ELI

“What the hell was that?” I blurt, scrubbing a hand down the back of my neck.

She’s standing in the middle of my living room, looking like she’s either about to bolt or crumble. Honestly, I don’t know which would surprise me more.

“I thought we had an understanding,” I say, quieter this time. Not mad. Just… confused. And tired.

Kara wipes at her eyes, mascara smudged at the corners. I’ve never seen her like this—off balance. Not the girl who sets rules like it’s a tournament. Not the girl who plays people like chess. She’s shaking.

And crying.

Crying.

Kara, who’s been laughing her way through this whole twisted triangle, is now crying in my apartment—mine, not Cass’s—and something about that knocks the wind out of me.

“I figured it was always going to be you and Cass,” I say. “Everyone else saw it. I thought you did too.”

She doesn’t deny it. Doesn’t say a word.

Instead, she folds—one careful confession at a time.

The revenge plan. The bet she overheard. The reason she said yes to me at all. The way it all spiraled into something else. Something she couldn’t control.

And then she tells me about her sister.

"Kira messaged him," she says, voice breaking. "For weeks. Funny messages, flirty ones, real ones. He responded at first—seemed interested. Then just... stopped. Complete silence."

I listen, trying to piece together the timeline.

"She kept trying," Kara continues. "Kept sending messages, hoping he'd respond.

The last thing she sent him was 'Why did you have to break my heart?' A few hours later..."

She doesn't finish. Doesn't need to.

"Jesus, Kara."

I stare at her for a long moment, trying to process what she's just told me. A girl is dead. My best friend was involved, however peripherally. And the woman I've been fake-dating for weeks came here to destroy him because of it.

"Jesus, Kara," I say again, quieter this time.

"She'd struggled before," she says quickly, like she needs to get it all out. "Depression, anxiety. She'd tried... she'd had episodes. But she'd been doing better. And then he just vanished from her life like she was nothing."

I rub my face, trying to process this. The weight of it.

"So you came here to make him pay," I say.

"I came here to make him feel what she felt. To make him want someone who would disappear. To break his heart the way he broke hers."

I sit down heavily on the couch, running my hands through my hair. This is so much bigger and messier than I thought. My best friend. A dead girl. A revenge plot I accidentally enabled.

"Christ," I mutter, then look up at her. "Kara, I need you to know something. What you're telling me... about Cass, about your sister... I don't know what happened between them. But I know Cass isn't cruel. Careless, maybe. Emotionally avoidant, definitely. But not cruel."

 "I'm not saying your sister deserved what happened to her. I'm not saying Cass handled it right. But sometimes..." I pause, choosing my words carefully. "Sometimes when someone is struggling, they can put pressure on relationships in ways that are hard to handle. Even with the best intentions."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying maybe there's more to the story than you know. Maybe Cass had reasons for pulling back that weren't about not caring."

Her face hardens. "You're defending him."

"I'm not defending anyone.  I'm just saying that mental health crises are rarely as simple as one person being the victim and another being the villain." I  lean forward.

"I had a cousin," I continue, "who struggled with bipolar disorder. When she was in crisis, she would reach out to everyone in her contacts. Text them, call them, show up at their places. She needed constant reassurance that people cared about her. And when people couldn't give her that level of response—because they had their own lives, their own limits—she would spiral deeper."

Kara wipes her eyes.

"That doesn't make her a bad person," I say. "And it doesn't make the people who had to step back bad people either. It just makes it complicated."

"But he ghosted her—"

"Maybe. Or maybe he recognized that he wasn't equipped to help her and didn't know how to communicate that. Maybe he was protecting himself from a situation that was becoming unhealthy. Maybe he was scared."

I can see her struggling with this, the way it complicates her neat narrative of blame.

"The thing is," I continue, “Mental illness doesn't make someone's behavior immune from consequences—it just makes those consequences more tragic."

She's crying again, but differently now. Like something is breaking open.

"I wanted someone to blame," she whispers. "It was easier than accepting that sometimes people just... leave."

"Yeah," I say gently. "I get that." 

She tells me the rest— The whole twisted mess of love and revenge and grief that brought her here.

I listen, numb. The whole story lands like a slow-motion car crash. And when she finally stops talking, when the last word hangs in the air between us, I say the one thing I know is true:

“You wanted to break his heart. Take your revenge…”

I trail off, but the rest finds its way out anyway.

“…but you’ve fallen in love with him.”

She doesn’t argue.

She doesn’t have to.

Her silence is louder than anything she could say.

I rub my face and lean against the wall, heart pounding with a different kind of ache. The kind that comes from knowing what comes next.

“I should’ve told you earlier,” I say. “I’m seeing someone. My ex from college. Erin.”

Kara’s head jerks slightly, eyes widening.

“We’ve been talking for a while,” I explain. “Last night, I told her I wanted to try again. For real. She said yes.”

She nods, slow. Like she’s bracing for the impact of her own choices. Like she already knows how this ends.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

And just like that, she turns and walks out of my apartment—no cheek kiss, no flirty jab, no final move.

Just gone.

The second the door shuts, I grab my phone and dial.

Cass.

Voicemail.

I try again. Still voicemail.

Third try. He picks up.

“You win,” he says, voice tight, sharp.

“Cass, wait—it’s not like that. She—”

Click.

He hangs up.

I let my head fall back against the wall and shut my eyes. Damn it.

I’m halfway through typing a message to him when there’s a knock at the door.

I open it.

It’s Erin, smiling. “You said tonight was quiet, so I figured I’d swing by.”

I force a smile, but my chest’s still burning from the fallout.

Quiet night?

Not anymore.