Page 67 of You Started It

“Do you need receipts?” I ask, bluffing, knowing any real proof I have has recently been deleted.

“He showed me the texts, Jamie. He was apologizing to you. Ben has a conscience and can admit when he’s wrong.”

A huff of air escapes me. “Can he?”

“And I have my own proof,” she says, her hands now resting on her hips. “About Axel.”

My jaw clenches. I put down the box and meet Olivia at the bottom of the stairs. “You have nothing. The only reason Axel sat next to you on the roller coaster was to get a rise out of Ben. Clearly it worked, since the two of you are still talking about it.”

“This isn’t about the roller coaster.” She pulls her phone out of her back pocket and types furiously before holding it up to my face. There on the screen is a message from Axel, dated a week after Wonderland. The message from him reads:Do you want to grab a coffee sometime?

Before I can read her responses to him, she pulls back her phone.

“Looks like you had a few things to say besides no.” I swallow, trying to steady my pulse and not show my hand.

“Yeah. I told him to leave me alone because I have a boyfriend. I thought you should see for yourself what Axel has been up to.”

My throat constricts. I can’t let Olivia best me, but I don’t have any smart retorts. Seeing Axel slide into Olivia’s DMs has completely thrown me. Sure, Axel texted Olivia before anything real was happening between us. In Axel’s mind, I had my heart set on getting back together with Ben. And I can’t exactly tell Olivia that. But also…why did he ask out Olivia? And flirt with her. What’s his endgame here? Am I just a consolation prize?

“Why don’t you focus on your relationship and I’ll focus on mine?” I finally say.

“Ben and I are just fine, thank you very much. This is me asking you, girl to girl, to stop with the fake drama and to leave us alone.”

I shake my head and begin walking up the stairs. “Actually,” I say, pausing and turning to face Olivia. I breathe in and out to slow my heart rate and turn the volume down on my emotions.Steady. Calm. Breathe.“Since you’re here, I’d love to hear your side of things. For the sake of closure.” I sit on a step and exhale again. “What happened with you and Ben this summer?”

Olivia sighs. “Oh my god, Jamie. Let it go.”

“Can’t you see it from my point of view? Ben tells me he wasn’t unfaithful. That things with you didn’t happen until after he broke up with me. But I don’t believe him. And maybe if you can validatehis story, then I can let go of these angry feelings I’ve been carrying around.” I didn’t mean to lay my cards on the line. To basically strip naked in front of the girl Ben left me for, but I’m getting tired of being lied to. And I just want to know the truth.

Her eyes dart to the doorway, like she wants to be anywhere in the world but here. “We started off as co-workers who became friends who became soulmates.” She takes a hesitant step closer, as my heart hammers in my throat. “I didn’t have an elaborate plan to ‘steal Ben.’ And that’s why I wanted to be honest with you about Axel. He’s sketch, Jamie. Watch yourself.”

I rise and dust off the back of my pants. “Ben isn’t perfect either, Olivia. Aren’t you upset that he hid the fact that I was tutoring him? And if he was so over things between us, then why did he feel it necessary to obnoxiously interrupt Axel and me when we were saying goodnight to one another? So, yeah, I think it’s safe to say as women we both need to watch ourselves.”

Olivia’s eyes meet with mine as a forced smile stretches tightly over her face. “I’ve got to go.”

I nod and watch her walk back into the salon, a burst of music entering the stairwell as she opens the door and fading quickly behind her once it closes.

I make the familiar trek up Ben’s driveway with a half-filled cardboard box in my arms. Luckily, Olivia’s baby-blue BMW is nowhere in sight. I can’t handle a face-to-face interaction with her twice in one day. Twice in a lifetime is more than enough.

This feels like a monumental step for me. Ending the Ben chapter so that I can move forward with Axel, officially. But standing here in front of his door—the door I used to open without knocking, the door I walked through many times before with Ben, thedoor where we had our first kiss—I second-guess this grown-up move and decide to just leave the box on his porch and run away, like the seventeen-year-old child I am.

I lower the box to the autumn-themed welcome mat and turn to leave after ringing the doorbell once. The windchime on his porch sounds and I stop to observe it. My mom and I bought it as a gift for the Camerons the first Christmas we spent together. Our first Christmas without Dad. Every time I hear the chimes ring, it takes me back to that Christmas Eve night when I stood out here with Ben, helping him hang it.

It had snowed that afternoon, leaving a fresh layer of powder over everything, creating the perfect setting for a homey Christmas celebration. Ben asked me to come out and help him find a spot for the windchime, but I knew it was just a ruse to get me alone. We’d been inseparable since we’d met in July of that year and had made things official at the winter formal the week before, but hadn’t yet sealed it with a kiss.

He was so shy back then. He hadn’t come into his own (still hasn’t, if you ask me). In a way, I liked it because he seemed to follow my lead. Amo Eli joked about how I had Ben wrapped around my finger, and he didn’t know where Ben’s personality ended and mine began. Maybe that was true in the early days, but things shifted the longer we were together.

And I guess it ended when he met Olivia and decided to blend with her personality instead of mine.

“Jamie?”

I freeze, clenching my jaw and taking in a deep breath before turning around. “Hi.”

“What’re you doing here?”

I nod to the box by Ben’s feet. “I dropped off a few of your things.”

His eyes travel down, and when he looks back up at me, a cloud of sadness surrounds him. The sad cloud is contagious and sends a pang of nostalgia through me.

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