Page 70 of Only Mostly Devastated

“Texting me, and calling me, and asking me to hang out. You need to get a hobby or something.”

Underneath Lara’s defiant nonchalance, there was a hint of confusion. “I don’t know what you—”

“There is nothing going on between us,”Renee said, far more loudly than she needed to. She glanced behind her, and I looked back to see her boyfriend watching from a few tables over. All at once, it made sense. This was a show, put on for his benefit. “How much clearer can I make myself?”

Lara’s mouth dropped open, and I wondered if Renee had made even the slightest attempt to be clear about that before this moment. “Wait, so are you saying youdon’twanna get married?” Lara asked, sarcasm mode officially activated. “This is so out of nowhere.”

“I’msorry, Lara, but I’mstraight, okay? I don’t think of you like that. At all. You’ve got the wrong idea.”

Renee was practically shouting now. The buzz from the tables around us had died down, and a few students had looked back to more effectively eavesdrop on the argument. If “argument” was really the right word for this situation—in fairness, Lara seemed to almost be goading Renee more than fighting back.

“Well, clearly,” Lara said. “I guesssomethingmust have confused me there. Can you think what? It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I just can’t—”

“You need tostop it!” Renee yelled.

“No,youneed to stop it,” I said quietly. The thing is, though, I didn’t mean to say it. It was out of my mouth as quickly as I thought it. I froze as Renee turned around to face me, her face red and furious. This was not good. I was not a confrontation kind of person. More of an “eating popcorn in the very back row, out of the firing line” kinda guy.

As she opened her mouth, though, Niamh jumped in. “Renee, if you want to talk to Lara, fine, but screaming at her in public isnota good look.”

“Yeah, so you might wanna get the hell away from our table before the rest of us scream back at you,” Juliette added, her face still blotchy and red, but her voice steady. “And trust me, we can scream louder.”

Renee looked between us and scrunched up her mouth. She seemed to be weighing the pros and cons. Juliette raised an eyebrow at her and she scowled, before turning back to Lara.“Stop texting me,”she said in a low voice.

“You got it, sweetie,” Lara said, turning back to her lasagna like the conversation was a little too boring to hold her attention.

Even when Renee disappeared, Lara did an impressive job of holding her composure, despite the obvious whispering and looks from the tables surrounding us. Even the basketball guys were looking over, and they were practically on the other side of the cafeteria. Matt was staring right at Lara, like he was trying to catch her eye. He looked concerned.

“Sooo…” Juliette said.

Lara rolled her eyes and thrust her phone at Juliette. “There. You tell me if what I said warranted that.”

Juliette and Niamh tipped their heads together to look at the screen. I didn’t bother joining them. I just looked at Lara and waited.

“That was basically gaslighting,” Lara said.

“What’s that?”

“When someone tries to twist what really happened to make you think you’re losing it.” She shoved lasagna into her mouth. “Trying to make me look obsessed with her like she wasn’tactivelyleading me on that whole time.”

Juliette and Niamh reemerged. “She was flirting with you,” Niamh confirmed.

“All the way up until the part when you got annoyed that she’s flirting with you while dating a guy she haszerointentions of breaking up with,” Juliette said, a little more loudly than she needed to. Probably so the nearby tables would overhear Lara’s side of the story, I guessed.

But Lara shook her head. “Don’t. I don’t need anyone else to know what happened. I could care less what they think.”

Couldn’t care less,I corrected internally. But I kept it to myself. Now didn’t seem like the time.

“But still,” Juliette pressed. “That was completely out of line. I have half a mind to go over there and read this thread out to her whole table.”

Lara shrugged. “It’s fine. Really. I guess I just thought it might mean something to her,” she finished, the same way someone might say, “I guess I thought it was going to rain today.”

Yeah.

I knew how that felt.

19

Lara sat on the brick wall bordering the school’s entrance with a straight back, her heeled boots crossed at the ankles, and her sky-blue dress spread out beneath the iced coffee she clutched in her lap. Juliette, Niamh, and I stood, drinking our own coffees, flanking her. Today, she was a queen, and we were her guards. We stood together, always. We had the necklaces to prove it.

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