Page 22 of You Started It

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Jamie, we need to talk,” Ben says. We’re parked on his street after watching a terrible movie he suggested and having a subpar dinner (also his recommendation). “Let’s go for a walk, get some fresh air.”

“It’s the middle of November and freezing,” I remind him.

“Just for a few minutes. We can walk off those garlic breadsticks,” he says with a sincere smile.

“Fine.” I unbuckle the seatbelt and step out of my car. As Ben comes around, I hike up the zipper to my coat and throw on my hood. He extends his hand but I shrug to show him mine are in my jacket pockets. “What’s up?” I ask as we begin walking.

“You were really quiet over dinner.”

“It was loud in the restaurant,” I say, even though the truth is I couldn’t get the image of Olivia and Axel out of my head.

“Then is there a reason you cowered every time I tried to touch you?”

“I didn’t cower.”

“You cower every time I try to touch you.” Ben stands in front of me. We’re stopped in the middle of the road. Scattered streetlights dot the ground with halos of light. “What’re we doing here, Jamie?”

I shrug again, picking at the inseams of my pockets.

“I thought we were trying to give our relationship another chance,” he says. “But it feels like I’m the only one trying.”

“I don’t know what you expect from me. You dumped me for another girl, and then when that relationship ended, you came crawling back—and what? You thought I would just run into your arms and be so grateful?”

Ben runs a hand over his face and sighs. “You have a relationship with your dad. We’re going to the formal together. It’s everything you wanted and you’re still not happy.”

He’s right. I do have everything I thought I wanted. But that was before. Before I ran over Axel’s bike. Before he held my hand. Before he rubbed the tip of his nose against mine. Before the dancing, the kissing, the laughing, the talks. Before Axel, I was asleep, but he woke me up. And now? I’m in some sort of weird purgatory where I just exist. I can’t go back to how things were because I don’t want to and I can’t move forward because I don’t know how.

A car horn sounds and we jump. Ben pulls me to the side of the road as a baby-blue BMW speeds past us and stops abruptly in front of Axel’s house, breaks squeaking.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ben says. He stampedes over to Axel’s. I follow behind with a bit more reluctance.

Olivia gets out of her car and slams her door, eyes searing into Ben’s. “What?”

“What?” Ben practically shouts. “You’re hanging out with this guy now? After you promised me there was nothing going on?” Axel gets out of the car and spots me on the street. We share a moment of solidarity as we stand on the receiving ends of this awkward encounter between exes.

“I can hang out with whoever I want. Interesting you seem to think you get a say, seeing as you ran right back to her ,” Olivia says. She doesn’t even look at me when she says it. Like I’m not worth the effort. “Heard you’re going to the formal together.” She crosses her arms over her chest.

“We’re not…” I interject. “I mean we are, but we’re not officially back together or anything,” I say, fumbling my words.

“Looks like you’re back together,” Olivia says. “At least that’s what Ben is telling everyone.”

“Ben?” I ask, feeling my face tighten.

He turns to me. “I don’t understand why you’re acting so surprised. What exactly do you think we’ve been doing the last two weeks?”

“We’re just hanging out. We haven’t been”—I pause, searching for the right word—“intimate.”

I glance over at Axel. His expression softens at my TMI reveal.

Olivia barks out a laugh. “Hilarious.”

“At least I can trust Jamie,” Ben says to Olivia. “She doesn’t DM other guys secretly behind my back.”

“That’s rich. No, seriously,” Olivia says, getting in Ben’s face. “Like you’re in any position to talk about secrets.”

As soon as Olivia finishes the sentence, Ben reaches for me, ignoring the brick wall I’ve been building in my mind. “Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Axel says. I stand still, looking between Ben and Axel, Olivia just outside my line of vision. “I think it’s time Jamie finally learns the truth.”

“Come on, Jamie, we don’t need to hear this,” Ben says, his hand now wrapped around my wrist. My feet stay planted where they are.

“No.” I twist my arm free from Ben’s grasp. “I want to hear what Axel has to say.”

Silence descends on the four of us. My eyes meet Axel’s, pleading with him to say something. He bites on his lower lip, his gaze moving between everyone. “I did slide into Olivia’s DMs after Wonderland, but it wasn’t so I could get with her. I was digging for information.”

Olivia squints her eyes at Axel. “What information?”

Axel focuses his attention on me. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to fully move on until you got the closure you needed from your relationship with Ben. And I knew you’d only get that closure once you learned the truth about what happened between him and Olivia at camp.”

“Jamie knows what happened. Nothing,” Ben interrupts.

“Let him speak,” I say to Ben, while keeping my eyes locked on Axel.

“I wanted an opportunity to speak to Olivia face-to-face, so I asked her to grab a coffee. But she basically told me to screw off and that she was with Ben. When I tried to explain that I wasn’t actually asking her out, she said she didn’t believe me and told me to stop messaging her. So I did.”

“Told you I didn’t do anything wrong,” Olivia says, glaring at Ben.

“Okay. But what’s this about?” I ask, waving my hand between Axel and Olivia. “Are you with Olivia now?”

“No!” Axel and Olivia say in unison.

A knifelike pain pierces through my stomach. I rub my hand over my lower abdomen and Axel’s eyes meet mine.

“Green apple?” he asks.

“Green apple,” I respond quietly.

“You can come inside if you need to,” Axel offers.

“Why are you and Olivia hanging out?” I ask again, ignoring my stomach cramp. “I saw her leaving your house a couple weeks ago, so this clearly isn’t just a one-time thing.”

“Wounded birds nest together,” Olivia says, crossing her arms over her chest. “We both needed someone to talk to. Someone who would understand what we’re going through. I didn’t realize Axel was just using me.” She glares at Axel, who is still looking at me.

“You talked to Olivia about me? About us?” I ask, feeling my face scrunch up. Another piercing pain shoots through my stomach.

“She told me the truth,” Axel says. “Ben kissed her before he broke up with you.”

“Is that true?” I ask Ben, this interaction giving me whiplash. He bows his head low and I step right up to him. “Answer me.”

“It was a mistake and I told Olivia we couldn’t do anything else until I spoke to you.”

“I knew it,” I say, shaking my head.

“I stopped it from going any further,” Ben says, probably thinking that it makes what happened okay. “I slipped up.”

“And then you lied about it. Repeatedly.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he says.

A stunted laugh escapes me. “Is that why you unceremoniously dumped me the day you came back from camp?”

“I’m not sure what you think I should have done instead. At least I didn’t ghost you.”

“Oh. At least,” I say, repeating Ben’s words back. “The fact that you thought we could get back together without telling me the truth first…Is that how little you respect me? After three years of being my boyfriend, you didn’t think I deserved to know the truth?”

“No. It’s not like that. I just knew you were hurting over Axel and I was hurting over Olivia and thought it might be…I don’t know what I thought,” Ben says, raking both hands through his hair.

“Apparently,” Olivia says, hurt radiating in her voice. “You can’t just ping-pong back and forth between girls, messing with their emotions, Ben. It’s not fair.”

I run my hands over my face. “So what’s this?” I ask Axel, nodding to Olivia. “You two are besties now? Divulging secrets? Sharing war stories? Trash-talking me?”

“No.” Axel remains still, his voice shaky. “We’re just hanging out.”

“Out of all the people you could hang out with, you choose Olivia?” I study him, trying to read his face as he rubs the back of his neck. “You did it to get me to react. Admit it.”

“I wanted to find out the truth, for you. But yeah.” He sighs, his shoulders slumped. “I guess I kept hanging out with her because I thought you were back with Ben and I wanted to…”

“Hurt me.” I finish the sentence for him. “Did you tell her the truth about us?”

“What truth?” Ben asks, stepping closer.

Axel gives me a pleading look but I ignore it. “Axel and I faked our entire relationship,” I say, a forced laugh coming out. “All of it. I needed someone to help me get you back and Axel had his own reasons for playing along. None of it was real.”

Ben shakes his head in validation. “I knew you could never go for a guy like him.”

Olivia’s mouth falls open. “Axel didn’t tell me that.”

“No.” Axel looks me square in the eye, ignoring the others. “It may have started that way, but it was real. You can’t deny that.” He swallows before taking a cautious step toward me. “Can we talk? Alone?”

“I wanted to talk to you earlier tonight, but clearly I wasn’t worth your time. You had better places to be. I feel so stupid.”

“I should get going,” Olivia says, walking back to her car. She looks at Ben once more before getting in and driving away. Ben comes up to me but I put my hand out to stop him.

“I can’t right now,” I say. “You need to go home.”

His shoulders lower in defeat and he sighs dramatically before walking past me on his way to his house.

And then there were two.

“I’m sorry, Jamie. I misread the situation. I reacted emotionally.” Axel covers his face with both hands like he’s masking a scream. He takes in a deep breath and looks at me. “You stopped talking to me. And then I thought you were with Ben. I admit that I tried to make you jealous. It was dumb. But I never said a bad word about you to Olivia. I was just hurt.”

“Hurt people hurt people,” I say quietly, almost to myself.

“You have to believe that the only reason I sent Olivia that DM was to get the truth. For you. For us.”

“There is no us.” I shut my eyes and take in a deep breath before releasing it. “It’s gotten too messy. We’ve both said and done things we regret, things we can’t take back. It’s probably best we just cut ties.” When Axel doesn’t respond, I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Do you still have the contract I gave you at Kit’s?”

“It’s in my room.”

“Could you please go and get it?” I ask, struggling to maintain eye contact. He nods and heads inside his house. I walk back to Ben’s, get in my car, and drive it to Axel’s. I park in front of his home. The exact same spot I ran over his bike on the night we met.

Axel returns with the contract in hand. I grab a pen from my glove compartment and meet Axel at the front of my car. “You received the money for Betty White?”

He nods as I check that item off the list.

“I helped you film multiple TikToks and I lived up to playing the role of supportive Arab girlfriend, even attending your cousin’s wedding.”

“You did.”

More checks.

“And I helped you get a job with Eli. The only part of this contract I didn’t completely live up to was providing you with rides to school until Christmas break, but I think you can understand the circumstances behind me being unable to fulfil that.”

Axel exhales. His lips part but I speak before he can.

“As for you,” I continue, “you have lived up to all the terms and agreements on your end of the contract…and then some.” I place the contract on the hood of my car and hand the pen to Axel, pointing to the line that has been left unsigned for nearly three months. “Please sign here.”

He takes the pen but hesitates. “What about item number four? The bucket list. We were supposed to go to those places together,” he says, with what appears to be hope in his eyes.

“I will no longer be needing your company.” I point my chin to the contract, keeping my tough exterior as Axel’s vulnerability is on full display. He nods before finally signing the contract. Once he does, I pick it up and tear it in half.

“Our relationship, fake and otherwise, is now terminated. Thank you for your help. I can take it from here.”

The torn pages slip from my hand and fall slowly to the road. I get back into my car and immediately drive away. I am done with relationships. And boys. And people. All I need to get by in life is myself.

All this time, Mom was right.

Next goal: learn how to do life alone and get to a toilet, ASAP.