Page 81 of Do You Ship It

Is this what heartbreak feels like?

Except … I’m not sure that’s what it is.

I keep picturing his face and the tears in his eyes, the betrayal that cracked his voice, and it just feelslonely. And then I keep thinking about Max shielding me from the chill and saying, ‘Because – because –’ and feeling the ghost of his lips on mine.

Max hasn’t tried to reach out to me either. We never swapped numbers, but it’s not as if I’m hard to find on social media the way he is. He could DM me if he wanted to.

Which, clearly, he doesn’t.

His radio silence doesn’t hurt as much as Jake’s does, but it still stings. I can only assume that he’s keeping a distance from me for Jake’s sake, for their friendship. It’s harder for them to avoid each other when they have classes together and are on the same football team, I suppose, and I can’t really blame him. I’d do the same in his shoes, wouldn’t I?

It was just a kiss, though.Oneconversation andonekiss, and it doesn’t matter if it’s all I keep thinking about, because Jake and I have a foundation so much stronger than that. I keep scrolling back through Discord to prove that to myself, every time I’m tempted to reach out to Max on his latent Instagram account.

Icannotthrow it all away for a boy who barely even speaks to me.

I know Anissa talks to Jake; sometimes, I see messages from @runicrascal flash up on her phone screen when we’re hanging out in the art rooms atlunch. And, two weeks after the party, Jake uploads an Instagram photo of him and Anissa at the Argonauta concert, the one Max told me about that time he drove me home.

Max isn’t in the photo. He and Jake must not have patched things up too well, if Anissa’s taken his place.

I can’t bring myself to hold it against Anissa the way I did with Max. Max felt like an interloper; the fact Anissa and Jake even interacted at all is my doing. And she’s sonice, so warm, I don’t begrudge her the friendship – even if it does feel like it’s at the cost of my own.

My friendship with the other girls is on thin ice, too. Every message in the group chat feels stilted; I keep avoiding the morning Costa runs; and Daphne and I still aren’t talking.

Chloe corners me one day to ask, ‘What’s going on with you two? Did you have a fight?’

Daphne clearly hasn’t told them how awful I was to her, which makes no sense to me, so I settle for shrugging and saying, ‘Nothing. We’re fine.’ Which we both know is a blatant lie, but it’s the only way I can think to get out of it.

I’m the one in the wrong, though, so I do Daphne the favour of withdrawing from the group as much as I can, even if I have classes with Nikita and Evie I can’tavoid. In media lessons, Daphne has taken to sitting at an empty desk at the back of the room – as far away from me as she can get.

And if the girls notice I’m spending more time with Anissa instead of them, they don’t confront me about it. Nikita sees the Instagram photo from the Argonauta concert and asks if I want her tohex the man-stealing witch, but the laugh I give in response is high and false, and we don’t talk about it again.

I don’t talk about much of anything with them these days, actually.

In the end, I retreat into Discord. I have eighteen tabs open on my phone with different fanfictions I’m reading, and upload a couple more one-shots myself. Mostly they’re about Lady di Silver trying to muddle through conflicting attraction to the Moonwalker or her long-standing bond with Devon.

I, obviously, can’t relate at all.

I do venture to the dark side though, and read some of the Moonsilver ship fics that I find linked in Discord.

I start painting more, too, feeling consumed by the need to actually finish the pieces I’m working on. Dark, moody scenes of Lady di Silver and Devon standing on opposite sides of the horse they shared in seasonone, unable to look at each other. A busy ballroom in a more fuzzy style with too-bright colours where Lady di Silver twirls across the floor, caught between the Moonwalker and Devon. Lady di Silver’s abandoned vanity strewn with weapons and jewels in a place that never really felt like home anyway.

It’scathartic. So much so I’m almost annoyed at how well the fandom, the artwork, all of it, is helping my messy emotions feel a little less overwhelming. Even if I can’t make sense of them yet, it’s helpful to process it through this medium, to express it without having to make it so personal. I get a weird sense of satisfaction from the paint splotches staining my hands and fingernails, a sense of real triumph when I finish a piece. I finally see why those girls wrote that eight hundred thousand word OWAR fanfic; why Max devotes so much time to perfecting his Moonwalker cosplay. Art has always been a fun outlet, a distraction, butthisis …

It’s the equivalent of a kiss that makes you weak at the knees and too dizzy to think straight. It feels like finally being able tobreathe.

It’s so silly, because it’s obviously not going tofixanything.

But … it does make me feel a little less at sea.

I don’t watch much more of the show, insteadrewatching old episodes. The new content feels tainted and leaves me with an ashy taste in my mouth now that I can’t share it with Jake. I don’t want to annoy him, and he obviously isn’t interested in talking to me – even in Discord. Our chat’s been dead since we agreed to be friends.

Which is the greatest goddamn irony of all.

I’d give up The Plan and my crush and even –especially– that kiss, if it just meant I got my friends back.

That’s when I realize that I even miss Max. Putting the kiss aside, he was … I mean, he wastherefor me at the party, wasn’t he? And he drove me home that time. He put me on to the audiobooks, and Argonauta have become a firm fixture in my Spotify listens since he introduced me to them. And after our conversation through the bathroom door, I realize that I had misjudged him a lot, too.

I keep replaying what he said about being himself and not living his life for other people. His cosplay doesn’t seem so mortifyingly cringeworthy, in that light.

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