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by L. M. Augustine

  This time, she stops. She looks at me, hard and sad. I’ve never seen Cat look at me like that before. “West?” Her hands tighten at her sides, and I can feel the old ladies watching us with excitement, like we’re their newest soap opera. The sad thing is, they’re probably right. My life in the past year has been just about the equivalent to that of characters in soap operas. “You really want to know?”

  In that instant, by the seriousness of Cat’s voice, I know I don’t, in fact, want to know. But I’m too curious for my own good. “Yes.” I taste bile in my mouth as soon as I say it, and the nausea washes over me in a rush. All I want to do is leave, run away and keep screaming and crying until I wake up from this nightmare.

  Cat takes one last breath, reaches out, and brushes the tips of her fingers against my arm. Our eyes lock—hard—and we stare at each other for the longest time before Cat finally whispers, her eyes misting with tears, “I didn’t make up Harper because I wanted to prank you. I made her up because I love you.”

  ***

  When your best friend tells you she loves you, you can do one of three things:

  1) You can tell her you love her too and then make out with her passionately.

  2) You can run away.

  3) Or you can just stare at her for what feels like a century without speaking a word like a senseless idiot and only create more awkwardness for everyone.

  Guess which reaction is mine? You betcha. #3. I think it’s a solid five minutes of me gawking, not knowing how to respond, not knowing what the hell I’m supposed to do, before anything happens. Yeah. That awkward.

  My heart is hammering now, and I swear my tongue has refused to work because as much as I try to open my mouth and speak, no words will come out. Beads of sweat drip down my neck, and the throbbing in my head pounds harder, harder, harder.

  Cat is in love with me.

  Oh my god.

  “You know what? Forget it,” Cat says when I don’t react, shaking her head and gathering up her things. “This was stupid. Forget it ever happened.”

  “Wait, Cat,” I say, reaching blindly for her arm, as if I could possibly make this anymore awkward. (Hint: apparently, I can.)

  She pushes past my grip. “No, no…” She grabs her bag, turns, and starts to fast-walk to the exit. “I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have done this to you.”

  “Cat,” I call after her, but she’s already rushing to the door, pulling it open, and getting the hell out of here like I should’ve done long ago. My whole body screams at me to just do something and to fucking fix this already, but I can’t. I can’t think. Can’t move. “That’s not…” I start to blurt out, but she’s already gone. “…what I meant,” I finish, dropping my voice, even though she can’t hear me.

  And now I’m standing in the middle of a failure of a coffee shop that doesn’t even sell coffee, with the cashier snoring to my right and a group of three old women staring at me like I’m from another planet and the one person I care about most in this world running away from me. Oh, and also, as if this could get any more exciting, the girl of my dreams doesn’t exist.

  Somehow, this is not how I pictured the meet-up going.

  “Well?” one of the old ladies, who is dressed in her oversized sweater and pink scarf, says. “Aren’t you going to run after her?” I don’t respond. I just stare at her, dumbfounded, like a complete moron. Words still refuse to come. It’s like I’m back in fifth goddamn grade and trying to recite my thirty-line poem in front of the whole school; I have a serious case of tongue-brokenness and no idea how to fix it. “You know if you don’t run after her you’ll lose her, right? Why would you want to lose your girlfriend?”

  “She’s not…” I say, shaking my head. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  The old lady raises her eyebrow. “I noticed the look in that girl’s eyes the moment she saw you. If that wasn’t the love of a girlfriend, I don’t know what it is.”

  I stop. My heart slows. “What look?”

  “Bah,” she says, turning to her two old-lady cohorts and sharing a smile like they know something I don’t. “Young people these days,” she says and the other two burst into sluggish, 90+-year-old laughter. The woman turns back at me. “Hun, from that one look of hers, I know you have a girl who loves you more than anything in the world. That’s valuable stuff. Don’t let her go.”

  “Are you… are you sure?” I can’t think clearly anymore.

  “I am most certainly sure,” she says, reaching out a bony hand.

  And I must be crazy because now I’m taking advice from random old ladies, but the next thing I know, I run after Cat. I burst through the coffee shop door, cheered on by the three of them, sprint down the sidewalk, and follow Cat’s bobbing head over the crowd of people.

  I push past stranger after stranger, keeping my gaze trained on Cat, and I just keep running and running. The wind whips against me and the air tastes like cigarettes, but I barely notice any of it. All of my concentration is on Cat now.

  When I finally catch up to her, she’s fast-walking through another crowd of people, speeding up with each step. I grab her arm and pull her back, breathing heavily. “Hey,” I say. She tries to fight my grip. “Hey.”

  “Let go of me!” she shouts, jerking away from me and nearly taking out a little girl to her right. “I told you I’m sorry! What more do you want from me? Do you want my dignity too? My happiness? My life? Because I’m sure that’s just about up for sale at this point.” She spins back around to face me, her eyes wild and sad at the same time. Tears sting her eyes, and it hurts to see her like this—like, physically hurts. She looks at me, exasperated. Cat, the strong one who always kept me in balance, exasperated. Oh my god, what have I done? “Well?” she says when I don’t respond. My jaw is still totally slack. “Aren’t you going to say something? I just told you I love you and you have zero fucking reaction?”

  I’m consciously aware of my hand on her arm, my skin touching her skin. She is warm and shaking, rattled in a way I’ve never seen her before. I have no idea what to say, what to do. I feel so fucking pathetic all of a sudden, because she just told me probably the biggest thing you can tell someone and I can’t even find the words to respond.

  “You really made that account because you love me?” I finally say like a blundering idiot, too scared to meet her gaze, to focus on anything but the slight tremble in my toes.

  “I did,” she says slowly, watching me as if I’m about to pull I knife on her. I nod. She sighs then, and I watch as she turns her head to look out at the sun beyond the crowded street of people.

  “What, Cat?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  I step forward. “Cat,” I say. “Tell me.”

  She hesitates, but does. “Remember when we were thirteen and we decided to prank our English teacher?” she says softly, still looking out at the sun—at anything but my face. “So we snuck into his classroom while he was stuffing his face with chocolate cake or whatever in the teacher’s lounge, and we super-glued his markers together? We felt so cool and untouchable at the time, like we’d just reached the holy grail of pranks, and when he yelled at about it to the class the next day just because he wanted to yell, we were giggling like idiots in the back, thinking we were the baddest kids this school has ever seen.” She says it with such fondness, with that same twinkle in her eyes from last night, like she’s telling me a story of a magical world we’ll never quite reach.

  I force a laugh. “That teacher was an asshole,” I say.

  Cat smiles. “Oh god, he so was. Remember his oversized moustache? Man, did that dude need to shave…” She pauses, gathering herself. “Or do you remember our freshman year, when that jerk-y kid Brian beat you out as the JV basketball point guard, and so we spent the whole night plotting how we would commit the perfect murder so you could get on the team like you deserved, and we laughed and laughed until it was morning and time for school again?”

  “Or,” she says even
more quietly, and steps toward me, her body just inches from mine, “do you remember last year, when we visited France because your mom wanted us ‘to have some fun for once,’ and we sat on that bench in the middle of night, looking out at the city lights and hearing the sound of laughter bubbling all around us, and you touched my arm and joked to me how romantic this would be if we weren’t best friends? Do you remember that?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Of course.” And I do remember. I remember all of it and more. I think about those memories, about Cat, every second of every day.

  She nods and drops her chin so it’s hovering just inches from mine. “Those,” Cat says, “were the moments I realized I was in love with you. I mean, I thought it was just a weird screwed-up platonic love at first, because I’m not the kind of person who is pathetic enough to fall for her own best friend, I’m just not, but the more I thought about it, about us, about you, I knew I loved you. Like, for real. And call me crazy but for once in my life, I didn’t have any doubts.” She looks up. Meets my gaze. I can’t turn away. My heart rate keeps slowing and then speeding up again and I don’t even know what to do. My whole face feels sweaty, my body a bundle of anxiety. “I knew I loved you,” Cat continues. “I knew with 100% certainty that you were the one for me. You know how I haven’t been dating for the past year? It’s not because I was too busy, like I told you. It’s because I was already in love with one boy.” She steps closer. Her side touches mine, and I’m flooded with her warmth as well as a sharp, tingling sensation down my spine. “And, West Ryder,” she whispers, “that boy was you. But I knew I couldn’t just tell you. Or maybe I could, maybe I should have, but I was too confused and desperate to do anything but hide it and pretend it never happened, and that it wasn’t real, because maybe I just had a bad day and was going crazy.” She sighs. “I knew about your vlog,” Cat says quietly. “I’ve known about it forever. You’re my best friend, West, and you’re an idiot for thinking you could keep it from me.” She forces a smile.

  I stand there, my mouth hanging open, still trying to process everything she’s saying. Finally, I manage to say, “How’d you find out? About the vlog, I mean.”

  “Dude. You left your diary wide open, flipped to the page with all your vlog info. I saw it when I beat you home from school. You aren’t the best with keeping secrets, especially not from me. Hell, no one can keep secrets from me.”

  I blush, and she continues, the distant smile on her lips already fading. “And so there I was with love I didn’t know what to do with and a vlog I wasn’t supposed to know about. I was desperate, and I decided to combine the two, and I used your vlog to do it. I created a fake profile and started commenting. I didn’t know what I was doing—I was being stupid, that’s what I was doing—but I just thought… if maybe I could befriend you there, you would see how perfect we are together, without the confusion and weirdness of us also being best friends. And on top of that, you would see how I really do love you… and maybe, just maybe, you could love me back.”

  There’s a long pause before Cat continues. I don’t say a word, still dumbfounded like a fucking moron.

  “I know everything about you, West, and you know everything about me. We’ve never had to hide anything from each other. But that day, and every day after that, I had to hide something from you, something most people would tell the whole goddamn world about.” She takes a deep breath, and our eyes lock. “I had to hide my love for you,” she whispers. “And that first meet-up, I or Harper or whoever the hell you want to call me, didn’t miss it because I was caught in traffic. I missed it because I was scared. Scared,” she says, “of this. Scared of you.”

  Then, she stops, and takes a step back. My head throbs, and I feel my blood getting hotter and hotter. Cat loves me. My best friend loves me. How am I supposed to feel? Shocked? Happy? Scared? I sure as hell feel none of those things, mostly just straight-up confusion, although my heart won’t stop beating and my mouth refuses to work properly. And, in the back of my mind I wonder: do I love her back?

  But I don’t know.

  I just don’t know.

  “What do you want me to say?” I look up at her, and she looks back at me. She’s tall, almost as tall as I am, her long red hair a major contrast to my dirty blond. I used to joke with her about how her head was like a red velvet cupcake, with that red-velvet-looking hair and pale skin and perfect smile to go along with it.

  I love that smile.

  It’s just a line now, though—a twisted, sad line.

  Her eyes level with mine. Her breathing is even and sounds somewhat pained as she whispers, “I want you to tell me if you’ll give this a shot.”

  “Give what a shot?” I ask, but I already know the answer.

  “If you’ll go on one date with me,” she says, “like we’ve never met before, and just… see. Just try to be together—as a real couple.”

  I look at her, but I don’t speak. I realize then that it would be so easy to say yes, to tell her I’d love to try this, to tell her what the hell and go for it because I can, because I don’t want to see her go and because what if I do love her and don’t know it? But somehow, I can’t find the courage to say it.

  I still feel so sick, so empty and tired, and I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to process all this. I have no idea how to respond to her, either.

  “West, please just answer me,” Cat whispers. “I’ve waited years for you. Just give me a response.”

  I take a deep breath, my jaw clenching. What am I supposed to say? Yes? No? Maybe? I’ll think about it and get back to you? All of the answers feel wrong, somehow, and I realize there is no way out of this but the truth.

  “No,” I finally say, turning away from her. “I’m sorry, but no.”

  All at once, Cat’s smile slips, and she shakes her head a little. “Thought so,” she says quietly, in a way that’s so serious and empty at the same time that I feel like I’ve done something horribly, horribly wrong. Then, she turns, brushes past me, and walks down the street until she disappears out of sight.

  I almost don’t see the tears in her eyes.

  ***

  Everybody seems to be watching me as I walk home. I keep my head down, not meeting their gazes, but I still see their eyes. All of them are strangers, dressed in business clothes or coats or whatever as they rush down the sidewalk to get out of work, but they all seem to be giving me the same disappointed look. It’s like they know what I did. It’s like they know I broke my best friend’s heart. I feel like they’re taunting me, guilting me, because these strangers, stares and all, must know what a hopeless idiot I am to turn away the one person I have left in the world.

  I take a deep breath. Each step I take seems to fall in rhythm with my pounding heart—step, beat, step, beat. The air is thick all around me, and I feel my mind slowly fade out. All I hear is the sound of my heart and each of my footfalls, and the background noise seems to disappear. I keep fast-walking until I reach my car, step inside, slam the door shut, and back out of the parking lot.

  The only thing I can think about on the drive back is Cat. Cat Cat Cat. I want to cry, want to scream and pound the steering wheel until this all goes away, until Harper ends up to be real and Cat and I can stay best friends and not… not this. Anything but this.

  Cat is in love with me and I turned her down.

  Oh shit. That really happened, didn’t it? I really turned her down. And she walked away like I’d just punched her in the face. Shit shit shit. I feel like I made a mistake somehow, like I should’ve done something more to fix this. I mean, she’s my best friend. Why couldn’t I have just manned up and given it a shot? What am I so scared of? I loved Harper, and if Cat is really Harper… what’s the difference?

  I turn out of Main Street and make my way to the back roads toward my house, kicking myself internally over and over again. But I can’t love Cat, right? We’re friends, best friends, but we aren’t the kind to date. We wouldn’t date. We can’t date.

  I’ve only e
ver truly cared for four people in the world: my mom, my dad, Cat, and Harper. Now two of them are gone and one is just about gone to me. Cat is the only person left. I grip the steering wheel harder. I’m not letting her go. I’m not going to fall for her—like, for real—and only have my heart ripped to shreds again. I care about her and I love her like a friend, but that’s all: like a friend.

  I turn another corner. My head is throbbing again. I feel like I should’ve known Cat was Harper, or at least guessed it. I should’ve prepared myself for this, thought about it, given her a real response. But Cat being Harper makes so much sense. They both talk alike, think alike, and they both make me feel warm and happy inside. I only mesh with one person in the world as much as I mesh with Harper, and that person is Cat.

  Because Harper isn’t real, idiot.

  I still remember the night Mom died. I was sitting in my room, filming for my vlog, when it happened. Dad and Mom went out for a date night an hour earlier. They’d been fighting so much lately that they said they needed to “reconnect” for a while, which so clearly would not happen, especially because they had a heated, hour-long debate on where to even go to dinner beforehand. They ended up compromising on some cheesy French restaurant, which served alcohol for my dad and wasn’t filled with screaming sports fans for my mom. I knew the night would end in them fighting some more, of course, so I distracted myself with my vlog, hoping it would all just go away and we could be a family again—a real family.

  What I didn’t count on was for Dad to get drunk or wasted or whatever the hell he was.

  What I didn’t count on was for him to get so worked up that he forced Mom to let him drive because “that bitch would try to kill him” if she were behind the steering wheel.

  What I didn’t count on was for him to run a red light to “get home faster” and for a truck at their right to crash into the passenger door.

  What I didn’t count on was for my mom to die.

  When I got the news, it was late into the night—really late. Even after factoring in the time for them to scream at each other by the car after they stormed out of the restaurant (this happened a lot), I knew it was still taking too long. The air felt off, and when the doorbell rang midway through my filming, I could tell immediately that something was wrong. I knew it like you know how someone is watching you, or how you know the book you’re about to read is going to be the best thing ever. I knew it—I knew it—and I did nothing.