Felix Ever After(74)

“Not regretting hanging out with me already, are you?”

I look at Declan. He has an eyebrow raised, glancing away from where Ezra stands.

I shake my head fast. “No. No, no regrets at all.”

White Castle is packed like always, filled with kids from St. Cat’s and Brooklyn hipsters who wear bike helmets and overalls and Crocs. Declan and I stand in line without speaking, and I stop myself from fidgeting as I try to think of a casual conversation that could possibly make this experience at least 10 percent less awkward . . . but nothing comes to me, and Declan just stands and waits patiently with his arms crossed, like he doesn’t feel uncomfortable at all, like he doesn’t give a single shit that he’s standing here beside me—me as me for the first time, and not as Lucky.

We both grab a few cheese sliders and take them out to sit on the curb, eating in silence for a few minutes. Declan’s brown curls blow around in the breeze, and he wipes them out of his eyes as he squints at passing St. Cat’s students who glance at us, raising hands to say hey with smiles.

“The more I thought about it,” he suddenly says—I whip my head around to him so fast it’s a wonder my neck doesn’t crack—“the more I realized how obvious it was. I mean, the signs were everywhere. You went to St. Cat’s. The things you said about art—they’re the kind of thing you’d say in acrylics, too. Everything you’d told me, about your identities. And you were acting weird as fuck.”

“I wasn’t being that weird.”

“You were weird as fuck, man, always staring at me and suddenly trying to start up conversations out of nowhere. Then there’s the fact that you were so curious about me and Ezra. I was even afraid that you might be Ezra—but I guess a part of me kind of hoped you’d be Ezra, too.”

“You hoped I’d be Ezra?” I don’t really know how I feel about that.

“In a way, yeah,” he says. “Not like I was desperate for it to be him or anything, but I missed Ezra sometimes—missed you, too.”

Warmth spreads over me. I want to ask why he was such a piece of shit to us, then—why not just stay our friend? But I remember what he’d told me. “When we were talking,” I start, “and you said that you broke up with Ez because he was in love with me . . .”

“I felt kind of betrayed. Jealous. It was easier to break up with him and not deal with the inevitable heartbreak. Plus I was dealing with all of that bullshit from my dad, him disowning me—my grandpa and I were trying to figure out the legal stuff of him becoming my guardian, so a lot was going on anyway.”

“I’m really sorry about that,” I tell him, my voice low. “I had no idea that’d happened.”

“I know. I didn’t tell you guys about it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want a pity party.”

“It can be okay to depend on your friends too, sometimes.”

“Thanks for the afternoon special.”

I snort and roll my eyes. “Nice to know that you can still be a dick.”

“I don’t think you get to call me a dick right now,” he says with more bite than I was expecting. He wipes the curls out of his eyes again, blinking in the sunlight.

“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry. I really am. It was just this mess that’d spiraled out of control, and then I started to—you know, have feelings for you—and I just didn’t know what to do, so I kept it going. I should’ve stopped. I should’ve told you the truth.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. When he does speak, he leans back on his palms. “The most obvious clue was your voice. I knew you sounded familiar, but I never made the connection. Maybe I didn’t want to. I don’t know.”

“Were you disappointed that it was me?” I ask him. I’m just begging for an insult, for him to hurt me, but I can’t help it. I need to know.

Declan watches me for a moment, not speaking, just eyeing me—and as he looks at me, I remember the conversations we’d had. How he said he wanted to meet me—to have the chance to kiss me. Embarrassment flares, but there’s fear, too. What if I was right? What if he isn’t interested in me?

He finally speaks. “I wasn’t disappointed,” he says. “I was surprised. I just never thought it would be you. It took a second to get used to the idea, and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The more I . . .” He trails off, and his expression becomes heavier. The longing I’d seen earlier is back. It heats me from the inside out.

He clenches his jaw and swallows, looking away. “I’m going back up to my grandfather’s for the weekend,” he tells me. “In Beacon.”

I’m thrown by the sudden shift in topic. “Okay,” I say.

“Do you want to come with me?” he asks.

“Come with you?” I say. “To Beacon?”

He waits, still watching me with that same expression—except it’s shifted, just a little, back to the expression I’m used to seeing on Declan more. A bit of steel. Protection, armor, I realize, against me hurting him again. I start to hear my dad’s voice in my head. It’s easier, sometimes, to love when you know it’s a love that you can’t have. What if this isn’t healthy—for either of us?