I know exactly what he's talking about. "You asked me if I trusted you."

"You said no."

My heart flinches, jerking painfully as though ready to jump out of my skin. "But I do now, I really do."

"I wish I believed that," he says sadly. And then he stands, unable to meet my eyes. "I don't think you even know how much I do. Because those four years that you spent telling yourself we weren't possible, convincing yourself not to believe, telling yourself over and over again that all I'd do is hurt you? All that time you spent being afraid? I was afraid too. I was terrified that you'd never forgive me, worried that you'd never be able to look past what happened that night, scared that I'd come to regret that moment forever. And now here we are." He pauses, looking around the room, eyes landing on everything except for me. "Everything we were both afraid of is coming true."

With that, Ollie walks away.

But I won't let him. I'm a rubber band that just snapped. My chest is on fire, my every nerve is zapping to life, flaring. All the hope I just had turns to undeniable fear and pain, so much that I can't contain it, that I don't know what to do with it. So, I bolt to my feet, vision a pinpoint on him, seeing nothing else.

"Ollie!"

He pauses in front of the door, turning halfway to me.

"Is that it?" I shriek, panicked. "Is this over? Are you just going to walk out and leave me again?"

He glances over his shoulder, Adam's apple bobbing as he takes a long, deep swallow, searching for control over his own emotions, over his words. "I'm not the one who gave up on us, Skye," he tells me, achingly honest. "You ended things before they even began."

He's right.

He's only walking where I pushed him-away.

"Ollie," I cry, voice cracking.

He slams his eyes shut, squeezing tight, speaking to the door when he opens his mouth again. "I need time to think. And so do you. We both have to figure out what we want, how much our hearts can handle."

Before I have the chance to tell him I want him, he's gone.

And I'm alone.

Six weeks ago, I thought all my dreams had finally come true. I was kissing the man I've loved since I was fifteen, I was wrapped in his arms, being carried to his bed, I was so happy I thought I would burst. And then I woke up and blinked into the light of the sun and remembered that things that wonderful just don't happen to me. I'm the girl whose dad just decided to stop caring about her one day. I'm the girl who told her crush she loved him and got rejected. I'm the girl who dated a guy for four years only to have him cheat on her. I'm the girl who hid in her books because she felt out of place in the real world. I'm the girl who gladly stood in the shadow of a best friend who shone so bright. And there are so many more things you don't even know about. I'm afraid and nervous, and I don't know if I was always that way or if I just slowly but surely, day after day, got wrapped in the threads, wound so tight that I woke up in a cobweb I had no chance to escape.

And I blamed Ollie. I blamed John. I blamed Blythe and Patrick and Bridge. I blamed my mom and my dad. I blamed the world.

But it's me.

I'm the one who ruined everything.

I'm the one who destroyed my own life.

And I still have no idea how to get out of my own way. Because instead of being brave, instead of chasing after Ollie and forcing him to understand, instead of facing Bridge and begging her to forgive me, I freeze up. I turn away. I crawl into my room, curl up into a ball, and cry my eyes out.

I do what I do best.

I let the fear overwhelm me.

In all of my favorite chick flicks, this is normally the point where the heroine realizes all of her mistakes, dusts herself off, and fixes her problems in the blink of an eye. The point where she wakes up, uses her newspaper column to write a tell-all confessional disclosing her many lies in order to show the man she loves and the best friend she lost that she's sorry. Well...this isn't a chick flick. This is the real world. And in the real world, if I did that, I'd get fired. I'd lose my job, my income, my health insurance. I'd cause a scandal for the newspaper for reporting false information. And I'd probably never work in journalism again. So yeah...unfortunately, I'm going to have to do things the hard way.

When I wake up on Sunday, I do not want to get out of bed...at all...not even a little bit. You know that saying-when the going gets tough, the tough get going? Well, for me it's more like, when the going gets tough, hide away, drown in a well of self-pity, and hope someone else will come along and fix things for you.

Normally that person is Bridge.

So...yeah, my bed is looking pretty freaking good right about now.

Because Bridge? Not coming.

I'm on my own. And let me give you a little insight-anxious, neurotic people with broken hearts? They don't do well on their own. In fact, all they do is slip farther and farther down the rabbit hole-and I'm about halfway to China already.

So as soon as I feel myself start to wake up, as soon as I feel the warmth of the sun slipping through my window, I sigh and scrunch my eyes closed, pretending I don't. I deny the day. I deny the fact that my life is in shambles. I force all the pain and the fears back down, telling myself over and over again to go back to sleep where yesterday can't catch up to me.

At least, I try to.

But the world has other plans.

"Thank god, you're finally awake. You sleep like the dead."

What the...?

Am I hallucinating? Am I actually hearing voices? Has my crazy finally taken one step too far from adorably quirky to certifiably insane? I mean, it was only a matter of time, but still.

I must be imagining things.

She can't actually be here.

Can she?

I bolt up, eyes shooting wide open, as my stomach takes a flying leap into my throat, panic and excitement jolting into one exploding sensation. But halfway to sitting up, I slam into an invisible wall, knocking my forehead into something equally as hard. Pain bursts, stealing my vision.

"Ow!"

"Ouch!"

Blinking rapidly, I clear the spots.

"Good Lord, you have a hard skull," I mutter, rubbing my head. The scene emerges through the haze, and I realize that the voice I heard, the voice I thought I recognized as the lovingly teasing voice of my best friend, was actually real.

"Speak for yourself," she retorts, wincing as she brings her fingers to her forehead, copying my movements.

"Bridge!" I cry, ache completely forgotten.

"Hey." She shrugs sheepishly.

But I'm on a whole different level. "Bridge!" I shout again. And then I reach out, clutching her shoulders to make sure she's real, nearly falling over as my legs get stuck in the tangled sheets. "Are you really here? How? Why? How?"

"Well," she murmurs, but I'm too overwhelmed.

"I don't even care," I burst, unable to hold my words or excitement in. And then whether she wants to or not, I hug her, wrapping my arms tightly around her torso, murmuring, "Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I don't even know what happened yesterday. I was the worst friend in the whole world, I was horrible, and I have been for weeks. I'm so sorry. So, so sorry. Can you ever forgive me? I really thought I'd lost you yesterday, and I didn't know what to do with myself. These past few weeks have been terrible without you. I've missed you so much. You're more than my best friend, you're the only sister I have in the world. So you have to forgive me, you just have to. I don't know what I'll do with myself if you don't, I-"

"Um, Skye?" Bridge mutters into my hair, voice choked. "I can't breathe."

Immediately, I let go, leaning back and biting my lip, waiting nervously.

Bridge sits back, catching her breath, and looks directly into my eyes.

I swallow.

Her brows come together.

I hold my breath.

A smile twitches at the corner of her lips, as though unsure, and then a moment later it spreads wide, stretching into her cheeks, revealing white teeth, transforming her entire expression. "I'm sorry too," she confesses.

And then somehow we're hugging again, mushed together, babbling incoherently as we fall into mutual hysterics.

"I'm so sorry."

"No, I'm so sorry."

"I missed you."

"No, I missed you."

"I love you!"

"No, I love you!"

And to be honest, I don't even know which of those sentiments are hers and which are mine because we're the same person right now. My head is buried in her neck, hers is tucked into mine, our arms wrap so tightly I don't know where she ends and I begin. Our voices are so emotional, they're coming out like the same blubbering, sniveling mess. And our tears intermix just like our words.

Suddenly, Bridge pulls back, holding me at arm's length, and gasps, "I hooked up with your ex-boyfriend!"

I shake my head fiercely. "I hooked up with your brother!"

"I stopped talking to you," she says as though she herself can't believe it.

"I treated you like crap."

"I just felt so guilty."

"So did I, and then I didn't know what to say, so I just decided to not say anything at all, which was the worst decision I could possibly make, and-"

"I did the same thing!"

"And I really did just want to tell you the truth yesterday," I plead, hoping she hears the honesty in my voice. "But then I just clammed up and got so nervous and afraid, and I just snapped. I totally went on the attack when it's not how I felt at all, but once I started, I didn't know how to stop, and the whole situation went totally out of control!"

"You know me." She sighs, scrunching up her whole face. "When I feel backed into a corner, I just lash out like a viper, and as soon as you brought up Patrick, I was so caught off guard, I put my wall completely up. But I didn't mean anything I said yesterday, I really didn't."

"Me neither," I murmur.

We both take a deep breath, unsure how many apologies need to be made. But there's one more I know I need to make, one more I can't let another day go by without saying.

"Bridge?"

She looks up from her folded hands, questioning.

"I'm sorry I never told you about Ollie," I rush to say, shaking my head before she can jump in, because I need to spit it out. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you back in high school when I first started crushing on him, but I really thought I would grow out of it, that it would go away. I never ever thought my feelings would amount to anything. And I was so worried it would put a wedge between us, so worried it would totally freak you out, that I didn't want you to know." I pause just long enough to take her hands. "But you can't ever for one second think that how I felt about Ollie had anything to do with how much I love you. You're my best friend. My sister. And I kept my feelings secret because I was too afraid to lose you, not because I wanted to use you in any way to get closer to him. Until you said that yesterday, the idea literally never crossed my mind. Never."

"I know," Bridge says, squeezing my hands. "I know. It was a stupid thing to even think, we've been best friends since we were five-"

"I was four." I grin.

Bridge rolls her eyes, but her lips twitch. "Fine, since I was five and you were four, and I know that. And I know our friendship means so much more to you than just a ticket to get to my brother. I was just scared and hurt and overwhelmed, and I needed to get away."

"Did you go to Patrick?" I ask quietly.

Bridge pulls her lower lip in. "Would you hate me if I said yes?"

"No..." I murmur, about 90 percent truthful and 10 percent, oh god I don't want to hear this, do I?

Eighty/twenty, but that's it, I swear.

Okay...seventy-five/twenty-five.

But Bridge's entire body relaxes back into my desk chair, relieved. "I didn't mean to, I promise. When I left, I just wanted to go for a walk to clear my head, and before I knew it, my feet had led me right to his front door. I haven't seen him since Sunday night, since I broke up with him, and I don't know, I just needed to talk to someone, and he was there for me, and..." She trails off, glancing up at me from hooded brows, as though suddenly sensing the strangled vibes I'm giving off. "This is weird, isn't it?"

My chest is a bundle of knots, but at that question, they unravel. Unable to hold back my emotions, I suddenly start laughing, needing to get some of the awkwardness out. "Yeah, sort of."

And I mean, it is, let's be real.

I've seen him in the nude. That alone is enough to make me uncomfortable, not even counting the fact that he was the second longest relationship I've ever had. So, yeah-bizarre.

But I can get over it.

I will get over it.

Because I can see how Bridge's face lit up just thinking about him, I can see the spark twinkling in the corner of her eye-one I'm not sure I've ever seen before. She's falling for him, and one of us deserves to be happy. It's the least I can do considering all the crap I've put her through the past few weeks.

"Maybe if we use code names?" I suggest. "How did you and..." I make a face, waiting for her to fill in the blank.

She frowns, thinking, and then brightens. "Harold!"

I pause. "Really, you're going with Harold?"

"And what exactly is wrong with Harold?" Bridge scoffs.

"Nothing." I shrug and then mumble, "I mean, I think my grandpa's best friend was named Harold, but if you're into that sort of thing..."

Bridge smacks me.