dates—Scott didn’t see the need to go out in public—and only saw each other a handful of times each week outside of school. He wouldn’t come over to my house often since he didn’t like my parents, and he’d never invited me to meet his.
Now, staring at him with his arms around another girl, I figured out why.
For a brief, fleeting moment, I wondered if I had already broken up with him. If maybe I’d just blocked it from my memory and we were already separated. Because surely he wasn’t at this party embracing another girl. Surely he wasn’t cheating on me. Surely if he wanted to see other people, he’d have the guts to cut ties with me first.
The lead feeling in my stomach rooted me in place.
“Sophia?” Edith’s voice was nervous behind me, soft. She must’ve stepped away from Zach, coming up just behind me. “What do you want to do?”
What did I want to do? About what? About the fact that my boyfriend’s mouth was in close proximity to another girl’s? His gaze was trained only on her—on her lips, really. His own angled up in a smirk.
My hands at my sides twitched, fingers aching to curl into fists, but there was a certain part of me that couldn’t get properly mad. Like I was separated entirely from the scene before me.
Until Scott’s eyes lifted from the girl, meeting mine.
Just leave, my brain told me, the franticness of my thoughts almost making me dizzy. Don’t make a scene. Don’t be like your parents. Talk to him about it later.
Edith stood directly behind me, though, a silent support that didn’t allow me to turn.
Scott’s arms unraveled from how they wrapped around the stranger. I expected him to be defensive, to deny what was so clearly obvious and try to talk me down. But what he did was the exact opposite. “Come on, Sophia,” Scott said with an eye roll. “Don’t give me that face.”
Energy buzzed in my chest, like my body longed to jump into action, but my brain didn’t know how to react. I was way too aware of the eyes that trained on us, on the dancing bodies that slowed to a standstill. “What face?”
“That ‘you’re breaking my heart’ face.” Scott came close enough that he didn’t have to talk so loud anymore, didn’t have to draw the attention of anyone else in the room, but he didn’t give up that power. In fact, his voice still sounded so loud in my ears. “Are you really that surprised?”
“Am I—what?” His words made literally no sense. The urge to laugh came, but nothing about this situation was remotely funny. “Am I surprised about what? You with—whoever that is?”
The girl peered around him, her blank gaze on me. Her brown curls hugged over her shoulders, a bit tangled as if someone run their fingers through it. She wasn’t even remotely familiar.
“We’re polar opposites, Sophia. You never come to any of my games. You always have your nose stuck in a book. And your parents—well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the weird department.”
I flinched, from his words and from his tone. The breath of air I tried to take in stuck in my throat, the harshness of his words making my chest ache. Yes, he was a Negative Ned more days than not, but never cruel. Not like this.
I didn’t want to look around me, to lock eyes with anyone in this horrible room.
But just over Scott’s shoulder, I saw Walsh, who looked back with an unreadable expression. A jolt of warmth splintered through me, but not the warmth of comfort—the heat of anger. Of course he got to witness this.
Everyone did.
“I want to have a good summer,” Scott went on, lifting a shoulder in a blameless shrug. “It’s better this way. You’ll be busy with your article and I’ll be busy…having fun. Doing what I want to do. Win-win, right?”
He kept talking, kept moving his thick jaw, but the numbness started to fade as the burn of tears built in my throat. My cheeks filled with fire, the heat from the room filtering into my body. “You’re breaking up with me because I’m not fun enough?”
“I’ve tried to make it work,” he sighed loudly, like he was the one being dumped. “I’ve tried to fix it. Fix us, fix you, but I just can’t do it anymore.”
Fix me. Fix me. Like I was broken. Like there was something wrong with me.
My gaze slipped past Scott once again,