Begin Again(55)

“That’s not the problem, Shay!” Valeria’s eyes are wet, her face puckered with anger. “The problem is I don’t want them to read it!”

Shay just shakes her head. “Val . . . you’re phenomenal. Why not?”

Val lifts a hand up to her forehead like she’s steeling herself before the compliment can sink in. “Because—because it’s not ready yet,” she says. “And it’s mine. It’s the only thing that’s just mine, and I trusted you with it, and now it’s out in the world where twenty-four thousand students can hate it or make fun of it or use it as toilet paper.”

“Or love it just as much as we do,” Shay cuts in stubbornly.

Valeria lets out a strangled, verge-of-tears kind of laugh. “It’s like—like, if someone took my diary, and just posted the whole thing on the internet. That’s what this is. Don’t you get it?”

Shay reaches out to touch Valeria’s shoulder, but Valeria jerks herself away as Shay says, “I never meant for it to get published without you knowing.”

“You shouldn’t have done anything with it in the first place. That was my decision, not yours.” Valeria runs her hands through her hair, shutting her eyes. “Just—dammit. There’s no way out of this, is there?”

“Nobody has to know it was you,” Shay says quietly.

“But that doesn’t mean I won’t hear what they think about it. And I’m . . . I’m not ready for that.”

The late winter wind picks that particular moment to gust in that rib-chilling, unexpected way it sometimes does near the arboretum on campus. All three of us tense up, looking at one another like something will suddenly resolve itself, as if one of us will have the magic words to make it okay.

“I’m sorry,” says Shay again.

Valeria’s shoulders slump.

“I know you are,” she says. “But I just . . . I’m gonna go.”

“Val,” Shay pleads.

Valeria turns around, swiping at her eyes with her coat sleeve. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

Neither of us answer her, watching as she turns the corner of the library down the path that leads to her dorm. The sun was already setting when we walked out here, but now a cloud has blotted it out completely and made the darkness fall with unnatural speed.

“Shit,” Shay mutters under her breath, turning on her heel in the opposite direction. Yet again, I have to adopt a half jog to keep up.

“It’ll be okay. She just needs some time to cool off,” I tell her. “One stupid thing isn’t going to ruin an entire friendship.”

“Friendship,” Shay says with a bitter edge.

I pick up the pace to match hers, unsure how to respond. “Or anything else,” I hedge.

When Shay answers, the words come out so loud with frustration that several heads swivel in our direction. “I really, really like her.”

“Oh,” I manage.

Because I had imagined this conversation before—I hoped she might say something on a walk home from the broadcast, or one of those nights when we’re both practically drunk on sleep deprivation cramming for exams. That at first she’d be shy about it, but eventually that giddy, new crush feeling would win out, and she might tell me then.

What I didn’t imagine was her blurting it out in the middle of campus, fleeing the library like we just set it on fire.

“Yeah,” says Shay. “Oh.”

Okay, then. Giddy crush feelings later. Damage control now. The gears in my brain are already turning, thinking ahead to tomorrow, to next week, to the conversations that need to be had and the understanding that needs to be shared. “We can fix this.”

Shay stops so fast that I almost skid on the slushy pavement to follow.

“No, we can’t,” she says. “I fucked up, Andie.”

I open my mouth to say she didn’t mess up so much as make a well-intentioned mistake, but she shoots me a warning glance.

“Okay, yes, this wasn’t ideal,” I say, shifting course. “But it’s not like—the be-all, end-all of you guys having a relationship.”

Shay holds up a hand to stop me. “I can’t even think about that right now.” She takes a breath, then glances around the quad like she’s worried someone will overhear. But for once, it’s just us. There’s no mistaking the finality in Shay’s tone when she looks at me and says, “I don’t want your help with this. Just don’t get involved, okay?”

It stings more than the bitter wind, but it’s not about me. I know that. So I nod. “Okay. I won’t.”

Shay lets out a long breath. “Sorry. I’m just—so mad at myself.”

“I know,” I say, keeping my voice low, too.

She gestures out toward the main road off campus. “I’m going to just . . . walk for a bit. I’ll see you back at the dorm.”

After she leaves I stand on the edge of the quad for a few moments, trying to decide what to do with myself. But before I can, my phone buzzes in my hand. I wince, certain it’s going to be my dad—I have been passive-aggressively playing voicemail tag with him for weeks—but it’s an email letting me know the score from my latest statistics test is in.

Sixty-seven percent.