Page 71 of Perfect on Paper

I might like Alexander Brougham.

I had feelings for Alexander Brougham.

Alexander Brougham, with his arguments and his perpetually serious face and his rudeness.

Alexander Brougham, with his vulnerability, and his perceptiveness, and his ability to make everything I said feel weighted and important.

Alexander Brougham with his too-blue eyes and the prettiest, rarest smile and delicate fingers.

Alexander Brougham, with his wild car karaoke, and his love of horror movies, and his impulsive decisions to sit in a tree on a cliff in the rain.

But if I did like Alexander Brougham, what did that say about me?

I tried to picture Dad’s reaction to Brougham, aguy,coming over again. The Q&Q Club’s reaction if I announced I was a girl dating a guy. The world’s reaction if I sat down at queer events and told them about my boyfriend.

I hadn’t even realized I held that fear before. But now I thought about it, my stomach turned so violently that it was clear it’d been sitting in my subconscious long before this moment.

I picked up my notebook and reviewed my entry, my head spinning. But I shut down all the stirring, confused thoughts with one neat, safe, objective realization. “Well, you know,” I said. “This is definitely not going to work, anyway.”

Ainsley, ever patient Ainsley, nodded. “Why not?”

“Well, because he’s got an anxious attachment style, and if I’m fearful avoidant, which I might be, it’ll never work. It’ll just be toxic, like he and Winona were. We’ll drive each other up the wall. I’ll freak out and my freak-outs will freak him out and then he’ll freak out, which will freak me out even more.”

“Are you sure you’re fearful avoidant?”

I shook my head. “I need to do some tests to be sure. But if I am, it’s all over. Unless we’re both able to work on our coping mechanisms, but that’s ahugeeffort, and really, I’ve invested nothing at this point so it’s probably a lot easier to walk away while it won’t hurt.”

“Darcy?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I had a thought. I know you’re really into all of this relationship advice stuff. And you’re great at it, don’t get me wrong.”

I didn’t love where this was going. No compliments ever started this way. “Okay?”

“But… do you think there’s a chance that—with Brougham and Brooke, anyway—you’re intellectualizing things so you don’t have to, you know, feel them?”

I puffed out my cheeks while I thought about that one. Was this what it was like to get blunt feedback from locker eighty-nine? Because it wasconfronting.“Maybe?”

Maybe Brooke was a fantasy for me. One that felt exciting, and a little breathless, but, most of all, safe. In real life, though, she wasn’t my imaginary wife. She was my best friend, a real person. And in real life, I didn’t challenge her, or light a fire in her the way she needed and deserved.

And if I was honest with myself, I could say the same for me. Only I’d ignored that in favor of fantasies about how shewouldchallenge me, how shewouldset me alight—when, if, maybe. Ainsley grabbed a pillow and fluffed it in her lap before resting her elbows on it. “Don’t be afraid of hard emotions, okay? Maybe just let your feelings happen, even if it’s just for the night. See how that goes?”

On an intellectual level, I knew Ainsley might be right. Maybe I wasn’t fearful avoidant. Maybe I was just… fearful. Because if I liked Brougham, and he liked me, I could get hurt, the kind of hurt that unrequited love couldn’t compare to. Right now, I was sitting in the space between a sound and its echo. Brougham had asked a question, and I had to answer it.

It was that, or keep dreaming about love, and working toward helping others find it, while never letting myself risk it.

Despite making my decision with Ainsley, I put it off for longer than I intended. Throughout the next school day, I kept waiting to run into him in the halls, but the one time I caught sight of him he was so far away there was no pointtrying to get to him. Then, that night after school, I kept starting and erasing texts. Finally, I decided I needed to talk to him in person, and resolved to find him the next day.

It was easy to find Brougham on a Thursday, at least.

I stood in the empty, abandoned halls after school, not far from locker eighty-nine, working up the courage to go and speak to him. Apparently, at some point, talking to Brougham had become terrifying. My hands were trembling.Trembling.Over Alexander Fucking Brougham.

It occurred to me as I started to pace in front of the pool entrance that I didn’t know Brougham’s middle name. Just that it was, almost certainly, not “Fucking.”

I glared at my hands until they stilled, then pushed open the door.

Brougham was swimming freestyle in the lane closest to me, with another student I didn’t recognize over in the far lane doing a backstroke.

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