Page 15 of You Started It
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I’m over Ben Cameron.
I really think I am.
I mean, how else would I have been able to make out with Axel in the back of my car for forty-three minutes? And then another thirteen by his front door when we were saying goodbye (over and over). How would I be able to fully let myself get absorbed in Axel’s presence if I were still in love with Ben?
Other signs I’m over Ben:
I haven’t scrolled through his socials in over a week. Or Olivia’s. I continue to ignore him in the halls and barely ever think about him anymore. Except to tell myself I’m over him. Because I am.
And it’s all because of Axel.
Axel, who I can’t stop thinking about.
Axel, whose mere touch sends pulses of electricity to all my lady parts.
Axel, who makes me laugh and smile and spreads happiness and calm through me.
Axel, whose six(plus)-pack looks even more incredible up close. And feels even better pressed up against my not-quite-one-pack.
It’s been one week since the wedding and Axel has taken over my thoughts and my life. When we’re not together, we text nonstop. Or FaceTime. There is nothing sweeter than watching his smile grow at something dorky I said through my phone screen, while trying not to get distracted by the small chain around his neck that only serves to accentuate his broad, often bare shoulders. We also seem to have entered the can’t-keep-our-hands-off-each-other stage of our relationship.
And it’s so much fun.
My phone buzzes on my nightstand. I reach for it from bed and flip it over to see a text from Axel.
Axel: Ready for tonight?
Me: NO! I have no idea where you’re taking me. What am I supposed to wear?
Axel: Something comfortable.
Me: You’ll have to feed me first. I’m hungry.
Axel: Are you trying to figure out if there will be food?
Me: You know how I get when I’m unfed.
Axel: There will be food. And music. But no dancing. That’s all you’re getting. Unless you’re feeling super anxious and then I can tell you a tiny bit more but that’s a green apple situation!
Me: Fine. I won’t be using my green apple card at this time. So, as per usual, I will come and pick you up and you’ll tell me where to go?
Axel: It’s worked well so far for us.
Me: It has.
Axel: I’ve got to get back to work! See you at 7.
Axel and I have been dancing around the terms and conditions of our union since our first kiss. I’ve stopped myself, countless times since the wedding, from bringing it up. The truth is, every time I’ve attempted to, I either get distracted by his lips on mine or I’m too afraid it will jinx things. Because maybe we don’t need a label. Maybe we could just transition from fake-dating to real-dating without having a whole conversation about it. Everyone else in our lives already believes we’ve been dating since the end of August. There’s really no point in making a big deal out of it.
Who am I kidding?
We definitely need to talk about it.
My gut tells me the reason behind this whole surprise date Axel has planned is so he can officially ask me to be his girlfriend. So, I’ll stand by, (im)patiently. Waiting for that moment.
…
He has until midnight.
Then I take matters into my own hands.
I sit up and eye the corner of my bedroom, which is piled with Ben’s belongings. If Axel and I are going to make things official tonight, then I want to start with a clean palette. That means getting rid of everything that reminds me of Ben. Starting with our message thread. I swipe across his name and, without hesitation, hit Delete. And there goes years’ worth of pictures, sweet words, not-so-sweet words, and every conversation we’ve ever had online. Just like that. Gone with one swipe.
I make my way into Mom’s salon feeling ten pounds lighter already. She has Phil Collins blasting and a customer sitting in her chair with layers of foils folded in.
“Jamie!” Mom calls in surprise.
“Do you have a box?” I ask.
“Try the storage room. I should have a couple in there,” she says while checking her client’s progress.
After riffling through Mom’s storage closet, I come out with a decent-sized box marked BioSilk. I stall when I see Olivia standing by Mom’s client. She opens her mouth to say something, but before she can, I ask, “What’re you doing here?”
She crosses her arms, cocking her head to the woman covered in foils. “This is my mom.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding between them. “Well, okay, nice seeing you.” I turn to make my way back up the stairs and Olivia follows me. She closes the door to Mom’s salon so it’s just the two of us in the narrow stairwell with echoes of Uncle Phil playing in the background.
“Can I help you?” I ask, stalled halfway up the stairs, still holding the empty box I plan to fill with her boyfriend’s crap.
“When are you going to stop inserting yourself into my relationship with Ben?”
“Ben asked me to tutor him. It wasn’t my idea.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. Ben and I have moved past that.”
“Then what are you talking about?” I ask, fingers digging into the cardboard box.
“The DM you sent me about Ben texting you. It worked just like you intended. I confronted him and it started a big fight between us.”
“Do you need receipts?” I ask, bluffing, knowing any real proof I have has recently been deleted.
“He showed me the texts, Jamie. He was apologizing to you. Ben has a conscience and can admit when he’s wrong.”
A huff of air escapes me. “Can he?”
“And I have my own proof,” she says, her hands now resting on her hips. “About Axel.”
My jaw clenches. I put down the box and meet Olivia at the bottom of the stairs. “You have nothing. The only reason Axel sat next to you on the roller coaster was to get a rise out of Ben. Clearly it worked, since the two of you are still talking about it.”
“This isn’t about the roller coaster.” She pulls her phone out of her back pocket and types furiously before holding it up to my face. There on the screen is a message from Axel, dated a week after Wonderland. The message from him reads: Do you want to grab a coffee sometime?
Before I can read her responses to him, she pulls back her phone.
“Looks like you had a few things to say besides no.” I swallow, trying to steady my pulse and not show my hand.
“Yeah. I told him to leave me alone because I have a boyfriend. I thought you should see for yourself what Axel has been up to.”
My throat constricts. I can’t let Olivia best me, but I don’t have any smart retorts. Seeing Axel slide into Olivia’s DMs has completely thrown me. Sure, Axel texted Olivia before anything real was happening between us. In Axel’s mind, I had my heart set on getting back together with Ben. And I can’t exactly tell Olivia that. But also…why did he ask out Olivia? And flirt with her. What’s his endgame here? Am I just a consolation prize?
“Why don’t you focus on your relationship and I’ll focus on mine?” I finally say.
“Ben and I are just fine, thank you very much. This is me asking you, girl to girl, to stop with the fake drama and to leave us alone.”
I shake my head and begin walking up the stairs. “Actually,” I say, pausing and turning to face Olivia. I breathe in and out to slow my heart rate and turn the volume down on my emotions. Steady. Calm. Breathe. “Since you’re here, I’d love to hear your side of things. For the sake of closure.” I sit on a step and exhale again. “What happened with you and Ben this summer?”
Olivia sighs. “Oh my god, Jamie. Let it go.”
“Can’t you see it from my point of view? Ben tells me he wasn’t unfaithful. That things with you didn’t happen until after he broke up with me. But I don’t believe him. And maybe if you can validate his story, then I can let go of these angry feelings I’ve been carrying around.” I didn’t mean to lay my cards on the line. To basically strip naked in front of the girl Ben left me for, but I’m getting tired of being lied to. And I just want to know the truth.
Her eyes dart to the doorway, like she wants to be anywhere in the world but here. “We started off as co-workers who became friends who became soulmates.” She takes a hesitant step closer, as my heart hammers in my throat. “I didn’t have an elaborate plan to ‘steal Ben.’ And that’s why I wanted to be honest with you about Axel. He’s sketch, Jamie. Watch yourself.”
I rise and dust off the back of my pants. “Ben isn’t perfect either, Olivia. Aren’t you upset that he hid the fact that I was tutoring him? And if he was so over things between us, then why did he feel it necessary to obnoxiously interrupt Axel and me when we were saying goodnight to one another? So, yeah, I think it’s safe to say as women we both need to watch ourselves.”
Olivia’s eyes meet with mine as a forced smile stretches tightly over her face. “I’ve got to go.”
I nod and watch her walk back into the salon, a burst of music entering the stairwell as she opens the door and fading quickly behind her once it closes.
I make the familiar trek up Ben’s driveway with a half-filled cardboard box in my arms. Luckily, Olivia’s baby-blue BMW is nowhere in sight. I can’t handle a face-to-face interaction with her twice in one day. Twice in a lifetime is more than enough.
This feels like a monumental step for me. Ending the Ben chapter so that I can move forward with Axel, officially. But standing here in front of his door—the door I used to open without knocking, the door I walked through many times before with Ben, the door where we had our first kiss—I second-guess this grown-up move and decide to just leave the box on his porch and run away, like the seventeen-year-old child I am.
I lower the box to the autumn-themed welcome mat and turn to leave after ringing the doorbell once. The windchime on his porch sounds and I stop to observe it. My mom and I bought it as a gift for the Camerons the first Christmas we spent together. Our first Christmas without Dad. Every time I hear the chimes ring, it takes me back to that Christmas Eve night when I stood out here with Ben, helping him hang it.
It had snowed that afternoon, leaving a fresh layer of powder over everything, creating the perfect setting for a homey Christmas celebration. Ben asked me to come out and help him find a spot for the windchime, but I knew it was just a ruse to get me alone. We’d been inseparable since we’d met in July of that year and had made things official at the winter formal the week before, but hadn’t yet sealed it with a kiss.
He was so shy back then. He hadn’t come into his own (still hasn’t, if you ask me). In a way, I liked it because he seemed to follow my lead. Amo Eli joked about how I had Ben wrapped around my finger, and he didn’t know where Ben’s personality ended and mine began. Maybe that was true in the early days, but things shifted the longer we were together.
And I guess it ended when he met Olivia and decided to blend with her personality instead of mine.
“Jamie?”
I freeze, clenching my jaw and taking in a deep breath before turning around. “Hi.”
“What’re you doing here?”
I nod to the box by Ben’s feet. “I dropped off a few of your things.”
His eyes travel down, and when he looks back up at me, a cloud of sadness surrounds him. The sad cloud is contagious and sends a pang of nostalgia through me.
“Thanks. How was the wedding?” he asks.
“It was great.”
A sharp gust of late October wind blows through and the windchime crashes to the ground. We both go to it immediately, crouching down at the same time and bumping our heads.
“Sorry,” we say simultaneously, before smiling.
Ben picks up the windchime; the bottoms are all tangled.
“Good luck unraveling that,” I say as we stand.
“Twisted wires are better than broken pieces. Easier to fix.”
“Sounds like a metaphor or something,” I say, tucking my hands into my sleeves as an awkward puff of laughter escapes. “I’m not so good with those.”
“You are the Homographs Queen. It’s one of the only things you except compliments on.”
“Accept,” I correct him automatically.
“I know, Jamie. I was just goofing around. We can still do that, can’t we?”
I walk to the edge of the porch and grip the railing, looking across the street to Axel’s home. It’s like I’m stuck in some time loop I can’t quite get out of. “I told you. I can’t be your friend. Especially when you keep spreading lies about Axel.”
“I’m not spreading lies.” Ben places the windchime down on the small table perched between two red Adirondack chairs before standing next to me. “Olivia told me about the DM.”
I turn to face him. “Did she show it to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did she show you a screengrab? Or hold her phone up to show you his message? Or did she just tell you about it?”
Ben’s face goes blank as he seems to think over my question. “She just told me about it.”
“Interesting,” I respond.
“What’s interesting?” Ben places his hand on my arm. I look up to find his hazel eyes on mine and I’m transported back to that Christmas Eve night again, standing in the same place, hanging the windchime. Ben grabbed my arm as I was about to go inside. When I turned back to look at him, he froze. It was like he couldn’t get the words out. He couldn’t be the one to make the first move, so I did. I pressed my lips up against his, making it official. Now here we are, almost three years later, in the same place but further apart than we’ve ever been. “What’s interesting, Jamie?”
“Olivia was at my mom’s salon today and showed me the DM. Axel did ask her to go for coffee and there were a string of responses from Olivia. Just as I was starting to read them, she pulled her phone away. So if you ask me, that’s just as sus. Or wait, what’s your favorite word? Shady.”
“Why are you with this guy, Jamie?”
“I guess I’m used to being around shady guys,” I reply, since I can’t admit that technically Axel didn’t do anything wrong by messaging Olivia, although I’m not thrilled that he did. I wrap my arms around myself as some sort of shield. I want to leave. I want to storm away dramatically, but my feet betray me, as if the ground is covered in thick glue. “It’s so ‘funny’ how you ran to Olivia the second we were over. Like it was this big, orchestrated plan the two of you devised. You didn’t even feel sorry or regretful. There was no grieving period.”
“It wasn’t like that, Jamie.”
“Maybe not. But you still betrayed me and what we had by opening your heart to someone else when your heart was supposed to belong to me.”
Ben rakes his fingers through his hair. “You wasted no time moving on with Axel.”
“I had to. You dumped me and the next day, she was already at your house, like this new trophy you were showing off to your family. Did they even ask about me? Ask what happened? What did you tell them?”
“I don’t understand why you insist on rehashing this over and over,” he says, shaking his head and walking away from me.
I follow and step up to him, pointing my finger to his face. “You’re a traitor. You sold me lies. Got me to believe you. Love you. Then you left. Just like my father did.”
“Why are you bringing your father into this? I’m nothing like him.”
“And how would you know?” I say, heat coming off my skin and forming sweat beads along my neck and chest. “You’ve never met him. Is that why you left me for Olivia?”
“Is what why?” he asks, his eyebrows drawn together.
“She’s got the mom and the dad. Going off her car, she lives in a nice house. Her family probably eats dinner together every night. I bet they love you. Tall, handsome, smart. A big protector for their tiny, precious daughter.”
“Jamie, are you alright?” Ben asks, lowering his head to mine.
“I have to go,” I say, taking clumsy steps back from Ben as I try to ignore the burning in my throat. “You may as well throw out everything in that box. It obviously meant nothing to you.” I race down the steps before he has a chance to say anything else and run all the way home without stopping.
If I’m so over Ben, then why did speaking to him just now hurt so much?