Chapter 2

"Bzzt, bzzt—"

My phone buzzed twice, a text popping up out of nowhere.

Reluctantly, I picked it up, and saw the message was from the other star of tonight's little drama, my childhood friend—Roderick Harding.

He'd sent me a screenshot of a chat.

I knew the other profile photo all too well; it was the couple photo Saul had switched to specially after we got together. But the contents of the chat turned my stomach.

"Hey, you still there?"

"Don't be upset, I already went off on Doreen Finch for you. That's just how she is—useless and hot-tempered on top of it."

"We've been together almost a year now, and honestly, this whole time with her has worn me out."

"Every single day I have to read her mind, come up with new ways to keep her happy, and she still takes it as her cue to push further."

"If only she had half your gentleness, half your sense."

"You two literally grew up together, so how are you this different? It can't have been easy for you either, putting up with Doreen Finch's awful temper all this time. Being her best friend must've been such a thankless job."

"Hey, you still there? Want to play again sometime?"

"…"

Roderick's messages kept popping up one after another:

"Something's off about your boyfriend."

"A man knows a man best—he is one hundred percent trying to hit on me."

"Does a normal guy talk to his girlfriend's childhood friend like this? Something's obviously wrong!"

Looking at Roderick's ragdoll-cat profile photo and his in-game handle, "Strawberry Coconut," it hit me all at once.

This whole time I'd just assumed Saul knew my childhood friend was a guy, so it had never even crossed my mind to think otherwise.

So my boyfriend had taken my childhood friend for a girl—and was trying to flirt with him?

It was so absurd I sat there for the longest time and still couldn't wrap my head around it.

I sat on the bed, going back over every little moment.

Saul and I hadn't been together all that long.

Freshman year, he chased me for three months. Back then I figured he was decent-looking, and he treated me pretty well, so I said yes to his confession.

But he was my first love, after all, and I'd put my whole heart into it.

For him, someone who'd never so much as held a needle, I followed online tutorials to learn how to knit a scarf. I kept track of everything he liked, and I got someone to bring back a limited-edition pair of sneakers for him from overseas.

I even stayed up all night with him watching the World Cup, a sport I couldn't follow at all, when I had class the next morning.

…

Everything I did for him, he looked right past. It didn't even measure up to some breezy little "big bro" from someone else.

How ironic.

Just then the doorbell rang. Through the video doorbell I saw the person standing outside was Roderick.

He'd clearly just come back from somewhere, a big bag in his left hand and an iced drink in his right.

It was my favorite.

Back when I first downloaded the game, I'd meant to use that name myself, but I typed a beat too slow and the guy next to me grabbed it first.

I hesitated for a while, then opened the door for him anyway.

"What? Did you come over just to gloat?"

Roderick looked at my red, puffy eyes, held it in for a good while, then came out with, "You actually cried?"

Nothing decent ever comes out of that mouth.

I smacked him on the shoulder. "Get lost!"

And went to shut the door, but he reacted fast, slipping inside in an instant.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Then his tone turned serious.

"But I still think you should hear me out—a boyfriend like that, you're better off dumping him."

I snapped back at him, "Already did."

Hearing that, this heartless guy didn't comfort me at all. Instead his eyes crinkled up right away, that look of someone failing to hold back a grin.

I shot him a look. "What? My getting dumped makes you happy?"

Roderick waved his hands. "No, no, no! It's just… I thought of something happy."

He handed me the snacks and the iced drink. "Consider it my apology. Don't be sad—I'm counting on you to show me around campus tomorrow!"

"Enough with the 'you' this and that. You're two months older than me! If you hadn't insisted on repeating a year, you wouldn't be a year behind me."

"That's because I stepped in to save a kid and missed the English portion of the SATs, wasn't it? Without repeating, my scores wouldn't have even cracked six hundred—how was I supposed to get into the same school as you?"

"Get lost." I pushed away his fake pitiful face and shot back, "Enough talk, you should head home too. Get up early tomorrow and go check in at school."

Then something came to me, and I called after him. "Wait—go accept his friend request first, and just chat with him like this. Don't tell him you're a guy."

Trust a friend I'd grown up with to catch on instantly. "Sure. So you're planning to…"

"That's right," I said, expressionless. "So from now on, you're the junior girl he's after."

Saul liked sweet, gentle girls, didn't he? Well, I was going to give him a huge surprise. He'd better not thank me too much.