Page 35 of If This Gets Out

“Hmm.” He raises his eyebrows. “True. But, also, most people have breaks as often asweekly,you know.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I swear on my life. I knew someone once who got a breakevery Saturday and Sunday.”

“Not possible. How did they stay productive?”

“They said their worth as a person wasn’t tied to their professional output.”

“Weird.”

“Soweird.”

I try to catch Zach’s eye as we pile off the bus and into the hotel, but he’s definitely avoiding me. Still, I stay hopeful, even with my stomach plummeting, all the way to my room. As soon as I close the door, I whip out my phone and text Zach.

Ready when you are.

My heart starts pounding like I just sprinted up a flight of stairs, and I grip the sheets beneath my fist as three dots appear.

I’m so sorry, but I’m actually really beat. Can we raincheck? Sorry. Almost asleep already.

I stare at the message, crestfallen.

Almost asleep already. Twenty seconds after he went into his room.

Uh-huh.

I let my hand fall into my lap limply and I stare at the stark cream wall with blurring eyes.

It’s not okay. As much as I desperately hoped it would be, it’s not. And I don’t know how to fix it.

Maybe I can’t fix it.

I slowly roll onto my side and curl into a ball, hugging my knees into my chest and touching my forehead to them. I feel like this is the sort of moment where I should cry. But I’ve never been allowed to cry. My whole life, I was taught that crying is a waste of time.Don’t cry. Fix it. Sort it out. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

But I can’t. And it feels like something inside of me is being sliced in half, and it wants to pour out, but it has nowhere to go. Instead, it presses against the inside of my chest, choking me, until I feel like I can’t get enough air in. So, I bury my head in even tighter, trying to hide in the darkness. Like if I block everything out for long enough, it’ll reset itself.

To think that only days ago I’d held Zach between my hands, and breathed in his scent, and tasted him, and for a moment I’d let myself believe that maybe miracles happened.

EIGHT

ZACH

I’m guilty of loving you.

That’s the first line of the “Guilty” chorus, and it’s stuck in my head now, so wherever I go, I hear that. It makes me think of Ruben, and the day we recorded it. We had the most fun ever in the studio that day, back when it felt like we shouldn’t be there, and someone had surely made a mistake letting us in. Ruben had given me some really good pointers, teaching me vocal warm-ups and breathing exercises. There’s no way I’d sound as good as I do on that song if he hadn’t. Plus, I can hear how much fun I was having that day in my voice, which, again, is thanks to him. It was our first single, and it hit number one, so who knows where we’d be now if he hadn’t helped me.

He’s always been the best guy. Focused, sure, but also so kind and gracious and fun to be around. He wants to be a superstar, but he’s never pushed anyone else down to get there, not in the way a lot of others do. He does the opposite, actually. Mom has always said that’s why Saturday is so successful, because we’re an actual team, and we’re all genuinely close friends.

Right now, I’m being a bad friend. Not just bad. Theworst.

I wanted to talk to him when he messaged, I really did, but as I was getting ready my anxiety skyrocketed, and I just knew I couldn’t go, because I don’t have an answer yet, and he’d expect one.

I’m not sure it’s all my fault, though. I asked for space to think, and I haven’t been given any. Instead, every second of every day, I’ve felt Ruben staring at me, like I’m supposed to tell him the split-second I figure my shit out, and our entire friendship hinges on my answer. The guilt is suffocating, the pressure enormous. I know he’s hurt and I made it worse, but he hasn’t exactly given me what I asked for, and the end result is I still don’t know what I want.

Every time I start leaning toward the thought thatmaybeI kind of like him, thatmaybethe kiss was real, it gets confusing, because what if I onlywantto think I like him because it means I can say what he wants to hear? So I can be someone other than a shit guy who mistreated him? So I don’t have to risk losing him forever?

And then I swing the other way and decide to tell him I used him to experiment, figured out it meant nothing, and genuinely apologize, butthatdoesn’t feel right, either. Because even if my thoughts are a mess, I know that there’s no waythatkiss meant nothing.

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