Page 90 of Just Friends

I catch my reflection in the mirror. My cheeks are tinged pink with the faintest sunburn from all the time I’ve spent outside over the past few weeks, and my hair is up in a messy bun on the top of my head, a remnant from earlier in the night when Stevie, Wren, and I decided we were finally going to learn the Hoedown Throwdown from theHannah Montana Movie. My mascara is smudged from laughing until we cried.

My eyes snag on the photo Alex pulled from the mirror frame when he was exploring my bedroom, the one of me on my first group date. Next to it is the one of me at prom. I look so happy in them—my smile wide, my eyes bright, my cheeks rosy. Just looking at all the photos from my childhood and teen years lined up around the frame makes my heart ache for that girl who used to love without fear of being hurt.

I can’t go back to her. I can’t make myself forget what it feels like when sweet, tender love turns rancid, rotting away all the soft, vulnerable pieces inside.

But I can face my demons. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to move on without confronting that shattered piece inside me once and for all, even if I can never put it back together the right way again.

Last fall, Alex and I spent a lazy Saturday morning wandering through a flea market. We stumbled upon this booth full of broken pottery that has been glued back together. Each work of art was an amalgamation of the others, a kaleidoscope of colors compiled together until the broken bits of all the shattered pieces formed one creation. Just looking at the mosaics felt monumental.

Maybe I’ll never be able to get back to the person I was in those photos on my mirror, but I can be something new, a coalescence of all the bits of goodness people have given me.

My hands tremble as I pull out my phone and dial the one person I thought I’d never speak to again.

It’s the middle of the night, but Sebastian answers on the third ring. “Hazel?”

Swallowing, I say, “Hi, Sebastian.”

I can hear rustling on the other end, like he’s sitting up in bed, and I can picture him there perfectly. In his shoebox of an apartment, his mattress on a platform I once thought was different and unique. In reality, it was the hipster version of a mattress on the floor.

“I didn’t think you were ever going to call,” he says, his voice rough and tinged with sleep. I thought hearing his voice would send me into a panic, but although my hands are shaking and my heart is beating loud enough for him to hear through the phone, I feel almost…calm.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, and I can imagine him pushing a hand through his always-tangled shoulder-length black hair. “Why did you change your mind?”

“Why did you do it?” I ask before I lose my nerve. When it happened, I couldn’t bear to ask. I was too scared of the answer. But it has haunted me for over a year now, the question ofwhy.

“Hazel.” He sighs. “I can’t give you a good reason. Not one that will justify it.”

Obviously, I knew this. I knew he could never give me a reason to explain away cheating on me, but it still stings. I guess I’ve been holding out hope that there’d be a logical explanation or some kind of misunderstanding. Like his neighbor was suffering from hypothermia and he had to cuddle her naked to share body heat.

I grip the dresser to stay steady, my fingers biting into the wood. “I just want the truth, Sebastian.”

“I was scared, Hazel,” he says after a long moment, one where I canfeelmy pulse thrumming, waiting for his answer.

It’s not the answer I expected, and I blurt out my surprise before I can think better of it. “What?”

Sebastian blows out a breath, and it rattles through the phone. “Before you, I’d never been in a serious relationship, and I wasn’t looking for one when we met.”

This is news to me. I remember the exact moment I saw Sebastian for the first time at a music festival in the desert a couple hours’ drive from LA. We spent the night talking and dancing, and I thought I’d never see him again. But then two days later, he randomly walked into the coffee shop where I spent my days working on freelance projects, and it felt like a sign.

I sidled up next to him, and he looked as surprised as I was. He ended up at my table and stayed there until the place closed down. We went on our first date the next night and never looked back.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“Everything happened so fast,” he says. “Before I knew what was happening, you became this intrinsic part of me, an extra limb, and it terrified me.”

My mind is spinning, a top set loose on a table. “So because I was so important to you, you cheated on me?” I know I sound incredulous, but I can’t bring myself to change it.

“No.” He sighs, sounding defeated. “But loving you felt too vast and scary, and I wanted something—someone—easier. Someone who wouldn’t overwhelm me and feel so utterly necessary to my existence.”

I hate how similar the words are to the ones I spoke to Lucy weeks ago when I told her I wanted to go out with Parker again because being with him felt manageable. Loving Parker wouldn’t have consumed me.

Worst of all, I hate that I understand how Sebastian felt. Now that I’ve been confronted with this undeniable, all-encompassing, terrifying love for Alex, I know exactly what it must have been like for him.

“That doesn’t excuse your actions, Sebastian. What you did”—my words cut off, choked with tears—“ithurt. You wrecked me,” I finally manage.

He’s quiet for so long that I think he’s hung up. Then he says, “I know. I know that, Hazel. And I’ve spent the last year reliving it over and over again and trying to come to terms with the reality that I ruined us. I’m so, so sorry, Hazel. You have to know that.”

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