Trying to live

Chapter 42

I felt a pang in my heart. I mean what about our tutoring sessions, what about our days at the F.T.D. classes in the auditorium? Did nothing matter? I mean, yes we kissed but before we kissed, we had this kind of banter going on between us. 

Now, he was just the guy he turned out to be when we broke up.

"Em," he said flatly, turning back to the cabinet like I wasn't even worth the effort of a real greeting. I bristled at the tone.

I clenched my jaw, refusing to let his indifference sting. "Henry."

The air between us immediately felt suffocating. We hadn't spoken since the kiss—since that fleeting, stupid moment that shouldn't have happened but did. We'd both been avoiding it, pretending like it didn't hang over us, like it wasn't weighing down everything.

But here we were, trapped in the same space, and there was no escaping it anymore.

I cleared my throat, stepping a little farther into the room. "We should probably talk about it."

He didn't move at first, his back still to me. Then, slowly, he shut the cabinet door and turned around, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest. His face was unreadable, his green eyes cold as ice, like the Henry I used to know was long gone.

"What is there to talk about?" he asked, his voice calm but clipped, like he was already over this conversation before it had even started.

I felt a flicker of frustration, my fingers tightening into fists at my sides. Why did he get to act like this didn't matter? Like it didn't affect him at all?

"About the kiss," I said, my voice firmer than I felt. "We can't just pretend it didn't happen."

Although, I tried to forget about it, I just couldn't. It meant something to me. 

He scoffed, shaking his head slightly. "I'm not pretending it didn't happen. It happened. It was a mistake."

There it was. That word again—mistake. He said it so easily, so dismissively, as if it hadn't meant anything to him at all. Like it was just a blip, a moment of weakness that he could brush off and move on from without a second thought.

My chest tightened, but I refused to let him see how much that word hurt. "A mistake," I echoed, trying to keep my voice steady, though I could feel it cracking at the edges.

"Yeah." His eyes flashed with something colder, harder. "You kissed me. I shouldn't have let it happen. I have Juliette now, I don't want anything to do with—this."

I flinched at his words, and I hated that I did. Of course, he was with her. Juliette. The girl who swooped in after everything between us fell apart. I swallowed hard, trying to shove down the resentment that flared up every time I thought of her.

His gaze pierced right through me, and for a moment, I saw it—the accusation, the anger he still carried from our breakup. It was like a wall between us, thicker and more impenetrable than anything else.

And I knew why. He still thought I'd cheated on him. He still blamed me for everything that went wrong between us.

"Right." I nodded bitterly, folding my arms over my chest. "Of course. Because I'm just the girl who ruins everything, right? I'm the one who screwed everything up."

"You did screw everything up," Henry snapped, his voice cold, cutting through the air like a knife. "You cheated, Em. You humiliated me in front of everyone. And now you think that one stupid kiss means something?"

The words hit like a slap, and I could feel my pulse pounding in my ears. My throat tightened, the memories of our messy breakup flashing in my mind—the shouting, the accusations, the way everyone had stared at us like we were some kind of spectacle. The way he defended Juliette when I said that she's hanging around him while he had a girlfriend - me. I never felt lonelier in my life than that moment - at the party before junior year started. I didn't even try to defend myself and so he had never forgiven me for what happened.