The Question He Wasn't Supposed to Ask

By lunch the next day I still hadn't decided anything. I walked into the cafeteria empty-handed, hoping for a fire drill, a hurricane, anything that would make the decision for me.

Nothing came.

Gray stood up from our table wearing that look, the one that meant he'd worked up his nerve. Conversations at the tables around us started dying off one by one, the way they do right before something happens and everyone can feel it coming.

"So," he said, loud enough that people two tables over turned their heads. "Homecoming's in two weeks."

"Gray."

"I know we've been kind of unofficial about this whole thing." He rubbed the back of his neck. Under any other circumstances I'd have thought it was the sweetest thing in the world. "But I want everyone to know. I want to take you as my actual girlfriend. Not the secret thing where I sneak over your fence like a criminal."

Sable Winters had gone still behind him, fork frozen halfway to her mouth.

My head was already three moves ahead. Say yes and there'd be photos, a homecoming dance, a whole relationship on display, none of which could survive chemo cycles and hospital stays I was barely hiding as it was. I had one job left where Gray was concerned. Keep him from loving me enough to lose me.

"No," I said.

The word landed and just sat there in the middle of the cafeteria.

His smile stopped halfway between hope and confusion. "What?"

"I don't want to go to homecoming with you. And I don't want to be your girlfriend."

"Josie, what are you—"

"We were never actually together. It was a summer thing." Every word came out like glass. "I don't feel that way about you. I'm sorry I let it go on this long."

Sable sucked in a breath somewhere to my right. Someone who'd just been handed exactly what she'd been praying for since freshman year.

Gray looked at me like I'd hit him. In every way that counted, I had. "You're serious."

"I'm serious."

"You kissed me on that dock. You told me you loved me two weeks ago. None of that meant anything to you?"

I held his eyes even though everything in me wanted to look away. "It was fun for the summer. I don't want anything serious. I'm sorry."

Dead silence now. Every eye in the room swinging between us like a tennis match. His jaw worked once, twice, and then he laughed, short and humorless, worse than if he'd screamed at me.

"Right." He nodded slowly. "Yeah. Okay."

He walked out. No last word, nothing. I sat there frozen, my chest cracking down the middle, telling myself this was the kind thing to do. That this counted as love, even though from where the rest of the cafeteria was sitting it looked exactly like cruelty.

Sable slid into the seat across from me before the doors had even swung shut behind him.

"Wow." A slow smile spread over her face. "Did that dumb girl really just turn down Gray Locke."

"Whatever you're about to say, I don't want to hear it."

"You just handed me exactly what I've wanted since freshman year, sweetie." She stood, smoothing her skirt, eyes already drifting toward the doors. "Thank you for that. I mean it."

I watched her walk off and felt something cold settle low in my stomach. I hadn't fixed anything. I'd just traded one disaster for a worse one.