“I’m not.”
She scoffs. “All you’ve ever done is lie to me! You say you like me, but you won’t acknowledge me at school. You watch anime, but you would die before you’d admit it to your little football team. You say you protect us by being popular, but you throw your
best friend
under the bus! You’re a big, fat liar!”
“Wait…” This is so not about Garret. He was just the final straw. “Are you saying you’re mad at me because…I’m popular?”
“No, you idiot.” She puts her hands on her hips. “You’re a freaking hypocrite. You say you don’t care about all that crap, but you do. Be popular if you want, but don’t pretend you care about us ‘little people.’ It’s all about your image. Who cares what your family and real friends think as long as everyone else thinks you’re cool?”
I take a deep breath, trying to keep my anger in check. “Izzy, you know I’m not like that. Yeah, I have two sets of friends, but I do everything I can to keep both sets happy. It’s not my fault you guys decided to turn against me!”
She raises an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah! You chose to believe a virtual stranger over me. That hurts. What do you really know about Keira, huh? You’ve lived your whole life with me and grown up with Garret. You should know I wouldn’t lie about something like that. I would never hurt him or you on purpose.”
She shakes her head. “So you’re saying you had absolutely no interest in Keira at any time since she moved here? Because it seemed like you did. You knew Garret liked her, didn’t you?”
My words catch as the guilt hits. “Just because I thought she was pretty doesn’t mean I’d do anything about it. Garret got with her, and the second I knew that I shut everything off. I have absolutely zero interest in her now. I…”
I can’t tell her how much I care about Daphne, not yet. This is bad enough.
She softens for just a second, almost as if she believes me. Not that she’d admit it. “That doesn’t excuse what you did to him at the championship.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t do anything to him! All I did was tell him the truth!”
“You don’t even see it!” She stamps her foot. “You
abandoned
him, Russell. Do you know what happened after he dropped that ball? Did you see how it tore him apart? Were you there to tell him it was okay, that he did his best?”
“I was there! I tried to talk to him after, and he shoved me away!”
That stops her cold—obviously Garret didn’t mention that—but she shakes it off. “Well, you didn’t try hard enough. Instead, you decided to go get so drunk Daphne had to practically drag you to your room. You showed the whole team they were allowed to disown Garret for his mistake. You banished him just because he wouldn’t listen to you about Keira. What kind of friend does that?”
I ball my fists. Maybe I did do that, but I didn’t mean to. Going with Dallas seemed like the best option at the time. “You know, you don’t have any right to lecture me about friendship.”
She gives me that girl look, the one that makes you want to protect your goods just in case. “Excuse me?”
“You’re a tyrant, not a friend. I might be traditionally popular, but I don’t take advantage of it. Then there’s you, who’s fully aware that your group revolves around you, and you
like
using that power to get what you want from them.”
Her eyes burn into mine. “That’s not true!”
“It is! If your friends don’t act exactly how you think they should, you cut them off. You accused Trent of being a
stalker
just because he liked you. Even if you didn’t like him back, he’s a decent guy and he didn’t deserve that. Then you banish me because I have more than five friends to hang out with, and some of them happen to be jocks. Collin is more your manservant than a boyfriend, and Daphne…how could you threaten your best friend just because she likes me?”
Her bright blue eyes go wide. “How do you know that?”
“She told me!” I run my hand through my hair. This is the part of the conversation I’m most afraid of. “I finally tell her how I feel, and she says she can’t be with me because
you
forbid her. What the hell, Izzy? You’re making your best friend miserable just to get back at me! Yeah, I made mistakes with Garret, but
you’re
the sucky friend here. You don’t own her! She’s so afraid you’ll abandon her that she does everything you say, whether she wants to or not.”
“You don’t deserve her!” she says way too loudly for this late.
Hearing Izzy say that deflates whatever fight I have left. It’s the truest statement of the night. I just want to leave. “She
is
way too good for me. You think I don’t know that?”
She glares at me, but I forge on.
I rub my neck and sigh. “I’m just saying it shouldn’t be up to you to decide. If Daphne wants to be with me or do something you don’t like, she should be able to without getting cut off like everyone else you don’t approve of. You shouldn’t take her for granted or punish her. You’re treating her like a pawn, not a friend.”
“Stop acting like you know her better than I do.” Izzy grabs the nearest book and chucks it at me. “She was my friend first!”
I dodge the book, but another gets me on the leg.
“You can’t take her away!”
She chucks another one and I catch it. “It’s all or nothing with you, isn’t it? Why can’t she be with me and still be your friend?”
“Because you’ll ruin everything.” She sits on her bed, spent. “You’ll hurt her. That’s what you do to anyone who makes the mistake of caring about you. Then I’ll lose her, too.”
I suck in a breath like she hit me right in the gut. “I’d never hurt her.”
She scoffs. “Lies.”
So this is what my sister thinks of me. All this time I thought we were close, but I guess not. “You suck at sharing.”
“I hate you.” She says it softly, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
I can’t speak for a second. My heart aches like she stole a piece of it. No matter how weird and hypocritical and stubborn she is, I don’t hate her. I could never hate her. “Well, I can’t say that to you. You’re my sister, and I still care about you whether you hate me or not.”
She flops onto her bed, hiding her face. “Get out.”
I stand there for a second before I leave, wondering whether I won or not. Or does Izzy think she won? Maybe, in the end, neither of us did.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Every time I see Daphne, Izzy’s words come back.
You don’t deserve her.
She doesn’t even know the worst parts of what happened and she can see how lacking I am. Daphne probably can, too, so I don’t get why she wants to be with me. She wouldn’t if she knew about Keira. Even what happened with Mercedes would hurt her. Izzy was right. There’s so much about me that could hurt Daphne, and that’s the one thing I never want to do.
The problem is I don’t think I can let her go. Not now. Some days it feels like she’s the only thing holding me up. Maybe I’m being selfish, keeping her when she could find someone better.
“Russ!” Trent yells.
I look up from the stack of buns I’ve buttered. There’s more than enough for the rest of the day, and yet I hardly remember working. “Yeah?”
“The door?”
“Oh.” Ripping off my plastic gloves, I head for the back.
When I open the door, Daphne tackles me. “Look what I got!”
She holds out a black belt, and I take it from her. “Wow, you did it.”
“I know! It was crazy scary. I so wanted you there because it would have made me relax. I almost messed up my last kata.” She pulls me into the break room and we sit. “Now I can work on my
dan
levels, but—”
She doesn’t finish, so I say, “What?”
“Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I look at her belt, still in my hands. Then I put it on the table and push it toward her. “I just wish I could have been there.”
“Russ…” She puts her hand over mine.
I force down the lump in my throat. “I hope everyone else came to support you.”
“They did. My parents and everyone…” She sighs. “I actually can’t stay long because they’re having a party.”
I put my head on the table. This sucks. A few minutes two days a week isn’t enough. “I’m so tired of hearing about what you’ve done. I want to
be
there with you.”
Her chair squeaks on the linoleum and then her hand rubs my back in slow circles. “What aren’t you telling me? It isn’t like you to mope, and you’ve been pretty mopey since you talked to Izzy.”
I lean back in my chair, studying her beautiful, dark eyes. She looks so concerned for me, and I don’t understand why. If I’m as horrible as Izzy thinks—and at least some of what she said was true—how could Daphne feel so differently? “Why do you like me?”
She flinches. “What?”
“You deserve so much better than me.”
“How could you say that?” Her concern turns into understanding. “Oh, Izzy said that, didn’t she? And you believe her?”
“Well, she’s right. I’m a screw-up, I’m not very smart, and I have no idea what I want to do with my life. There are so many stupid things I’ve done that I’ve lost track. I can’t even support you like you deserve. All I can do is feed you a burger and talk for a few minutes in a tiny break room.”
She laughs. “Are you kidding?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding? You’re smart and focused and gorgeous. I don’t belong with someone like you.” I look up at the ceiling, Izzy’s angry face flashing in my mind. I hate that she got to me. Our fight replays over and over in my head. My sister knows me, every good and bad thing, and she hates me. How can I be a good person?
“Hey, now.” Daphne puts her hands on my face and forces me to look at her. “You need to stop thinking like that. I don’t see it that way at all.”
“But you might at some point. Like when you’re at Harvard and I’m still working in a bacon-flavored kitchen.”
She gives me a flat look. “First of all, I am
not
going to Harvard. Even if I could get in, can you honestly see me at Harvard?”
“No,” I admit.
“Good, because I have no plans of dying a slow, preppy death. And second, you know my dad is a biker, right? He’s the kind of guy people look at and automatically think is a dumb ox. But his favorite thing to read is the
Wall Street Journal
, and guess what he listens to on all his rides?”
“What?”
“Audio books. He loves listening to books, and he literally goes through hundreds a year. Mom yells at him for spending so much money on them. He could teach the classics better than any teacher at our school.”
I smile at the image of her dad listening to
Moby Dick
while driving across the country in his leather jacket. “That’s pretty funny.”
“I know, and he never finished high school, never went to college, and never got a ‘real’ job. He started working in a bike shop at seventeen, and he got so good at it he started his own. Anyone who knows bikes around here knows my dad. He’s passionate about his work, and it shows in everything he does.”
I nod. “Why are you telling me this?”
She rolls her eyes. “Have you forgotten that my mom’s a lawyer? Talk about a strange match, but they love each other. She doesn’t give a crap about his rough past. How could you think I’d judge you like that?”
The words won’t come, so I just put my forehead to hers and hope she gets how much this means to me.
She combs one hand through my hair and smiles. “Russ, you’re incredible. I’ve always thought so. Everyone makes mistakes. I’ve made plenty. But it’s not about the mistakes you make; it’s how you act after you make them. You care about people. You try to fix things. You are passionate about the things you like, even if you’re afraid to show it. A guy like you could be such a jerk, but you aren’t.”
“You’re the amazing one, for seeing me through everything,” I say.
She climbs into my lap and rests her head on my shoulder. “It’s not hard. I know you don’t think so, but you are talented. You’re good at sports. You’re an amazing cook. And most of all, you’re a really good friend.”
Her last words sting. “I’m not a good friend.”
“You are! You always have been. It’s part of who you are.”
Except for that one time I wasn’t. That one time I got so jealous of my best friend that I ruined everything. If she knew about that, she wouldn’t have said any of what she just did. “But—”
Daphne puts her finger to my mouth. “Shut up, okay?”
She kisses me. For a second I can’t believe she did it. I figured she’d want to take the physical thing slow because I’m her first boyfriend. Then I realize she’s technically my first girlfriend. Huh. Her arms wrap around my neck, and then her mouth meets mine again.
This is definitely her first kiss, but for some reason it’s better than any kiss I’ve ever had. It’s not just physical; it’s more. It fills me up in every way, makes me feel like I could explode with happiness. I never want to let go of her—she is not a girl you let go.
“I need to get going,” she says after a while.
“Don’t.” I kiss her forehead, her cheek, her neck.
“Russ! Stop tempting me to stay.” She giggles. “Christmas break starts soon, so we’ll have
plenty
of time when I get away next.”
She tries to get up, but I hold her tight, put my face to her neck and breathe her in. “No. Not enough.”
“Being this late will be hard enough to explain.” She kisses me and then smiles. “But we’re doing that again.”
“Fine by me.” I smile for her, though it kills me to watch her leave yet again.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Dad and I stand in the kitchen, picking at Christmas dinner leftovers while we wash dishes. As usual, James Taylor’s Christmas album plays in the background, but it can’t quite drown out the sound of anime night. Yes, it’s a major holiday, but anime night stops for nothing. After all the festivities, Izzy still manages to gather as many people as possible. Garret’s not here—he’s spent every Christmas break I can remember at his grandma’s in Minnesota—but Daphne is. We’re in the same house, yet in different rooms. I want to go in there and put my arms around her and ask her how her family party went. But Izzy would freak out, and I’d rather not get the parents involved in our drama. So far they haven’t noticed how little we talk lately.