Page 124 of Gamebreaker

So I sat on my bathroom floor and breathed with my best friend on speakerphone for a full minute, her slow, exaggerated inhales and exhales coming through the phone like a metronome, until my lungs remembered how.

"I slept with Cam," I finally managed.

"Oh, honey."

"And it was perfect. Mia, it was so perfect, and I had to leave, and I left, and now I'm on my bathroom floor looking like a Jackson Pollock painting, and my hair..." My voice cracked straight down the middle. "I didn't even wear a bonnet."

In any other universe, it would have been the funniest line I'd said all week.

"Tell me what happened," Mia said quietly.

So I did. Not all of it. Some of it was mine, and some of it was Cam's, and I'd learned the hard way what happened when you told the wrong stories out loud. But I told her enough.

"She didn't even fight me on it," I said. "I kind of wanted her to. Isn't that sick? I wanted her to grab my arm and say, no, stay, I'll do it, I'll tell everyone. And she just stood there. Because she knew she couldn't. Because she respected me too much to lie."

"That's not sick. That's grief."

"I think I'm falling in love with her." It came out in a whisper, like if I said it any louder, it would be true. "I might already be. And I don't know how to make it stop."

"You don't make it stop," Mia said gently. "Not yet. You just learn to carry it. And eventually, it hurts less. Not because you stop caring, but because you learn to hold both at once. That it was real, and that it couldn't work."

"That's a terrible answer."

"I know. But it's the true one." She paused. "I'm coming over."

"No. You and Laine have had today planned for weeks, and I'm not going to be the reason you cancel it." I wiped my face with the back of my hand. "I just needed to hear your voice. I needed someone to know I did the right thing, even though it feels like I'm dying."

"You did the right thing. You held your boundary."

"Then why does it hurt so much?"

"Because it would have been easier if she'd been terrible. If you could hate her instead of understanding her."

God, that was exactly it.

"Mia? Can you call Isla? Ask her to have Trish check on Cam?" My throat closed. I saw her again, barefoot in that big empty entryway, her hands hanging at her sides like she didn't know what to do with them. "She looked devastated. And I can't be the one to take care of her right now. But I need to know that someone will."

There was a long silence on the line.

"You're sitting on your bathroom floor crying," Mia said finally, her voice wobbling, "and you're asking me to make sure she's okay."

"Will you?"

"Yeah, babe. I'll call Isla as soon as we hang up. And I'm coming over in a while, and you're not going to fight me on it. Not right now."

"You really don't have to."

"I know I don't. That's what makes it love."

"Gross. Sappy." I laughed, and it came out wet and broken. "Go back to sleep. Love you."

"Love you too. I'll be there this afternoon, and you can't stop me."

We hung up. I sat there for a long time, staring at the bathroom door.

Then I stood up, looked at my hair again, and knew what I had to do.

You can't just shower curls like mine after a night like that. Not without paying for it.