel who I’d rather never talk to ever again.

And one of them is on the other side of the door.

“Neil, I know that you’re in there. Your location on your phone is turned on.” Lindsay pounds on the door some more.

I open the door just as my next-door neighbor opens his.

“Young lady, will you please keep it down?” the older man fusses at her.

“Oh, stuff it, grandpa.” Lindsay strolls into the room, and I close the door behind her.

“No, please. Come on in.”

She’s still dressed in her rehearsal dinner dress, her hair a little looser around her shoulders, so it can’t be that late. Everything’s still a little fuzzy from the nap.

“What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your mother stormed back into the banquet hall in tears, and it took her friends half an hour to get her out of the bathroom because she was crying so hard, and you and Wyatt were faking this entire thing? Just so you could get back at Josh? And where did Wyatt go? I saw him leaving the hotel with all his things.”

“You saw Wyatt?”

“What’s really going on here, Neil?”

“It was an act. This was all an act. I dragged Wyatt into this scheme so that I could get Josh off my back, convince him that he should move on, forget about me.” I let the words spill out of me so quickly that I’m surprised that Lindsay can even understand me. “Then things got complicated. I asked him to leave.”

I hate to use the wrong pronoun for Wyatt, but I don’t want to out them, and little bells would go off in Josh’s head if he suddenly heard me using they/them.

Lindsay stares at me, her arms crossed as she leans against the counter in the kitchen.

“You fake dated your roommate.”

I nod.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I don’t answer her.

“Seriously, like … who thinks to do that?”

“I panicked.”

“You’re an idiot.”

That much I know is true.

“And your mom?”

“She found out too,” I tell her. “But then … I don’t know, things kind of snapped, and I told her off.”

“I was there for that part. It really messed her up, Neil.”

“You think I don’t know that? I just … I’d had enough.”