She looks at me. I’m incapable of disguising the confused look on my face long enough to play along with this. I’m not even sure I want to play along. It hurts to hear him using this word, and all but confirms that this is what he said to Tina a little while ago. I’m reminded that this all started as a game, and I’m not entirely sure where we stand after what happened upstairs in the shower earlier.
I shoot a look at Oliver. He seems oblivious to what he’s said.
“What?” he says with a laugh. “You said it first.”
I frown, confused. I try to think of when I might have said something like that, because I swear that I didn’t… and then it hits me. He’s not talking about recently. He’s not even talking about during our fake relationship. He’s talking about last year when I drunkenly told Tina that I was obsessed with him and then he used that fact to embarrass me in front of everyone at the bar. He does remember. And worse, he’s using these words to hurt me all over again.
I get up and I storm away. I’m so angry that I can’t even come up with an excuse for leaving.
“Ouch,” Ryan says behind me.
I can hear Tina admonishing him quietly as I head upstairs. I don’t look back. I head into the bedroom and close the door behind me. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. For a minute there, I thought that I could move past what happened a year ago. Even though Oliver never apologized, I thought that maybe he regretted the way he treated me and the reason he hadn’t brought it up was because he was embarrassed about the way he had behaved. I guess that was wishful thinking. It turns out he wasn’t embarrassed about it at all. He was just waiting for me to completely drop my guard so that he could bring it up again and reopen an old wound. I can’t believe I’ve allowed myself to be blinded all over again.
The bedroom door creaks open behind me. I stop pacing the room to turn and glare at Oliver. He closes the door behind himself. He stays there, back against the wall, watching me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“If you really have to ask that question, then I’m not sure it’s even worth answering.”
“Okay. You’re mad at me,” he says. “I don’t understand why.”
I pick up my backpack. “I’ll find another room to sleep in. You can keep this one.” I step up to him, waiting for him to move out of the way, but he doesn’t.
He shakes his head. “I really don’t understand you sometimes. One minute we’re having fun, and the next you storm off and now you’re moving into a different room?”
I can’t believe that all this time I naively believed that he might feel bad for embarrassing me last year. Now I realize that he doesn’t even know what he did wrong. I’m not sure which is worse. To tell him what he did and why it hurts would be admitting that I have feelings for him. I’m not sure my heart can take the rejection.
“Maybe this is for the best,” I tell him. “We can use this fight to put an end to our fake relationship and we won’t have to pretend anymore.”
His face hardens. “Right. I guess it is all fake, isn’t it?”
He steps out of my way and opens the door for me. I go out into the hall and let myself into the bedroom with the bunk beds. I throw my backpack onto the floor and sit down on one of the beds. The door flies open a second later. During the split second that it takes for me to look up and see who it is, I have this fleeting thought that it might be Oliver following me in here because he can’t let this go. But it’s not him, because just as he said, none of what we have is real to him. He’s probably relieved that I suggested we put an end to it. I’m probably a lot more torn up about it than he is.
“Let’s get in the hot tub,” Tina says.
“I kind of feel like being alone right now.”
“Let’s get in the hot tub,” she repeats, louder.
I stare at her. She stares back, eyebrow raised. I know that look, and I know that I won’t win this argument. “Fine. I’ll get changed.”
I meet her out back on the patio. She’s waiting for me with a drink in each hand. I don’t see Oliver or Ryan on my way out, which is a relief. They’re probably having a beer together while Oliver makes up some breakup story for us. I wonder what he’s saying.
Tina hands me a hard lemonade. I step into the hot tub after her and sink down until my shoulders are covered and only my head and my hand with the drink are popping out of the water. I take a sip.
“Do you want to talk about what’s going on with you and Oliver?” she asks.
I shake my head. Tears spring to my eyes. I blink them away. I don’t want to cry, so I stare at the bubbling water and try to think of anything else.
“So, he said that he’s obsessed with you,” she says. I guess we’re just diving right into this, then. “And you’re upset… why? Because you wish he had said something else?” She asks this tentatively, like she’s trying to get to the bottom of the reason for my reaction. “Or because you feel like he’s still making fun of you?”
I look up at her, surprised by how close she is.
“Ding, ding, ding!” she says.
“I think we might break up,” I say. This feels like the right opening.
“That’s stupid,” she says with a snort.
