Chapter 26
I hardly hear from Jake in the weeks following our last Discord chat. I send him a few texts asking if he’s okay and if he’s free to hang out, and try to break the ice by sending him a couple of funny Instagram posts or TikToks I think he’ll like, but the most I get is the thumbs-up emoji.
It’s worse than if he just left me on read.
I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if I can fix it.
I thought finding out that Jake had feelings for me and I didn’t have some enormously unrequited crush would be the best thing in the world, that I’d be over the moon, but I’m left with this hollow ache in my chest, and whenever I think about it, it’s hard to breathe.
Is this what heartbreak feels like?
Except…I’m not sure that’s what it is.
I keep picturing his face and the tears in his eyes, the betrayal that cracked his voice, and it just feels lonely. And then I keep thinking about Max shielding me from the chill and saying, “Because—because—” and feeling the ghost of his lips on mine.
Max hasn’t tried to reach out to me, either. We never swapped numbers, but it’s not as if I’m hard to find on social media the way he is. He could DM me if he wanted to.
Which, clearly, he doesn’t.
His radio silence doesn’t hurt as much as Jake’s does, but it still stings.
I can only assume that he’s keeping a distance from me for Jake’s sake, for their friendship.
It’s harder for them to avoid each other when they have classes together and are on the same soccer team, I suppose, and I can’t really blame him.
I’d do the same in his shoes, wouldn’t I?
It was just a kiss, though. One conversation and one kiss, and it doesn’t matter if it’s all I keep thinking about, because Jake and I have a foundation so much stronger than that.
I keep scrolling back through the Discord to prove that to myself, every time I’m tempted to reach out to Max on his latent Instagram account.
I cannot throw it all away for a boy who barely even speaks to me.
I know Anissa talks to Jake; sometimes, I see messages from @runicrascal flash up on her phone screen when we’re hanging out in the art rooms at lunch.
And two weeks after the party, Jake uploads an Instagram photo of him and Anissa at the Argonauta concert, the one Max told me about that time he drove me home.
Max isn’t in the photo. He and Jake must not have patched things up too well, if Anissa’s taken his place.
I can’t bring myself to hold it against Anissa the way I did with Max. Max felt like an interloper; the fact Anissa and Jake even interacted at all is my doing. And she’s so nice, so warm, I don’t begrudge her the friendship—even if it does feel like it’s at the cost of my own.
My friendship with the other girls is on thin ice, too. Every message in the group chat feels stilted, I keep avoiding the morning Costa runs, and Daphne and I still aren’t talking.
Chloe corners me one day to ask, “What’s going on with you two? Did you have a fight?”
Daphne clearly hasn’t told them how awful I was to her, which makes no sense to me, so I settle for shrugging and saying, “Nothing. We’re fine.” Which we both know is a blatant lie, but it’s the only way I can think to get out of it.
I’m the one in the wrong, though, so I do Daphne the favor of withdrawing from the group as much as I can, even if I have classes with Nikita and Evie I can’t avoid. In media lessons, Daphne has taken to sitting at an empty desk at the back of the room—as far away from me as she can get.
And if the girls notice I’m spending more time with Anissa instead of them, they don’t confront me about it.
Nikita sees the Instagram photo from the Argonauta concert and asks if I want her to hex the man-stealing witch, but the laugh I give in response is high and false, and we don’t talk about it again.
I don’t talk about much of anything with them these days, actually.
—
In the end, I retreat into the Discord. I have eighteen tabs open on my phone with different fanfictions I’m reading, and upload a couple more one-shots myself.
Mostly they’re about Lady di Silver trying to muddle through conflicting attraction to the Moonwalker and her long-standing bond with Devon.
I, obviously, can’t relate at all.
I do venture to the dark side, though, and read some of the Moonsilver ship fics that I find linked in the Discord.
I start painting more, too, feeling consumed by the need to actually finish the pieces I’m working on.
Dark, moody scenes of Lady di Silver and Devon standing on opposite sides of the horse they shared in season one, unable to look at each other.
A busy ballroom in a more fuzzy style with too-bright colors where she twirls across the floor, caught between the Moonwalker and Devon.
Her abandoned vanity strewn with weapons and jewels in a place that never really felt like home anyway.
It’s cathartic. So much so I’m almost annoyed at how well the fandom, the artwork, all of it, is helping my messy emotions feel a little less overwhelming.
Even if I can’t make sense of them yet, it’s helpful to process it through this medium, to express it without having to make it so personal.
I get a weird sense of satisfaction from the paint splotches staining my hands and fingernails, a sense of real triumph when I finish a piece.
I finally see why those girls wrote that eight-hundred-thousand-word OWAR fanfic, why Max devotes so much time to perfecting his Moonwalker cosplay.
Art has always been a fun outlet, a distraction, but this is…
It’s the equivalent of a kiss that makes you weak in the knees and too dizzy to think straight. It feels like finally being able to breathe.
It’s so silly, because it’s obviously not going to fix anything.
But…it does make me feel a little less at sea.
I don’t watch much more of the show, instead rewatching old episodes.
The new content feels tainted and leaves me with an ashy taste in my mouth now that I can’t share it with Jake.
I don’t want to annoy him, and he obviously isn’t interested in talking to me—even in the Discord.
Our chat’s been dead since we agreed to be friends.
Which is the greatest goddamn irony of all.
I’d give up The Fangirl Project and my crush and even—especially—that kiss, if it just meant I got my friends back.
That’s when I realize that I even miss Max.
Putting the kiss aside, he was…I mean, he was there for me at the party, wasn’t he?
And he drove me home that time. He put me on to the audiobooks, and Argonauta has become a firm fixture in my Spotify listens since he introduced me to them.
And after our conversation through the bathroom door, I realize that I misjudged him a lot, too.
I keep replaying what he said about being himself and not living his life for other people. His cosplay doesn’t seem so mortifyingly cringeworthy, in that light.
I think about it every time I debate over what to wear to school and trawl Instagram to see if the girls have posted a fit check yet that morning—it’s habit, at this point, even if I’m avoiding our morning Costa trips for now.
Jake’s voice rings in my head, shouting at me for being so shallow.
But I guess I don’t know how to be otherwise, and I keep picking outfits based on what the others are wearing. At least, I figure, it’ll help me fade into the background.
November slips past with the weather as gray and dismal as my mood, and then I’m kept blessedly distracted by extra shifts at H the light is on, and it’s Daphne—pink-cheeked and seething, her arms crossed tightly.
The latch flips back into place on the other side of the door, and I rattle the handle uselessly.
“Evie! What the hell?”
“You two need to sort this out! We’re all sick of you both doing the whole cold-shoulder thing.”
“But—”
And then Chloe’s voice joins in from the other side of the door, too, shouting, “Whatever’s gone on, you two need to talk through it and hear each other out. Then you can either make up or decide you’re not friends anymore. We’re going to get coffees; we’ll be back in half an hour.”
Nikita calls, “Try not to kill each other!” Then her voice drops, but I can still hear her through the door. “Wait, Evie, are there scalpels in there? Should we have checked?”
“We’re not going to kill each other!” Daphne and I both shout back, and share a look. Her mouth purses, and I swallow a huff. There’s the sound of the other girls walking away, though, leaving us stuck in here until they let us out.
Daphne sighs, moving to the corner to sit on a stack of boxes. She doesn’t quite look at me as she asks, “Did Evie tell you she needed help reaching the top shelf, too?”
“We’re not even that much taller than her. Why did we fall for it?”
She rolls her eyes, but it feels good-natured. “Because she’s Evie.”
I hesitate before taking a seat, too. I get stuck sitting on the floor, since there aren’t any other boxes to perch on, and I wrap my arms around my knees. “They sound like the couples’ counselor my parents see. Talk through your problems, hear where the other person is coming from.”
“How’s that working for them?”
I snort.
“Oh. You…um, you never…mentioned anything.”