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“Ugh, you’re impossible. I’m going to hit my head on the wall until I die.”

“I really don’t know the difference,” she said. I sighed, hard, a pointed sigh before I realized I didn’t know what it was pointed at. I looked back down.

“Um…” I shifted in my chair. “I feel like I’m a little weird.”

She paused. “Is… that it?”

“Like I said, do not tell anybody.”

“I think everybody knows that already…”

“You’re the worst.” I hugged myself. “I mean, like… like…” I frowned. “Maybe I don’t know what I mean. But you know what I mean, right? I’m not pretty and cool and stylish and talented and smart and all these other things. I’m just… me. Just Paisley.”

She glanced sidelong at me. “You’re too… insecure to date people?”

“When you put it like that, it makes me sound like a loser. I just… I’m not the dating type. End of story. Fin. Kaput.”

“I’m not sure you know whatkaputmeans.” She shook her head. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of, though. We all have insecurities. And I know they can really get in the way when we’re dating. Like… trust me when I say I know that very well. My insecurities almost lost me everything with Gwen.”

“Yeah, but, like… at least you have something that makes you interesting. Ugh. Forget it. I hate this conversation. I’m going to go climb into a hole and fill it back up behind me.”

“Does Emberlynn know you feel this way? She’s your best friend, right?”

I was of half a mind to just walk out the door and keep walking until I drowned in the ocean. Kay wouldn’t stop coming with the hits. I ducked my head. “I mean, ostensibly,” I mumbled.

“Did something happen?”

“No. Yeah. I guess. Just… you know. She’s dating my sister.” I shrugged, picking at my fingernails. “And I don’t have a problem with that. Not anymore, at least. I was a little brat about it for a while, but I don’t have a problem anymore. Just that she’s… well. Someone else is more important in her life now.”

She pursed her lips, a sad little pout. “She shouldn’t have to make you feel less important just to be with someone. A relationship doesn’t mean sacrificing your friendships.”

“I know. And it’s my problem. I guess it’s not that Aria ismoreimportant, just that she’s… just as important, in a different way. So now someone else has equal billing as me. And I’m not mature enough to handle that.”

She sighed sadly. “I’m sorry things are making you feel that way.”

I kicked at the floor. “It just feels harder to open up to her about as much. And we still spend all our time together, but itfeels like there’s some kind of wall forming there, building up slowly, and it makes me want to scream until my lungs pop out like a party blower.”

“Ew.”

I sighed, standing up. My feet carried me outside, into the little lot behind the house, and I sat down on the stoop. Kay sat down next to me, and I guess at this point I kind of just accepted that I’d have to have this conversation with her.

“It sucks when I step back and realize I don’t have any identity outside of her,” I said. “I feel like I used to be all fun and happy and living my best life as me around everybody in town. And then Emberlynn moved into town and I was, like, literally obsessed, and I clung onto her, and it was even better. But now that she’s finding her own life outside of me, I’m kind of realizing thatIdon’t have my own life outside ofher.I’m just a weirdo who looks like a goblin and breeds lizards.”

“I think you look cute.”

“Ugh. Don’t patronize me. If I could turn into King Kong right now and smash you into a pulp, I would.”

She smiled sweetly at me. “Well, as far as I know, you can’t, so I’m willing to take that risk. Idothink you look cute. I like your hair, and you have pretty eyes.”

“I look like a soulless monster rolled in dog hair and lint.”

“Okay, now I think you’re exaggerating. Still, if you don’t like the way you come across, how you look and act and everything…” She shrugged, resting back against the door and looking up to the sky. Dark clouds formed on the horizon, and the winds whipping up said rain was coming. Kay breathed in deep before she looked at me. “I think it’s important to love ourselves. And sometimes that takes the form of accepting things about ourselves and learning to love them as they are, and sometimes I think that takes the form of finding the courage to change things about ourselves.”

“Ugh, you’re telling me to get better. I would, but that’s, like… work. And, ugh, pass.”

“It’s not work if it’s fun.”

I chewed my cheek. I believed that, but I still wanted to be difficult. Partly because this whole thing was way too close to home and partly just because being difficult was, like, my thing. “It’s work if it needs me to get out of bed or move or do anything at all.”