Page 38 of Perfect on Paper

“… Yeah,” I said, but I hesitated a fraction of a second too long.

His shoulders dropped. “You think it’s a bad sign, hey?”

“Well… you’re right, it is totally fair to want to see your friends…”

“But if she liked me, she wouldn’t have wanted to.”

I chose my words carefully. “It’s pretty rude to walk out mid-activity. It either means she’s trying to play a game with you, or that she’s…”

“Not that keen.”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Which one do you reckon?”

“Me? I don’t know her. What does your gut say?”

He turned his head pointedly to look down the pier. The track of his eyes followed the roller coaster, dropping his gaze in time with the distant screams of terror. “The latter.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” he said, a little too quickly. “It’s fine. We had a good day, and if she wants to be friends, it’s better than being enemies. It’s not like I can force her into having feelings for me. And if she isn’t interested, it probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”

I met Ainsley’s eyes across the pier, and she shrugged at me in a question. I held up one finger.Give me a second.

“I mean, it’s not like we had some great, epic love story or anything,” he went on to nobody in particular. “Like, how’s this, right, she constantly talks shit about her best friends, and if I everdareto take her side during her two-hour rants about them, she goes and tells them everything I said and they hold it against me! How fucked up is that? Why do I evenwantto see her?”

Distancing and devaluing. He felt back in control when he was the one who didn’t wanther.Textbook.

“Oh butnow,now shedesperatelywants to go hang with Kaylee and Emma. The same Kaylee and Emma she toldme are histrionic drama queens onSpace Mountain,but, hey, that’s none of my business. Whatever she wants to do, you know?”

“Right,” I added. Mostly to pretend this was a conversation and not a one-sided rant.

“I’m just saying I’m not theonly onewith flaws here. I’m not going to degrade myself to beg for her to care about me. It’s not like I did her somegreat wrong.”

“Well—”

“I mean, I might not have been perfect but I would never have hurt her, or let anyone else hurt her, not for anything. I’m sick of feeling like I’m the one who fucked everything up between us. She broke us just as much as I did.”

It was truly fascinating. Even while descending, Brougham managed to keep his face almost entirely passive. If it weren’t for the odd twitch in the corner of his mouth, he might as well have been discussing the humidity levels.

“You’re hurt,” I said simply.

He scoffed. “Ah, no. I’m fucked off.”

“And hurt.”

“You have to care to be hurt,” he said.

“And you don’t care?”

“No. Like I said, it’s fine. I’mgladshe’s gone off. Saves me putting in any more time and effort.”

Talk about a gentleman who doth protest too much. “If you say so.”

His head snapped up and he bored into me with hard eyes. “You can go now. There’s no point staying, unless you want to go have fun with your sister. I know you didn’t want to be here in the first place.”

And there it was. For a moment there I thought I’d gottenaway with losing Brougham and being AWOL when he needed me. “I know I fucked up. I’m so sorry. The timing of that was awful.”

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