3. Feral, Allegedly
FERAL, ALLEGEDLY
JUNIE
My high school guidance counselor once called me feral, but she justified it by saying she didn’t expect anything less when I was being raised in a frat house.
Turns out Miss Jones was only twenty-three and attended one of Fen’s house parties. The one where I dumped tuna juice on the crotch of some girl’s pants when she stripped naked to go down a Slip ’N Slide in my backyard after telling me I was bringing down the vibe by being there.
In my own fucking house. Three months after my mother had passed away.
Sometimes I wish I had inherited the failing business and Nolan got the haunted house instead of the other way around. Unfortunately for me, the one thing my mother did do was bequeath her ancestral possessions to her spawn.
Now, my house feels like the only thing my mother left behind that still feels…untouched. Like if I hold onto it hard enough, nothing else can disappear.
Closing my eyes, I attempt to meditate away those wild feelings that are crawling up my neck, but it’s intensely hard to do when I’m stuck in a garage apartment owned by Cole freaking Whittaker.
I mean, the ways I could fuck with him are endless. But there’s a thread of doubt that keeps me from going completely savage.
Pouring more wine into my glass, I groan because now I owe that pushy lady a thank you for this.
The apartment is much nicer than I was expecting when I first walked up those stairs, and I wish I could poke around a little, but my mind won’t shut up about what’s to come.
I can’t even count on Fen or Hudson as a distraction because they’re leaving in a few hours.
When my options are myself or Cole, who I know is still awake because I had the misfortune of looking up and making eye contact with him through my bedroom window earlier, I choose myself. Sighing, I make my way out to the stairs.
It’s cool out, but considering summer in Boston is like a gym rat’s armpit, the fresh air that flows in from the ocean is refreshing. I sit on the top step that overlooks the water and do the one thing Fenway told me not to do.
I scroll.
Today, Grace posted her baby registry along with a slew of photos. The cover photo is her sitting in a pile of her shit outside of my house, crying fake tears, gaining sympathy like it’s her job.
My heart splinters a little more. I didn’t think that was possible after Cole demolished the organ when I was eighteen. Thanks for reminding me it’s in there, Grace.
I scoff. Seriously, who sleeps with their best friend’s boyfriend?
Someone who was never your friend to begin with.
I swallow hard. That voice sounds suspiciously like Cole’s, and I can’t afford to have him in my head. Not here.
Knowing I shouldn’t focus on the wreckage of my life, I continue to scroll, feeling worse by the second. How long was I holding onto a one-sided friendship just so I wouldn’t feel so lonely?
The TikTok notifications are still rolling in, like an earthquake with continuous aftershocks.
Your video has 2M new views.
Your video has 5K new comments.
I swipe through the damage with the manic energy of someone picking a scab. Yes, it’s bad for me. Yes, it’ll leave a gnarly scar. No, I can’t stop.
Someone auto-tuned my “I’m not sorry” speech into a dance remix that’s now also going viral.
The famous influencer SassyTalk is now doing a series on it that’s bringing in viewers at an alarming rate.
My newest video, where I told the world that she slept with my boyfriend, in my house, where she lived rent-free, is being suppressed by the one Grace spliced together, omitting her bad behavior but keeping my colorful language.
It only takes three swipes for me to come across the original video of myself. The woman staring out of the screen doesn’t even look like me. This girl really is…ferine. She’s mascara-smeared and magnificent, saying things I’ve swallowed for twenty-four years.
She’s also the reason no one will hire me.
The lump in my throat gets bigger.
Callahan Analytics was the center of every spreadsheet I’ve ever made for my life. My five-year plans, the career trajectory I mapped out in the school library long after I should have been in bed. All of it was torched by sixty seconds of spite.
It wasn’t just a job. It was the plan. The one I started to formulate in the fourth grade at career day.
The one my mom pinky-promised to show up to.
And as I sat, listening to Christy Callahan’s mom talk about life balance and how numbers never lie, I understood once and for all that lies were all my mother was capable of.
That’s the day I chose the Callahan path. Years later, I made their company my mission. And now it’s gone too.
Hudson’s words when he rescued me from the Bagelry ring in my head. “One of these days, you’ll figure out that all that spite you wield to protect yourself is really just what ruins your joy.”
I shove that memory down and keep scrolling.
It takes even less time to land on Grace’s I.Am.Sorry account because of the sheer quantity of posts she’s made. Toxic acid swirls through my gut.
She has new videos pinned to the top. The first one I click on is of me tossing her stuff out my window with her crying into the camera. The caption she chose? This is what she did to me after I told her the truth.
It has 3.1 million views. A million more than the bar video.
Her second video is of her with perfect lighting and perfect tears. “I lost my best friend, and I don’t know how to heal. I just don’t understand what I did to deserve this.”
What you did? I want to throw my phone into the ocean.
You slept with Paul. You’re pregnant by someone else’s boyfriend.
You told me at my graduation party with all my acquaintances present, not while we were getting ready to go out in the privacy of my bedroom. You knew exactly what you were doing!
It’s clear in the comments section that the viewers don’t have any context. All people see is a crying woman sitting in the wreckage of her belongings, pregnant, on a sidewalk, and the monster who threw them there.
She’s unhinged.
Classic narcissist behavior.
Grace, you have nothing to be sorry for.
Her account name is genius, and I hate that I recognize it. I.Am.Sorry. It sounds like an apology. It’s designed to make the audience say you have nothing to apologize for. She was always smarter than people gave her credit for.
I scroll again. A video of Grace holding up a torn book, another of her showing screenshots of death threats she says she’s received. Each video is more polished than the last. Each one with more followers, more sympathy, more love.
My hands are shaking. How can she be benefiting off of my pain that she caused, while I lost everything?
A text notification pops up from Fen. He’s never slept normal hours.
Juniper and Her Berries:
Fen: Jesus, Spite-Berry. This thing is spiraling.
Hudson: Dare I ask?
What the hell is he still doing up?
Nolan: Answer your fucking phone, Junie.
Fen: Seriously. The fucking audacity. She must have bots scanning her I.Am.Sorry account. The second someone defends Junie, it’s gone. Wiped as though it never existed.
Fen: This means war.
Hudson: I’m not bailing you out of jail again.
Nolan: Keep it legal, but I’d be okay with some of Grace’s dirty laundry being aired.
Pulling my knees up to my chest, I allow my forehead to fall as I continue to scroll through the decimation of my carefully curated life.
I feel him before I see him. It’s always been this way between us. He’s silent as he climbs the stairs, then a tiny clink and the scent of mangos fill my nose.
“It’s a mango magnesium blend,” he says, but I don’t lift my head.
He sits on the stair below me, and his body heat warms my bare legs. His scent makes my heart hurt. It hasn’t changed at all—sandalwood and clean laundry with a hint of citrus.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks. The only sounds are the rolling waves and some aggressively loud wind chimes in the nighttime breeze.
“You don’t have to drink it, but Nana Mae says it helps.”
His words blanket me in a comfort I no longer accept from him.
“You still can’t sleep,” I say, and he shifts as though he’s uncomfortable. We used to know everything about each other.
“Neither can you, apparently.”
“I have two million people calling me unhinged and a million more calling me the queen of petty. What’s your excuse?”
He opens his mouth, but no words come out, and I roll my eyes.
Abruptly, he turns to face me.
Up close, it catches me off guard. How the green of his eyes reflects the moonlight that seems to highlight the pain that lives there.
“Honestly?” He drags his knuckles across his jaw. “That reunion was a fucking disaster, and it was all my fault.”
“Is that what this is?” There’s no malice in my tone. Even my snark seems to be on vacation. This is what happens around him. My defenses set down their weapons without ever asking their general for direction.
“I don’t know, Junie—per. I—us—this. Fuck. This is weird, right?”
I snort in a lame attempt at shielding my emotions from this man. “Yeah, that hug was…rough.”
A bark of laughter rips from his chest. I hate that it still covers me like a familiar sweater.
“I panicked.”
“I noticed.” Did you see that I was dying inside? Did you feel my sadness like you used to?
Another silence falls over us, so I pick up the mug of tea simply to have something to do.
“The comments are brutal,” I say quietly.
Silence has never had a space between us.
“Someone made a compilation of all the things I said and set it to that Sarah McLachlan song. You know…” My gaze dips to his for less than a second before I tear it away.
“The sad dog commercial one they play at Christmastime?”
“Stop reading them, Junie.”
“Right. Let me just snap my fingers and pretend none of this is happening. Grace—” My voice cracks, and he lifts his arms as though he’s about to comfort me.
I don’t know if that would help or make things worse, but I’m relieved when he drops them without making contact.
“Grace is a knob goblin who never deserved you.” There’s a fierceness to his tone that I don’t remember.
“But people like her, Cole.” Something we both know I’ve always struggled with. My mother said I was aggressively unlovable at times, and I keep proving her right.
He sucks in an audible breath that I ignore.
“She’s waging a war against me that I have no chance of winning, and she’s the one who got pregnant by my boyfriend. I guess it should tell you something when she was my only option for a friend.”
“She’s not.” He curses under his breath, and I sit up taller. “She’s not your only friend, Junie.”
My eyes burn with unshed anger.
“Fen—”
Fen. Right. Fenway’s my friend. Hudson is my friend.
Not him. Not Cole. Not anymore.
“Fenway’s the PR expert here,” he says. “He may not have anticipated how far Grace would take this, but he won’t make that mistake again.
And those people online, they don’t know you, Junie.
They saw a sixty second video of one of the worst moments of your life and decided they understood everything. They don’t.”
I force my gaze to meet his and stay there.
“Do you?” I ask. “Do you understand everything?”
So many stories play behind his eyes, but now there’s a wall there too. An arbitrary boundary he set to keep me out, and that hurts more than anything Grace has done.
“No, Junie. I don’t understand everything. But what I do know is that you deserved better.” This time he’s the one to look away. “From them, and from me.”
It’s the only acknowledgment he’s ever given that he knows how much he hurt me by leaving the way he did. It also tells me that I may never get the answers I want about why.
“Where do I go from here?” Somehow, I’ve fallen back into the safety of our friendship, except this time, I don’t know who I am anymore and I’m afraid I’ll drown before I escape.
Because this version of me is the scared little girl who used to curl up on her front porch, begging someone to see her, but knowing deep down that everything she wanted would be ripped away eventually.
And maybe that’s the problem. He’s always been able to see me, and now I can’t protect myself without knowing who I can become.
“Fuck if I know, Junie.” He sighs, and some of the tension leaves his back and shoulders. “Why don’t we start with what we can do, huh?”
“Great. What’s that?” There’s my snark…of course she couldn’t stay away for long.
“Well, Viper…”
Warmth. It begins in my chest and spreads outward at an alarming rate. That nickname should not make me feel good.
“For starters, why don’t we work on being friends again, in real life, without social media?” He holds my gaze for a long moment. He used to be able to read all my expressions. Can he see the emptiness in me now?
“Friends, hmm?”
He nods, his lips ticking up on the right side, like he believes friendship is all he has to offer.
“Friends.” It’s not acceptance. It’s not forgiveness.
It’s not even a truce.
It’s just…something. Somewhere between spite and us.
We sit in the silence until the sky begins to lighten. We don’t get into my asshole ex or what the comments say. I don’t ask about his life or his equally shitty ex. We just…exist. In the same space. Breathing the same air.
I’m not even sure what I want from Cole anymore, but I do know him. He’s planning to fix me up, get me steady on my feet, then send me back to Boston—just another pit stop in his life.
And I can’t do that again.
My exit strategy has to be clean, efficient, set in stone so I don’t fall back into the easy comfort of what used to be.
Do the job. Collect the check. Make a new plan. Move on.
“I should try to get a little sleep before I have to pretend to be a functioning employee,” I say as I stand.
Do the job. Collect the check. Make a new plan. Move on.
Easy.
He rises with me and shocks the hell out of me when he tugs me into a hug that doesn’t allow for any awkwardness between us. I stand frozen for five full seconds before I find myself returning the embrace.
When he finally pulls away, a tiny seizure clenches my heart—a thumping and a pounding that feels like a second chance. This isn’t going to be easy.
“Nana Mae wants to see you at nine. She has…plans,” he says with the crooked smile that made me fall in love with him when I was sixteen.
I take a step backward. “Should I be scared?”
“Terrified,” he teases.
The corner of my mouth twitches, but I don’t allow a smile.
“Good night, Juniper.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say Junie, but I’m already struggling to find my equilibrium. “Good night, Cole.”
I step inside my apartment as the sky glows in shades of pink and gold, knowing if I don’t figure out how to protect my heart against the one who still holds it, what’s left of my life will blow up in my face too.
And that would be an explosion I’d never recover from.