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“Watch me,” she hisses.

And then she’s gone, whirling around to yank the auditorium door open and disappear inside. The handle clicks back into place behind her, and I blink at the space where her lips were just seconds before.

“Holy. Shit.” Lydia’s voice makes me jump. She grabs my arm, and I turn to find her staring at me with wide eyes and a huge, elated grin on her face. “Okay, you have got to bang her.”

“Lydia!” I shush her and glance at the vendor tables, but no one is paying attention.

“I’m serious,” Lydia continues, unhindered by the threat of anyone listening. “You know, the last time I saw her, we were, what, sixteen, right? She was gorgeous then, but now...I mean, damn. Plus, you two have some serious sexual tension. I thought you were gonna start going at it right here on the floor in front of me.”

“Lydia!” I wrap my hand around her elbow and drag her far enough down the nearest hallway to be out of earshot from anyone else. I’ll be missing the start of the awards at this rate, but I can’t go in there without sorting this out. “I do not want to bang Kenzie,” I insist, waving my hands around in the air to indicate how insane the idea is. “She’s, like, my mortal enemy, remember? You know this. It’s kind of been one of the constant themes of my life. She’s mean.”

Lydia nods, that electrified smile still stretching her cheeks. “Yep. And hot. So hot.”

I groan and sag against the locker behind me. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“Oh, I am. I totally am.” She joins me against the wall and pats my shoulder. “She sucks, but I think you two have some...energy between you that you really need to do something about. I mean, you told her you’re going to apply for a scholarship I’m pretty sure you don’t have a genuine interest in just to piss her off. Wouldn’t it be less work to bang and be done with it?”

“We are not going to bang, Lydia!”

“I mean...” She stares across the hallway and twists a finger around her stubby little ponytail. “It could be just what you need after the whole Savannah thing.”

I flinch, all my muscles tightening at the sound of her name.

Lydia chews on her lip and watches me from the corner of her eye. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“No, it’s okay.” I sigh and focus on loosening my fists. Even my toes have scrunched up in my shoes, all of me contracting and cringing away from the memories. “It’s been months. I should be...I should be over it.”

Lydia convinced me to come along and fulfill her lifelong dream of backpacking the world for a year after high school. We traipsed our way through Europe, Australia, and finally, South Africa, where I met my ex-girlfriend, Savannah. In a typical lesbian U-Haul move, I ended up relocating my whole life to be with the first girl I’d ever seriously dated and joining her volunteer project in Johannesburg.

In similar U-Haul move fashion, it did not end well.

Lydia shuffles in close enough to lean her shoulder against mine. “That’s not what I meant, Moira. What she did to you was super shitty. Of course it still hurts.”

“It’s not even what she did that hurts the most,” I mutter as I stare at the tips of my shoes. “It’s what she said.”

I’ve been back in Ottawa since June, and I still hear Savannah’s voice on a loop in my head when I lay in bed at night.

I can still see her facing me in our tiny apartment in Johannesburg, standing on the other side of our bed with the mattress between us, like she couldn’t even bear to be close to me.

Technically, it was her bed. Technically, almost everything in the apartment was, and she didn’t fail to remind me of that when she dumped me after I caught her cheating.

Apparently the cheating was my fault. Apparently I didn’t have enough goals or enough of a personality to keep her interested. Apparently I wasn’t enough.

“Lydia, she called me—”

“It doesn’t matter what she called you,” she interrupts. “None of it was true.”

I open my mouth, ready to protest again, but Lydia purses her lips, tilts her chin down, and wags a finger at me. The full combination of gestures is one she likes to call her ‘disapproving Jewish mom glare.’

It’s very effective.

“Okay, okay,” I grumble, my shoulders slumping as I turn to lead us back to the auditorium door.

“Here.” Lydia grabs my shoulder just as I’m about to reach for the handle and shoves the blue paper in my hands. “Take this, and take my unsolicited opinion along with it. If you’re not gonna bang Kenzie, you should at least beat her at this.”

CHAPTER 4

KENZIE