Page 52 of Only in Your Dreams

“But nothing through Summer? Parker?”

Brooks eyes me, amused. “You know, it all came together the second she showed up.”

“What did?”

“Why you’ve been stubbornly single since we met freshman year.”

I force my eyes on the field. “Was I that obvious?”

Brooks shrugs. “Nah, you were fine overall. But to my well-trained eye, you were definitely a little shifty. What happened while you were stuck together?”

“Nothing.”

“My well-trained eye says that’s bullshit. You can’t convince me that you were stuck alone with the love of your life and it led to nothing.”

“She isn’t the love of my life.”

Liar, liar.

“The girl you’ve been obsessed with since you were a kid, then.”

“I’m not obsessed with her.”

Liar.

“The girl you fucked while you were stranded together in the woods,” he ventures. When I don’t agree, he narrows his eyes. “The girl you fondled?” I roll my eyes. “Kissed?”

“Give it a rest,” I groan. “I said nothing happened.”

I refuse to give him an inch on this. She and I never got the chance to talk about how we’d address what went down between us before Parker showed up. The kissing, the touching. I refuse to make that call without her blessing. Grams didn’t raise me to run my mouth like that. Locker room talk was never my thing.

I’m not sure he entirely buys it, but Brooks pulls his phone from his pocket. “I’m gonna do you a favor, even though I’m fairly sure you’re lying to me.” He types at his phone, and a few seconds later mine vibrates in my back pocket. “There. Summer just added her to the group chat.”

“You guys work fast,” I mutter, pulling out my phone. “How does this help me?”

“You know her number now.”

I stare down at the non-descript phone number now at the top of our group chat.

“Who says I’m a shitty friend, huh?” Brooks nudges me.

I tap Melody’s number and add it to my contacts, thumbs hovering over the screen when I open up a new message thread. “I never said you were a shitty friend.”

“But I’ve felt like a shitty friend,” he says, voice dipping solemnly the same way it has every time he’s launched into an apology since Monday. “And once again, I am sincerely sorry I didn’t realize you were both missing. I swear I would have driven right back if I did—”

I tune out the thousandth apology speech. I can tell him it’s fine, can pat him on the back as many times as I want, but Brooks’s guilty conscience knows no bounds. He just needs to get through it and he’ll be fine until the next time it occurs to him how bad he feels.

I stare down at the pulsing cursor on the screen as I figure out what I want to say to Mel.

Did you really mean it when you said kissing me meant nothing?

Because if my head wasn’t already brutally screwed up over you before, I’m a downright mess now.

Instead, I typeheyand hit send before I lose my nerve.

I spend the next thirty seconds staring, horrified, at the three letters contained in that blue message bubble, instantly wanting to claw them back. Hey.

Hey?

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