Ben answers right away. “I was just thinking about you!”

“You were?”

He nods.

“But you’re going to leave me hanging on the details, aren’t you?”

“Yup.” His face breaks into a grin, and wow. We need to FaceTime more often, because his smile is my favorite smile ever. He’s gotten a haircut since the last selfie he posted—sort of longer on top, but it’s subtle. He looks perfect. Which is a thing I notice in a strictly platonic way. I’ll just be here thinking all the platonic Ben thoughts. Even though he’s on his bed. It’s not like I’m thinking about all the things we did on that bed. I can appreciate the bed as a well-crafted, functional item of furniture. Ben leans back on his pillows and yawns. “So, what’s up?”

Might as well spit it out. “Jessie dumped Ethan.”

Ben sits up. “Whoa.”

“Right? It’s weird.”

“I bet. Wow. How are they holding up?”

I stretch my legs out in front of me, settling in for the long haul. “Jessie’s good, I think. Ethan, though. Have you looked at his Instagram?”

“Not recently.”

“Ben, it’s bad. He posted this story where he’s singing ‘I’ll Cover You’ from Rent and crying, and like . . . I don’t know. Can you pull a muscle from cringing?”

Ben winces. “Uh-oh.”

“Whatever you’re picturing, it’s worse. Just watch it.”

“Poor Ethan.”

“I know.” I press a hand to my face. “Tell me this gets less awkward.”

“You mean breakups?”

“Yeah, I mean. I’ve only ever had ours, and ours was awesome.”

Ben laughs. “Best breakup ever.”

“I know. We rocked it.” I sigh. “Maybe Ethan and Jess will bounce back, too.”

“They might. I bet they will.”

“Should I go visit him at UVA? I don’t want it to be like I’m picking sides. Jessie’s my friend, too.”

“That’s tricky.” Ben wrinkles his nose, and it’s so cute, it makes my heart flip. I’ll never get over those freckles. Not ever. “But it gets easier. You’ll see. Look at me and Hudson.”

I narrow my eyes. “I try not to.”

“I love that you’re still jealous of Hudson. Still.”

“Always.”

He shakes his head, smiling. “I’m just saying, it’s not exactly like it used to be, but we’re cool. We can text. We don’t really talk much, but—”

A door bursts open, and I’m suddenly surrounded by girls in scarves and gloves and pom-pom hats. They’re loud and happy and flushed, probably tipsy, and one of them fist-bumps me when she walks by.

“Where are you?” Ben asks.

“In the Butts. The Butterfield dorms.”

“You call it the Butts? People live in the Butts?”

“Yup. People are literally partying in the Butts right now. That’s why I’m here. I escaped a Butt party.”

“Wow.” Ben laughs. “Whose Butt?”

I feel myself blushing. “Just this guy.”

“Oh, right. That guy from your a cappella group?”

“Mikey.”

“Cool.” He pauses. “So . . . are you guys, like—”

“No,” I say quickly. “I don’t think so. I mean, he’s sweet. But he has the same name as my dad.”

“He can’t help that.”

“Okay, and get this. He thought Hamilton was fine, but not great. And he doesn’t like arcades! That’s weird, right?”

“Arthur, you don’t like arcades.”

“I know, but he seems like he would, and he doesn’t, and I don’t like that.” I shrug. “Anyway, what about you? Are you . . .”

“Single as fuck,” Ben says happily. “But Dylan and Samantha are back in town this weekend and are coming over later.”

“Oh my God, I miss them! Remember that night at Milton’s apartment?”

“Of course.”

“Kind of weird, huh, that out of all three couples that night, Dylan and Samantha are officially the last couple standing.”

“That is weird. Wow.”

And for a minute, we just look at each other, and I swear the air gets thicker. I haven’t even been in the same state as Ben since we said goodbye that summer. But my heart and brain and lungs never remember that.

The truth is, I don’t know how to do this. I’ve spent so much time googling. How to turn off a feeling. How to make myself like him platonically.

When Ben finally speaks, his voice is low and soft. “We’re still standing.”

“What?” I look at him strangely. I’m sitting in a dorm hallway against a wall. He’s sitting on a bed.

“I mean, we’re still here. We’re still us. You’re still in my life.”

“Very good point.”

And it’s true. I love his smile. I love his voice. I love his face. I love that he lives in my phone, even now. I love being his friend. His best friend.

My best friend, Ben.

Maybe that’s what the universe wanted. Maybe that’s us.

Ben

One Month Later

New York, New York

This is it. This is actually it. The end.

I can’t believe I did it.

The final chapter of The Wicked Wizard War is up on Wattpad.

I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed, the same spot against my wall where I finished the first draft last December. A couple days before New Year’s. Met my goal. I was listening to Lana Del Rey then, and tonight I’m mellowing out to the Chromatics cover of “I’m on Fire.” What’s missing now is this sense of privacy. No one waiting on new chapters. Except Arthur. It’s so different now. I’ve been posting my edited chapters serially since January. Started off with a few hundred reads and it moved into the thousands in February. I’m pretty sure this final chapter is going to push me over fifty thousand reads, which is mind-blowing. I owe a lot of that to the awesome book cover Dylan commissioned Samantha to design last Christmas. The community loves it; readers have even found me and Samantha on Instagram to tell us.

The chapter has only been up for a couple minutes and I’m already wanting to keep refreshing the page for new reads and reviews. Just to see that the previous thirty-nine chapters weren’t some fluke. I want to go on Tumblr and check my tags, as if fans have already had the time to whip up some epic fan-art for the scene where Ben-Jamin single-handedly annihilates the Life Swallowers and rescues King Arturo, Duke Dill, and Sovereign Harrietta. Or where Ben-Jamin teams up the Crowned Sorceress, Sam O’Mal, to exorcise the vicious spirits that were possessing Hudsonien so he can find happiness again.

But instead of trying to scratch those itches, I pick up my phone and FaceTime the person who encouraged me to post the story in the first place. Feels extra full circle since I also called Arthur when I finished the very first draft.

Arthur answers immediately. Beaming smile and glasses. “I got the Wattpad notification that BennisTheMenace uploaded a new chapter! I was just about to call you.”

“You say that all the time,” I say, shaking my head.

“You do too!”

“Truth.” We always seem to call each other when we need to talk the most. Like last week when I FaceTimed him from Dave & Buster’s to show him the claw machine from our first date and discovered Arthur panicking in his dorm room and ready to quit a cappella because he cut things off with Mikey. He really needed to hear from someone who survived summer school with his ex-boyfriend, and he promised me he would sing even louder.

Arthur is in his bedroom, back in Georgia for the holidays. Sometimes I forget that I’ve never been there because I feel like I know his house, especially his bedroom, so well from all the hours we’ve clocked in on FaceTime. “I’m so proud of you,” Arthur says. “You did it.”

Arthur telling me I did it makes this whole book thing extra real. It sinks in deeper than seeing the final chapter live online or when I switched the story’s status from In-Progress to Complete.