Page 59 of Betting on the Best Friend
“So this is a controlled detonation.” Knowing Charlie is the one taking damage right now causes more cracks to spider across my heart.
“I guess it is.” The words are subdued.
I didn’t do this to him, but I’m the cause of it. Does that mean I’m the one person who can’t help right now? I want to. I don’t know what to do.
Charlie groans. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what? I’m not doing anything.”
“Like you’re trying to figure out how to donate your kidney to me like I’m dying. You’re making it weird.”
I gasp, my head flying up. “I’mnot the one who—”
I break off when he starts laughing.
“Better,” he says. “We can’t fix this if you act like I’m broken.”
“How am I supposed to act?” It comes out like a whine, and I hate it, because that makes it about me. I force my tone to be more matter-of-fact. “Tell me what you need me to do, and I’ll do it.”
“Nothing. It’s okay. It’s my problem, not yours.”
“But it is!”
He looks startled by the way the words burst out of me. It deepens the sense I’ve been doing things wrong for months but no one told me, and I hate that I had no chance to get it right.
I shift to my knees and give the net another hard yank to let him know I’m bugged. Everything is changing, and I don’t like it. It’s hard enough not to think about when Madison marries and leaves me, with Sami not far behind. I’ve been fighting to stay in my bubble, and Charlie is supposed to be my constant. “We’ve always been so good. Why couldn’t it have been enough?”
“I didn’t choose this, Ruby.” He doesn’t change position, but he’s tense now, the muscles in his arms corded.
Good.Good.He’s spent the last several minutes wreaking havoc on our friendship, and I’ve been trying to keep it together, but it’s jagged glass and it won’t hold anything. It’s all pouring out.
“This detonation isn’t controlled at all.” I hear the edge of panic in my voice, but I lost control the second Charlie said he didn’t know what he needed me to do. “You blew everything up because you were tired of waiting, and you can’t . . .” I search for the words, upset that I can’t articulate the feeling. “You can’t even give me a damage report. I don’t know what to fix or how.”
“You don’t need to fix anything.”
“But it’s broken now!”
“No, it isn’t. We aren’t.”
“Can you promise everything is going to be the same? You can’t,” I say, reading the answer on his face. “It was fine before, and now it’s not.”
“It was fine foryoubefore,” he says.
“It’s not my fault that it wasn’t fine for you!”
Charlie is looking at me with a mixture of frustration and puzzlement. He’s seen me get annoyed when things go wrong at work, even seen me get downright mad when I feel like one of my people has been wronged, but I’ve never turned onhim. The puzzlement is aninsult, like he can’t fathom why I’m mad.
“You know what, Charlie?”
Charlie shifts to his knees, his face unreadable. “Tell me, Ruby. Tell me what.”
“Youbroke this, and it sucks.”
Hurt rolls across his face before his mouth tightens.
I hear the sound of footsteps approaching on the bridge, reminding me that our cocoon is an illusion. We’re about to lose even that delusion of privacy, and it makes me madder.
Charlie stands. “Let’s get out of here.” His voice is flat as he offers me a hand.
