Page 49 of Never Ever Getting Back Together

My smile is tight and cold. “Trusting Jordy was a mistake. But it’s not as big a mistake as he’s just made.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning maybe I stay, and we do this together?”

She hesitates. “Oh. Wow. I… don’t know.”

I press on. “Think about it. We could cover each other. Both of us can sing the other’s praises to Jordy. It’ll be an extra pair of eyes to watch out for sabotage from the producers or the other girls. Then, whichever one he picks gets the honor of crushing him.”

“But I want to be the person who crushes him,” she protests.

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “We’ll do our best to get you in that spot, then. I don’t care which one of us it is. And if we’re in it together, that brings our chances to thirty-three-point-three percent, all things being equal.”

“Did you just calculate that?”

“It’s a third, Maya, take a math class sometime,” I say, and she blushes.

“Whatever. And how do I know you won’t betray me?”

“Honestly? If I wanted to date that asshole again, I wouldn’t need to play dirty. I’d just do it.”

Maya considers this. “Fine,” she says. “Welcome to team Fuck Up the Fuck Boy.”

I stare at her flatly. “We need to work on the name.”

“What’s wrong with the team name?”

I don’t dignify that with a response. Instead, I climb to my feet and stretch. “My head’s spinning. I’m going to bed before I pass out. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Maya watches me climb the ladder. “Are you gonna tell him you know?” she asks. “About me?”

Good question. “I don’t know yet. It might be fun to watch him squirm. But it seems like the sort of thing that might put him on his guard around us. Let’s see how it goes.”

Maya’s laugh is bitter as I climb under the blankets. “All right. Good night.”

“Do you mean it this time?” I grin despite myself.

If I’m reading Maya’s tone right, she’s smiling, too. “Yeah. This time.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Night.”

As I close my eyes, my mind tries to conjure up thoughts of grief and betrayal, but I force them away. Then, of all things, my mom’s face pops up, and I shut that down, too.

Not tonight.

I’m not ready to process all of this just yet.

One step at a time.

FOURTEENSkye

The next morning, I decide I’m ready to process. Or, at the very least, I’m ready to commence the act of processing. For about an hour, I lie staring at the ceiling, my stomach twisting as I replay the beginning of my relationship with Jordy, memory by memory. There was the time he flew home for the week—obviously that was to visit Maya. But what other signs were there? The habit he had of leaving the room when his “mom” called. Was that Maya, too? The way he’d angle his phone away from me when he used it, obviously enough that I’d noticed it more than once. Was he messaging Maya?

Could there have been a third someone else still in the picture while Jordy and I were exclusively dating? There’s no way to know.

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