Page 126 of Don't Puck His Best Friend
Harper
"You'reback?"Maddiesaysfrom the couch when I burst through the door.
I can't answer. The tears are already streaming down my face, hot and fast and unstoppable. I run over to her, practically shoving Sirus aside, and collapse into her arms.
"What happened?" Her voice is panicked now. "Did you guys break up?"
I shake my head against her shoulder, gasping for air between sobs. "No.” I cry more. “This feels worse."
"What do you mean worse?"
I can't speak. The words are stuck in my throat, tangled up with the image of Liam's smirk, Cole's desperate eyes, the casual way they talked about sharing girls like it was nothing. Like those girls were nothing.
Like maybe I'm nothing.
Sirus appears with a box of tissues. I take a handful and blow my nose, the sound embarrassingly loud in the quiet apartment.
"You need to talk to me because I'm freaking out," Maddie says, rubbing my back.
I look at Sirus through blurry eyes. He's standing there awkwardly, clearly wanting to give us space but also worried.
"If you're going to stay, you have to promise me to keep it to yourself." I stick out my pinky.
He walks over and takes it. "Promise."
I take a shaky breath. "So, Liam came over."
Maddie's eyes widen. "Oh God."
"He... he told me something that I'm not sure I can forgive."
Maddie looks at Sirus, then back at me. "I am going to murder him."
I shake my head quickly. "It's not like that. It's..." I trail off, not sure how to say it.
She waits, patient but tense.
"They used to… have threesomes."
Maddie gasps. Sirus's eyes practically bulge out of his head in horror.
"Liam kept offering." My voice cracks. "This morning. He was... he was suggesting..."
"Oh hell no!" Maddie starts making this sound between a growl and a scream, and if the situation wasn't so awful, I might laugh.
More tears fall, and I wipe them away uselessly. They just keep coming. "Cole doesn't want to. But he let Liam talk so that I could understand what was going on. Like he thought I needed to know their history or something."
"Wait, wait." Maddie holds up her hand, processing. "What they did before you doesn't matter... right? Cole still wants to be with you?"
I nod miserably. "That's what he says. But I can't stop thinking about—" I stop, the words catching in my throat. "I can't stopthinking that maybe they discussed it. Maybe at some point, I was just... an option. Something they could pass between them."
Sirus leans forward, elbows on his knees. "So, let me get this straight. You sleep with Liam and then date Cole. You’ve been with Cole for almost a year now. And then Liam comes out of nowhere and suddenly wants to have a threesome?"
"Right," Maddie says, nodding. "Like why do this now? Why bring it up now?"
I shrug helplessly. "I can't figure it out either."
"I think it's because Liam's miserable and he wants Cole to be too," Sirus says quietly. "I've watched him this year. He's been spiraling. Drinking too much, hooking up with random girls, picking fights. This is just another way to blow everything up."
