Chapter 21 – Brinley #2
Mocha Mart is a funky little shop, with neon signs of coffee cups in the windows and vintage arcade games lined against the walls. It’s a big hangout for high school students, and it’s so loud and bright, you can barely see what’s inside until you open the door.
That’s why I don’t see it coming.
The laughter hits me before I can even process what I’m looking at. Luke sits at a large corner table, surrounded by Ryan, Nate, James, and a group of other older kids I’ve never met. They’re all waiting for something, like a pride of lions stalking a gazelle.
Beau isn’t here.
And I’m the gazelle.
Luke holds up my diary and grins at me, and the ground drops out from under me.
“How?” I choke out. I hid my diary—it’s always hidden—and I don’t know how Luke could have gotten into my room to look for it.
Then it clicks. I left my room because I thought Beau wanted to see me. While I was putting in contacts that sting my eyes and burning myself on the straightener, my brother went into my room and took the most private thing I own.
Luke opens the diary and clears his throat.
“Beau Bishop has the most beautiful hands I’ve ever seen,” he recites in a high, girly voice.
“They’re like an artist’s hands, or the Statue of David’s.
They’re so big and masculine, and I can’t stop thinking about what they look like. I wish I could draw them.”
Ryan and Nate clutch their stomachs as they laugh, and James chuckles darkly. “Does anyone have a picture of Beau’s hands?” Ryan yells. “I need to take another look at those things!”
“Oh, this is my favorite part.” Luke turns to another page.
“When Beau walks into the room, it feels like I’m floating.
I’m like a bubble, light and rainbow-y, except nothing can pop me.
I don’t think he has any idea how handsome he is.
Maybe—” He pauses for Nate to finish laughing.
“Maybe I can tell him one day, so he knows how his eyes look like the bottom of a deep well!”
Luke doubles over laughing and James slaps his back.
I can’t move. I can’t speak. I feel like I’m watching this happen to someone else, like I’m floating above my own body. Then the floating stops, and the pain is so total that I think I might throw up.
Because Beau walks in.
For one fraction of a second—one desperate, pathetic heartbeat—I think he’s here to stop it. He didn’t know their plans. He came to save me.
The guys greet him like a punchline arriving on cue.
“There he is!” Nate grins.
“The man of the hour!” says Luke.
“Did you know you purse your lips when you concentrate?” Ryan howls. “Because Brinley did. She wrote all about it.”
Beau just stands there. He doesn’t laugh with the guys, but he doesn’t cross the room. He doesn’t snatch my diary out of Luke’s hands. He doesn’t put himself between me and them, shielding me from my own vulnerable worlds they’re hurling around like weapons.
He just puts his hands in his pockets and rolls his eyes. “Hey, stop. Luke, come on. Don’t be a dick.”
Casual. Mild. Like he’s suggesting they change the channel, not watching my heart get destroyed.
It’s not like I expected him to put on some big display to protect my honor, but he could have said something.
Something to remind them that I’m a person, not a carnival act.
Even if he doesn’t like me, even if he only sees me as some annoying little girl, Beau’s a good guy.
Would he really just stand by why they humiliate me?
Apparently, yes. He would.
Because I’m nothing to him.
In that moment I know with terrible clarity that I’m not worth the risk of protecting. Not to Beau. Not to any of them. I’m the expendable one—the permanent audience member who wandered onstage, and they’re putting me back in my seat where I belong.
The texts were never from Beau. He looks exactly like someone who just arrived, not someone who planned this—but it doesn’t matter. He’s here. He sees what’s happening. And his version of helping is muttering “don’t be a dick” in a completely indifferent voice.
The tears come all at once, dropping down my cheeks. My vision gets blurry because I’ve never cried with contacts in. I hate that I’m crying. I hate that I’m giving that to them.
Luke’s smile gets smaller when he sees the tears. “Brin, it’s just a joke. Lighten up.”
Nothing about this is a joke, I want to scream.
That diary was the most real thing I had and they turned it into nothing.
Rage makes me stomp across the room and yank the diary out of Luke’s hands.
I shove him back against the table with all my strength, and he falls back a step, knocking over glasses. That wipes the smile off his face.
“I hate you.” My voice sounds raw. Wrecked. “I hate you and I never want to speak to you again.”
I mean Luke. I mean all of them, all his horrible, miserable friends. My eyes sweep the room and land on Beau last. I hold his gaze for one searing second. I want him to see what he did by doing nothing. I want him to carry it.
Then I spin on my heel and rush toward the door with the tattered fragments of my dignity.
The contacts blur my vision, tears and saline and lenses I put in for a boy who let me burn. I rip them out and throw them down on the sidewalk. Thank god I put my glasses in my purse, just in case. I put them back on with shaking hands.
By the time I get back to my room, the grief is already calcifying into something harder.
Something with edges. I fall to my knees on the floor.
Then I open the diary and rip out every page about him.
I shred them to pieces with my bare hands.
I sit on my bedroom floor, surrounded by confetti that used to be my heart.
I think, with a coldness that surprises even me, I’m going to get them all back. I don’t know how yet. But I will.