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At the sliding glass doors, Eli stopped me. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I said. “Thanks for saving my life.”

Eli nodded. “We're even, then.” When I looked at him quizzically, he said, “I use a ladder when I climb in and out of Cassie's window.”

The part of me that wasn't bruised wanted to laugh. I wouldn't have believed he had it in him, but when it came to Cassandra Castillo, there didn't seem to be anything the boys who loved her wouldn't do.

Eli and I were no longer enemies—no longer two men on a collision course toward the same beautiful prize—but that didn't make us friends, either. I knew that the only reason he was even talking to me right now was because he wanted to know what Cassie had said to me. No, he needed to know. I'd seen only a small portion of Eli's story that night, but I suspected he'd overcome his own share of obstacles to get to this moment. That didn't entitle him to the details of my private conversation with Cassie, but it was the reason I said what I said next.

“Cassie doesn't need a boyfriend,” I told Eli. “She needs a friend. That's how you show her that you love her.”

When I walked back into the house, I should have felt like a failure. The only lip action I'd gotten had been from Cassie's ex-boyfriend. Instead I felt like a champion. Sure, maybe my night
would have turned out differently if I'd taken Coop and Ben's advice and talked to Natalie Grayson—who was passed out on the couch next to Ewan McCoy. He'd snaked her phone and was posting fake status updates to her Facebook. According to her feed, she'd pooped her pants twice. But I was coming to terms with everything that had happened. I felt like my life had been on pause since that night at Pirate Chang's and I was finally ready to play again.

Coop and Ben found me in the kitchen. Ben threw his arm around my shoulders, babbling about how awesome the party was. Coop was less enthusiastic but he gave me a solid grin, which was exactly what I needed. Once the hub of the party, the kitchen was now a wasteland. The keg was empty and there were red cups perched on every surface. Someone had raided Cassie's cupboards and spilled a bag of yellow rice on the tile floor. The grains crunched under my feet.

“Buck up,” Ben said. “We'll find you another girl. Maybe even one who doesn't mind if you don't shower for three days and that your idea of cooking a gourmet meal is microwaving Hot Pockets.”

“Whatever,” I said. “It's cool.”

Coop was looking at me the way he looked at pictures of naked girls, with curiosity and confusion. “Why?” he asked.

I knew the why he was speaking of. It was the why that had defined my life for years. If anyone deserved an answer, it was my long-suffering best friend. “When I saw that Urinal Cake kid up on the waterfall, I realized he was me. That I was a fool. I took a shot
of tequila, jumped on a bed, fought a psycho, got trounced at beer pong, drank a shit-ton of rum with Eli, fell out a window, and nearly drowned. My dad was right: Sometimes love hurts, but it shouldn't be so damn hard.”

Neither Coop nor Ben said anything right away. Coop probably wanted to do the dance of joy, but he held his glee in check for my benefit. Instead he took Ben's hand and kissed the top of it. They were in love. They had to work at it, sure, but it wasn't a titanic struggle. The way they knew what the other felt and fell into each other's sentences. That was real. That was love.

I knew I'd really been in love with Cassie and that maybe she could have loved me too, but it wasn't enough. Love wasn't always enough. That thought should have brought me down, sunk me into a deep depression, but it actually made me smile. Because if Cassie wasn't the girl for me, then maybe that girl was still out there somewhere, being awesome.

“I know what'll cheer you up,” Ben said.

“This better not be like the time you tried to order me a Russian bride on the Internet.”

“Kasia loved you,” Ben said. “And you rejected her. Do you know how that made her feel? Do you?”

Coop chuckled, and the pall that had settled over us burned away like morning fog. “Rewind, baby. What's the plan?”

Ben rubbed his hands together, making sure he had our attention. “Strawberry-stuffed French toast,” Ben said. “Smothered in syrup. And cheesy fries. And maybe a burger. I've been craving a burger for like an hour. And water. I'm parched.”

As we left, I saw Eli sitting on the couch with Cassie, letting her cry into his shoulder.

The rest of the party people were outside watching the best version of
Romeo and Juliet
ever staged in our shithole town. A couple of hours earlier, I might have thought it was beautiful that Romeo was willing to kill himself for the girl he loved, but now I realized how stupid that sentiment is. That isn't romance, it's mental illness. No girl is worth dying for, not even Cassie.

I looked at Coop and Ben—my best friends. Everyone I wanted to hang out with was right here in this room.

“Sounds awesome,” I said. “I'm done here.”

As I sat on the pool steps, letting the watery blood stream out of my nose while Eli and Cassie argued behind me and Sia tried to corral her actors back into position so that she could finish
Romeo and Juliet,
I admitted to myself the one thing that I wouldn't have admitted to anyone else: I'd deserved what I'd gotten.

I'm not just talking about the bloody nose. Though I did have that coming. Not only had I lured Eli into his ex-girlfriend's bedroom and tricked him into handcuffing himself to her bed, but I'd kissed Cassie right out in the open where I knew he'd be able to see.

It was more than that, though. Because I'd dicked over Natalie, pissed off my best friend, and lost the one girl who might have actually liked me. My phone had taken on more water than the
Titanic
when Eli had punched me and I'd fallen into the pool, so I couldn't even text Stella and apologize for being an asshole. Maybe she was still around the house somewhere, but I wasn't sure if she'd want to talk to me, especially
not if she and Ewan were making out, a thought that turned my stomach.

I was dateless, friendless, and phoneless, and my nose felt like it was filled with bees. There didn't seem to be much lower to go. Clearly I was wrong.

Cassie sat down next to me and sighed. “Did you really dress up like a girl and kiss Eli?”

“What happens at spring break parties, stays at—”

“I'll take that as a yes,” Cassie said. I thought she was going to throw me out of her house, but she laughed and patted my arm. “How's your nose?”

I shrugged. It felt surreal to be sitting here talking to Cassie like nothing else had happened all night. Like we were friends now or something. But it was cool. Realizing Cassie wasn't the girl of my dreams didn't diminish the feelings I'd carried for her all those years. I still loved her. I simply wasn't in love with her. When I imagined my future, Cassie was still in it, just off to the side, a supporting character who got less screen time as I grew older.

“I'll survive.”

“Where's Coop?”

“Lost track of him,” I said. “Maybe he left.” The truth was that I didn't know. After he'd saved me from Blaise, I hoped that Coop would come to his senses and decide not to end our friendship, but as I sat there in the water, I wasn't sure I deserved to have a friend like Cooper Yates.

I was staring at the water and the way the ripples
reflected the moon, but when I looked up, Cassie was smiling at me and doing that thing with her tongue and the gap in her teeth. It was still sexy as hell. “You're different,” Cassie said. “I like it.”

I'd waited years to hear Cassie say something like that, but the thing was that I didn't feel any different. Older, wetter, bloodier, but still like a total fuckup who seemed destined to do the wrong thing in every situation.

“You gonna be okay?” I asked.

Cassie looked over her shoulder at Eli. He was sitting on the couch in his boxers, watching my every move. I suspected I'd made an enemy tonight; not that I thought Eli and I could have ever been friends—not really. We'd loved the same girl, and in a competition like that, there are rarely any winners.

“He wants to get back together.” Cassie looked at me again. “But I don't know. I think . . . I think maybe I need some time alone. You know, to figure things out.” She looked embarrassed. “When my parents told me about the house and college—I sort of lost it.”

“Are you going to finish the year?”

“I'm going to try,” Cassie said. “You know Aja Bourne, right?” I nodded. “We've never been good friends or anything, but we had a couple of classes together. Earlier, she told me that if my parents had to move, I could stay with her until graduation. Isn't that weird?”

Aja was just full of surprises tonight, and all of them amazing. “You should do it,” I said. “Aja's a cool chick. And
her grandma used to be a chef in France and cooks shit you can't even believe.”

Cassie gave me a curious smile. “I'll keep that in mind.” Cassie glanced back at Eli again. “I should go. . . .”

“Yeah,” I said. “I should look for a ride home.”

“What about that girl you came with? She was cute.”

“She's with . . . someone else.” I shrugged and looked back toward the house, hoping I'd see Stella. I didn't. “It's cool.” Losing Stella to Ewan was another thing I deserved. My myopic focus on Cassie had kept me from seeing the amazing girl that had been right in front of me.

Cassie graced me with a pitying frown. “You'll find someone.” There was a moment of silence, and then Cassie kissed me on the cheek and walked back to Eli.

I sat on the steps until Sia grabbed me by my wet collar and wordlessly dragged me out of the pool. Despite the fact that she'd lost most of her audience, she was determined that the show would go on. I admired her dedication. Aja waved at me from the sidelines and I waved back before going inside.

The house was stained with the evidence of the night's festivities. There was no way that Cassie was going to be able to scrub it clean before her parents returned home. Which might have been a good thing. Maybe seeing what Cassie had done would make them realize how much their decisions affected her. That's what I told myself anyway. Sure, I could have stayed to help clean up, but this was more than a two- or
even a twenty-man job, and I just wanted to crawl into bed and let tonight become the past.

I wandered through the house, looking for Ben and Coop, hoping that maybe I'd find Stella, but the rooms were occupied by people who had passed out or fallen asleep or who were otherwise engaged in the sort of activities that don't usually require an audience. All in all, I thought Cassie's party had been a success. It was certainly not the night I'd envisioned when I'd left Gobbler's with Natalie, but I doubted that anyone who'd attended would soon forget Cassandra Castillo's barter party.

When I reached the front of the house and hadn't found anyone to give me a ride, I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to call my parents after all. If I'd called them when Natalie had dumped my ass on the side of the road, I probably could have avoided the events of the entire night, but I realized that, even in my current predicament, I wouldn't have wanted to.

“Simon!”

I turned to the spiral staircase and saw Ewan McCoy running down it, carrying something white and furry under one arm. “Ewan?” When I realized he had Falcor, I about jumped out of my skin with excitement.

“What's up?” Ewan asked when he got to the bottom step.

“Nothing.” I was about to explode with curiosity. Why did Ewan have Falcor, and where was Stella? I listened for her singular voice in case she was lagging behind but heard nothing resembling Stella Nash.

Ewan pointed at my nose. “That's gotta hurt. You should hear what people are saying. Apparently you took out Eli and half the football team to get with Cassie.”

I laughed at the way the events by the pool were already morphing into the stuff of legend. By Monday morning people would be telling each other I'd swooped out of the sky on a helicopter made of beer cans and rescued Cassie from Eli's clutches. Or not.

“Awesome,” I said. Ewan fist-bumped me and we shared a chuckle over the whole thing. “How are you and Stella getting along?” I asked, no longer able to contain myself.

Ewan looked down at Falcor, who was acting squirmy. Neither seemed comfortable with the other. “That's what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Did you guys . . .”

“She's a cool girl, but she wasn't into me.” A choir of angels sang in the background and it took me a moment to realize it was part of an actual song and not a gang of divine beings celebrating on my behalf.

I did my best to look nonchalant despite the fact that I was dancing on the inside. “That sucks. Where is she?”

Ewan glanced toward the front door. “She took off.” He held up Falcor like he was plague infected. “Left me with this.”

Falcor now hung limply in Ewan's hands. “No,” I said. “She's got to be here somewhere. She'd never leave Falcor.”

“I'm telling you, man. She split while you were doing your thing with Cassie.”

I wasn't sure if Stella had stuck around to see me kiss Cassie, but whether she'd seen it or not, though, she very likely assumed I'd achieved my goal. It was too bad she hadn't waited around for the finale. Maybe not the part where Eli decked me, but definitely the part where I realized that Cassie wasn't the girl for me.

“What're you going to do?” I asked.

Ewan shoved Falcor into my arms. “I'm not really an animal person. Can you take him home?” Falcor bathed my face, his tongue snaking up my right nostril, licking away some of the dried blood. “Yeah,” Ewan said. “That's just gross.”