And wow. Now I’m about to start crying at the conference table. I just stare at my hands, blinking. Fantastic.

“Okay, that’s not the reaction I was expecting,” Juliet says carefully. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Juliet and Namrata exchange glances again.

But I don’t care. Let them feel bad. I have no shits left to give. Dad’s in Atlanta, Mom’s halfway to Canandaigua, Ethan and Jessie are probably making out behind Starbucks, and my only two friends in this whole stupid city are spending my birthday at a party in my neighborhood without me.

My seventeenth birthday. Maybe on some planets, that’s the kind of thing people look forward to. But all I can think about is Hudson and Ben passing love notes in class. Ben’s Instagram, with its fifty-six versions of Hudson’s face. Hudson’s name on a shipping label for a box that was never sent.

I think about the giant gaping hole in my heart, exactly the size of Ben’s fist.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Ben

Saturday, August 4

I’m at this low-key coffee shop with Hudson since our exam is on Tuesday and I really need a solid study session to handle my weak spots. A couple times I thought I saw Dylan waltzing in, but it wasn’t him. That’s for the best. I’m not sure Harriett running off an hour ago to celebrate a friend’s birthday and leaving me alone with Hudson was for the best, though. I mean. We were fine that night after my showdown with Dylan. But it’s just us again for the first time.

We’re sitting side by side on stools. We’ve been quizzing each other, but the only answers I care about are all Arthur-related: How is he celebrating his birthday? Who’s making him feel like a king? Namrata and Juliet? Will texting him a happy birthday ruin his day? Does he hate me?

“Earth to Ben,” Hudson says, waving.

“Sorry.”

“Arthur?”

“Yup. Hard to focus.” Hudson and Harriett don’t know it’s Arthur’s birthday. I just jumped into study group so I wouldn’t stay home and play Sims. Last night my Sim counterpart gave flowers to Sim Arthur and got rejected because fuck my lives, real and digital. It’s become really obvious that no one can hurt you if they can’t talk to you, so I just locked Sim Ben in a room with no doors or windows. He’ll run out of oxygen eventually, but at least no one is breaking his heart. “Today is Arthur’s birthday.”

“Did you make him something?” Hudson asks. “You’re a birthday pro.” For Hudson’s birthday I teamed up with Dylan to draw Hudson in Wonder Woman’s armor since she’s his favorite superhero. I wonder if he threw that out or not.

“I wrote Arthur into The Wicked Wizard War,” I say. I finished the chapter last night after I was done with my homework. I was planning on emailing the chapter to Arthur at midnight, but I couldn’t get myself to send another message he would ignore. “I actually shared the book with him.”

“Wow. That’s huge. You must’ve really liked him.” Hudson asked to read TWWW a couple times but never as passionately as Arthur did. Not sharing something so personal to me with the guy I was dating should’ve been a red flag about how positive I felt about our future. “I’m guessing Hudsonien got the ax?”

“Locked away in a dungeon,” I say.

“Cool,” Hudson says. “You should just text Arthur. You won’t feel better until you do.”

“I know I should. But it feels like I’m programmed to do the wrong thing. I walked away from Arthur when we first met. I took too long to open up and earn his trust. I was always late. I never threw away that fucking box, and now he wants nothing to do with me.”

“What box?” Hudson asks.

No point hiding anything.

“On the first day of summer school I brought a box of everything you gave me. But you didn’t show up, so I was going to mail it to you, and then I met Arthur at the post office. But I didn’t mail it because . . .”

“Because what?”

“I was still holding out hope?”

I shouldn’t be talking about this, but I can’t help myself; these are all the words I’ve been thinking but couldn’t say out loud. Not to Hudson. Not even to myself.

“Where’s the box now?”

“In my mom’s closet.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

My phone rings; it’s Dylan. I screen his call. I saw his Instagram post earlier, and I don’t need to pick up so he can not-so-casually remind me how well things are going with Samantha.

I don’t know how to tell Hudson that I want to throw away a box of things that used to mean everything to me. But that fucking box. I can’t keep treating it like something that belongs in a museum’s exhibit specializing in one guy’s history of breaking hearts.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m kind of happy to hear you say that, Ben.”

“Why?”

My phone rings again. I don’t know this number, so I can screen this call too.

“Same reason you never mailed it,” he says.

“Hope?”

Hudson leans in, like he thinks we’re about to kiss.

My phone buzzes. This time it’s a text from that unknown number: Ben, it’s Samantha. Call me. Dylan is in the hospital.

“Holy shit.” I call Samantha back immediately. While it’s ringing, I tell Hudson that Dylan is in the hospital. He’s asking me what’s going on, but all I can think about are the different things that could’ve happened. Coffee burn or car accident or jumped by some stranger because he was being too Dylan in a place where that gets you hit or something too scary to even think to myself.

“Ben,” Samantha answers.

“What happened? Is he okay?”

“His heart,” Samantha says, and she sounds like she’s fighting for her air herself. “We had to rush him to the hospital.”

“Where are you? What hospital?”

“New York–Presbyterian. His parents are on the way. Are you coming?”

“Of course.” The fact that she has to ask makes me feel like the worst best friend ever. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I say, walking toward the train station already. I hang up and Hudson catches up to me. “Dylan’s heart is being stupid and I got to get to him.”

I’m about to cry, because holy shit, the universe might be setting me up for a painful goodbye.

“Where?”

“Presbyterian.”

“That should only take us twenty minutes, maybe ten if we catch an express train.”

“No. I have to go . . .” Not alone, because I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t need Hudson there. “It’s okay. You don’t have to go.”

“He was my friend too,” Hudson says.

“But he’s my brother.” And that’s that. Hudson nods. “I’ll let you know how he’s doing,” I say as I take off.

Nothing’s going to happen to Dylan. He’s going to be fine. It’s Dylan. Nothing ever holds him down. But it still hurts to picture him in a hospital bed. I need him to know that I was there if—no.

Dylan is going to be okay.

He’s going to be okay.

One stop away from the hospital and the train is stuck underground because fuck you, universe. It’s hard to keep calm. He just had his appointment, where his doctor said he was low-risk for any attack like this. Yeah, he’s going to be fine. It’s Dylan. Nothing ever holds him down. . . .

I have to talk to someone. My phone has service since we’re close enough to the next station, and I type out a text to Arthur:

Dylan is in the hospital. Idk everything yet but his heart is acting up. I haven’t been this scared in a long time. It’s Dylan, you know. I was a total dick to him a couple days ago because I’m an asshole. And I never really took his heart thing that seriously but maybe I should have and I’m fucking TERRIFIED. And I’m fucking stuck underground because the MTA gods are still The Worst. I know you don’t want to hear from me, but you’re the only person I want to talk to right now. I’m sorry, Arthur. Happy birthday. I hope hearing from me doesn’t ruin your day.