My parents could barely look at me before I cut my wrist but after? In the hospital room, Mom had lost it. For the first time in, like forever, she had lost it.

She had stormed into the private room, Dad trailing behind her. Her sharp gaze shot from my face to my bandaged wrist.

Stricken panic had crossed her too perfect features, and I thought that finally, she was going to pull me into her arms and tell me that everything was going to be okay, that we’d get through this together.

That look of pain had given way to disappointment, to pity, and to anger.

“How dare you shame yourself and your family like this, Avery. What am I supposed to tell people when they find out about this?” Mom had said and her voice had shook as she struggled to keep quiet in the hospital room, but she lost control. The next words were shrieked. “After everything else, you go and do this? Haven’t you put us through enough? What is wrong with you, Avery? What is God’s name is wrong with you?”

The nurses had dragged Mom out of the room.

Strangely, what I remembered from that night had been that brief look of panic on her face and how I had mistakenly believed it had been there out of concern for me.

That stricken look had been on Cam’s face, and I wanted to be somebody else, because I knew that stricken look would eventually turn into something else, into disappointment, into pity, and into anger.

And I couldn’t bear to see that happen with Cam.

I would do anything to avoid that, even if it meant taking drastic steps. Somewhere between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, I’d made up my mind about the current state of my life.

This… this stuff with Cam had been doomed for failure from the beginning. Could a guy and a girl who were attracted to each other really be friends? I didn’t think so. Things would get too complicated. They’d either act on those feelings or stay away from each other. We had tried to act on those feelings for a hot second. We kissed a couple of times. That was all. And in reality, it wouldn’t have gone further.

I wasn’t sure that I could’ve gone further. Well, especially now I didn’t think so. Cam would eventually move on and I would have an absolutely obliterated heart. Not broken, but completely destroyed, because Cam… he was falling-in-love-with material. And I couldn’t let that happened.

Maybe you already had, whispered an evil, terrible, bitchy voice.