Page 60 of Devil in Disguise
“All right,” Dyma said, “now I’m seriously pissed off. So it reallywasn’tabout being my friend. Thanks for nothing.” She stood up, then remembered her backpack and reached down for it.
Avery put his hand on it and said, “No. You’re not leaving yet.”
She waited. The moment stretched out, he didn’t let go of it, and she couldn’t read Fletcher’s expression at all. They both just stared at her, and this felt … hostile. The hair started rising on the back of her neck, and she thought,You’re kidding,even as she started gauging angles to the door. And then, because she refused to stand here being scared, and because she was tired of guys pulling this crap, she said, “You’re scaring me. Are youtryingto be an asshole?”
“Me?” Avery blinked at her through his glasses. “How?”
“How?How?”She waved an arm. “Has any girl ever beenslightlyhonest with you? Because I’m in a room with both of you, the door’s closed, and you’re hanging onto my backpack like you’re holding me here and telling me I’m not leaving. Because you’re both telling me it was all about sex, and Fletcher’s staring at me in this really creepy way! And because girls never know—” She had to stop and take a breath— “Weneverknow when a guy’s going to jump us. When a guy’s going to show his … hissnakeside, that we never even knew was there. And I don’t have friends like that. I have friends who likemethe way I liked both of you, who aren’t just trying to get something from me! I have friends who have myback!You think I was flirting? I was havingfun.If you read that wrong, that’s not my fault!”
Only one word for how they both looked now. Frozen. Horrified. Avery had long since taken his hand off her backpack, and Fletcher said, “Wait. What? We aren’t going to—”
“See, that’s the thing!” The hot tears stood in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. The horrible roommates, saying goodbye to Owen yesterday, the scary midterms, this … it was all welling up inside her. “We don’tknow.Girls don’tknow.But when I was with you guys, I felt safe. I feltgood.You’re telling me that wasn’t real? That I have to watch my back?”
Fletcher said. “Whoa. Dial it down.”
All right. That was it. “I won’t,” she told him. “I won’t dial it down. You think this is drama? This is girls’reality.”She picked up her backpack. “I’m going to the Rec Center. I’m not going to climb, because I can’t afford all those shoe rentals. I did them anyway because I wanted you guys to like me, and I bought all those coffees I couldn’t afford for the same reason. Because you were my friends, and I thought you were great, and I was probably desperate, because nothing except hanging out with you was anything like my dreams of college. Well, I’m not desperate anymore, and I’m not begging anybody to be my friend. From now on, I’m being honest. I don’t work at the dining hall because I love it. I do it because I’m broke. And if you were my friends, why didn’t that ever occur to you before you asked me to go for coffee? Pro tip. Guys don’t get a pass on basic sensitivity anymore. Payattention.”
“But your mom—” Fletcher began.
“Is marrying somebody rich. My future baby brother will be rich. But hello? Dining hall? Harlan isn’t my father. He didn’t sign up for me, I’m an adult, and I’m not asking him for money. I’m sure as hell not asking Owen for it! I pay my own way. I make my own choices. And right now, I’m choosing to go work out.”
She could be alone. She could handle alone.
She could do this.
* * *
She was runningon the treadmill, her headphones in her ears, blasting the loudest, angriest music she could find and watching a college football show on ESPN with about one-fifth of her attention, just to damp down the Rage Molecules that were still ricocheting around her brain, and possibly the realization that she was now down to exactly one friend—whose mother was probably going to forbid her from seeing Dyma anymore, the way her life was going—when the guys showed up in front of her. Both of them, just standing there.
She hit the button, slowed the treadmill to a jog, silenced the music, and said, “What.”
“See,” Fletcher said with an attempt at his normal easy grin, “this is why guys don’t necessarily want to be friends with girls.”
“Nice,” she said. “I’m turning on my music again.”
“No, wait!” he said. “That was a joke. A guy would’ve just said, ‘Fuck you,’ and shoved me, and we’d have yelled some, and then we’d be done. We wouldn’t have to face all our failings in this seriously uncomfortable way.”
“So you make a lot of moves on guys?” she asked.
“No. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” He grinned, and all right, she grinned back. Hey. She appreciated irony. “But see, you’re so verbal, so I’ve got to stand here and apologize using my words. How’m I doing so far?”
“Mm.” She waggled a hand. “Middling.”
He put his hands on his hips and stared at the floor a second, then looked up and said, “Right. I misunderstood, and that’s awkward, and then there’s the weird dynamic between Avery and me that you exposed—thanks for that, by the way, because that’s hardly inconvenient at all. On the other hand, I realized I still like you, even though you’re kind of a pain in the ass right now. Also, I wish this were kindergarten and I could just say, ‘Do you want to be my friend?’ And then we could build with blocks or something.”
“We could totally have done that,” she said. “I was a blockfiend.”
Avery said, “I guess it’s my turn. I’m not going to be able to do this as well as Fletcher, though.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but you don’t have to. You weren’t nearly as much of a jerk as Fletcher. And I’m apologizing too. Maybe I flirted, I don’t know. I thought I was just having my personality, you know, but maybe I was flirting. And Idefinitelydidn’t tell you I had a boyfriend, and I should have.”
“Yeah,” Fletcher said, “though we’d have guessed anyway by now, judging by that bruise on your neck.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said. “But see—this is why I want guy friends. Because you’ll say that stuff instead of being all tactful.”
“So,” Avery said, “if I pay for the shoe rental, do you want to go climbing?”
“What? No,” she said, and saw him flinch. “Well, Iwantto. But I don’t want you to pay for me. Talk about an asymmetrical power dynamic. Also, I still have your harness.”
