new information, like a plant making food from the sun. “What’s wrong with the hipster salad place?” she asked.
Meg barked a laugh. “Are you kidding?” she asked. “Everything I just said, and that’s what you’re choosing to focus on right now?”
“No, no, no,” Emily said, holding her hands up. “I just meant—” But Meg shook her head.
“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry I don’t like the hipster salad place, okay? I’m sorry we’re not exactly the same anymore. Maybe we’re not actually brain twins, but that’s no reason for you to be so mean and judgy and, like—and, like—”
“Meg!” Emily broke in. “I’m sorry, okay? I just—I didn’t know any of that stuff. About your mom, or Colby, or—”
“You don’t know those things because you made it so I couldn’t tell you.”
“Of course you could have told me!” Emily’s eyes widened. “What did I do that made you think you couldn’t tell me?”
“I—all of it!” Meg said. “The way you were about the first time I talked to him on the phone or, like, when you found out I went there—”
“Going there without telling anyone was not a good idea, Meg!”
“I know that,” Meg protested. “Don’t you think I know that? And I get why you reacted the way you did, but then you never even asked what happened once I got there, like you weren’t even curious about it because it wasn’t something you would have done yourself. And then you were so fixated on both of us being at Cornell—”
“I thought you wanted to go to Cornell!”
“I did, Emily!” The words came out like a reflex—but no, even that wasn’t exactly true. Meg blew a breath out, tried again. “Or at least, I didn’t have a better plan. I was such a mess last year, and you were so into the idea that it just made sense. But then once I actually got in and started trying to picture myself there . . .” She gazed down at the table for a moment, trying to organize her thoughts into something more coherent. Lifted her face again. “So much of our friendship has always been about being the same, you know? And it just felt like maybe that was all going to fall apart if I didn’t want the same stuff we had always wanted, or I liked someone who was different from the people we’d always liked, or I admitted I was mad about something you did, or—”
“Wait a second.” Emily raised her eyebrows. “Mad about something I did?”
Meg sighed. “Come on,” she said, embarrassed. “Seriously? Are you really going to make me—”
“What, me and Mason?” Emily looked surprised, then sad. “You said you were okay with me and Mason.”
“Of course I wasn’t okay with you and Mason!” Meg threw up her hands, nearly upending her coffee cup in the process. A mom with her toddler two tables over shot her a dirty look. Well, too bad! Meg thought wildly. Here I am, making a scene! “We had been broken up for like a week, Em! Who does that? What kind of best friend—”
“What kind of best friend starts dating him in the first place when you knew I liked him?” Emily demanded.
Meg blinked. “Wait,” she said, thinking for a moment that she’d misheard. Surely, Emily hadn’t just said . . . “What?”
“I liked him, Meg!” It was almost a wail. “Before you guys ever—I liked him. And it was like you didn’t even notice.”
“I didn’t,” Meg said immediately. “I never would have—”
“Well, I did,” Emily said. “I liked him so much at the beginning of junior year—or before that, even. Way back when he still had those bad glasses.”
Meg shook her head, the whole story reshuffling itself in her head like a deck of cards. Emily couldn’t have—of course she would have known if—
“Those were terrible glasses,” she said absently.
Both of them were quiet for a moment, just the sound of an old Norah Jones song piping in over the speakers. Now that she stopped to actually think about it, it felt obvious: the way Emily had been the one to pull Mason into their friend group to begin with, the way she’d sat him at their table at her sweet sixteen and been so angry when he and Meg snuck off together. Meg wondered if she really hadn’t registered those signs, or if she just hadn’t wanted to. It was weird and kind of crummy to realize she’d been thinking of herself as totally in the right