Page 19 of Best Friends for Never

“And now I’m ending it, so let’s move on to where you tell me what awful, embarrassing thing happened.”

I huff. “Fine. It was ...” I blow out a breath, drawing this out far more than I should because saying it out loud will make me feel like a fool for getting so upset that I spent a few hours wandering the streets before I finally came here and worked through the night. “He ...HecalledmePeter.”

“What?” he asks, and I can’t blame him. I rushed those four words out like they were one.

“He called me Peter,” I say more clearly this time. “I know it seems ridiculous, but—”

“Peter was his nickname for you.”

I tip my head to the side. “How did you know that?”

“Um, on a good day, there are about two thousand one hundred people who live in this town, Parker.Everyoneknows he used to call you that. Why do you think we all started calling Mr. Donaldson’s dog Boy?”

“What does Mr. Donaldson’s dog have to do with this?”

He gives a look that says,Come on, now. Think about it.

I think back to when Mr. Donaldson brought home a new puppy and how excited he was and how the town went a little wild with buying dog toys and how he named it—oh my gosh!

Peter.He named the dog Peter.

“The whole town changed a dog’s name for me? Because Noel used to call me Peter Parker?”

My obsession with Spider-Man started when I was young, back when I was convinced I looked just like Mary Jane, thanks to my hair.This carried over well into moving to Emerald Grove. Naturally, Noel picked up on it, and soon after I moved here, he started calling me Peter because of my love for the web-slinging hero and my name. It stuck from the time I was eight until ... well, until he left.

I haven’t been called it since.

Axel shrugs like it’s no big deal when it really is. “We kind of like you around here.”

Like me?Like me?

That sounds an awful lot like love to me.

It’s touching and completely unexpected. And it makes me love Emerald Grove even more.

“We’re totally Team Parker around these parts.”

Thatpart I don’t like. Team Parker? As if they have to pick one of us? It shouldn’t be that way. They shouldn’t “pick me” because I stayed and Noel left. Is that why Dick was so rude to him last night? Because he left? Because of me?

“So, he called you Peter, and it freaked you out, so you went home and panicked there?” Axel guesses, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Sort of. First, he asked me how I was doing.”

“He ...” Axel blinks slowly. “He asked you how you were doing? Like you’re an old acquaintance and you weren’t obsessed with each other at one point? Like ten years hasn’t gone by since you last saw him?” he asks through clenched teeth. “As if he didn’t just walk out on you like your ...”

He doesn’t finish that sentence, but we both know what he was going to say.

Like your father.

It’s no secret to anyone in this town what happened to my mother and me. One day, my dad was here, then the next, he wasn’t. Everyone knows he walked out on us before breakfast, never to return. We just all like to pretend it didn’t happen, bury it down deep, and never talk about it.

Or at least that’s what I like to do.

“I wouldn’t say we wereobsessedwith each other, but yes,” I say, pretending Axel didn’t just almost bring up the catalyst of my abandonment issues.

“That’s ...” He inhales sharply. “Well, it’s fucking bullshit, is what it is. I’m kicking his ass.”

Before I realize what’s happening, Axel spins on his heel and is halfway out the door before I move.

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