Page 218 of Boys Who Taint

The sudden question catches me off guard. “W-what?”

“It’s hard to hide when you’re in that deep,” she says, grinning. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Aspen. Or anyone else.” She grabs my arm. “As long as you don’t tell anyone what I told you either.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I say.

“Good. Because I don’t think I’ll ever, ever recover.”

I snort. “You’d hex me if I tried.”

“Damn right I would.”

We both laugh, and for a moment, I don’t feel so alone in my head.

“You know what? Fuck ’em,” she says.

I’m still lost in thought. “Who?”

“Them. Those fuckers don’t love us back.” She gets up and pats her legs. “I’m done waiting around, wasting my life for someone who’s not interested. You and I are in the same boat. We should cheer each other on in finding a new partner. A new life. A new obsession.”

I look up at her. “What do you mean?”

She holds out her hand. “Let’s make a pact.”

“But we’re not—”

“Screw it. Even if we weren’t friends, we’re friends now. We’re bonded for life, man. We exchanged secrets. I don’t do that with everyone.”

Tempted by the prospect of that twinge of jealousy and yearning cutting away at my heart, I take her hand.

“Screw them. Let’s take our life into our own hands. No more pining. No more suffering. We make a pact, here and now, just you and I. We’re going to do our best to find a new love and forget about the old.”

But what if I don’t want to forget?

“They don’t want us. They’ve flown off. It’s time we did the same.”

Maybe she’s right. Perhaps we should stop living in the past.

Her smile is enough to convince me as I let her pull me up from the ground.

“Let’s make the jump. Together,” she says. “And when we fall into that water, we give up on them.”

I swallow away the lump in my throat and nod.

I take off my shirt, and she removes her beach dress so we’re both in our swimwear. She reaches out for my hand, and I take it.

Am I really doing this? Am I ready to let go?

She squeezes my hand. “Just run and jump. Don’t look back. There’s only one way down.”

We both begin to run.

Don’t look back. Don’t stop. Just give up.

“Here we go!” she squeals.

The moment our feet reach the ledge, a blue butterfly flutters across my field of vision, the same kind that landed on Aspen’s marshmallow at the bonfire, and I stop.

Abruptly.

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