“You don’t want any cards?” Ryan taps the deck a few times.
“Fine.”
Ryan deals her a card.
“I call,” she says.
He hands me a card. “Kennedy?”
“Raise.” I place a chip down, and Chelsea reluctantly matches it. Crap hand.
“We all pretty much agree Chase isn’t interested, right? I mean, Emily is so special. She’s smart, she’s pretty, she’s unique, she’s talented. Chase appreciates that. There’s just no spark on his end. It’s no one’s fault.” It suddenly occurs to me that what Chelsea is saying sounds suspiciously like a breakup speech. And I’m sitting in the middle of it. I try to catch her eye to signalbad idea,but she’s focused intently on Ryan. I love her to death, but reading the room is not among her strengths.
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “I guess that’s true.”
“False hope is painful,” Chelsea says.
Ryan deals her another card, slowly this time, his eyes trained on the deck. “It is.”
“Shit. I mean, hmm.” She assumes her best poker face, which is terrible. “I call.”
I take my next card. Pair of queens. It isn’t great, but it doesn’t look like she has anything. “Raise you twenty.”
“Twenty? I’m out.” She tosses her cards down, and I show my hand. “Oh, come on. I had three twos.”
Ryan picks up her cards to verify. “Then why did you fold?”
She shrugs. “Kennedy always wins.”
Ryan drops his head into his forearm and laughs, and when he raises his head, his face is flushed. “When did you start thinking you were better than me?” His eyes are bright, almost feverish, as he stares desperately at Chelsea. I feel like I’ve evaporated, an invisible witness.
Chelsea’s mouth drops open in dismay. “I never thought that.”
I scramble to my feet and make a dash for the kitchen. “The dishes,” I mumble incoherently, slamming the doorsbehind me and collapsing against them, my heart tumbling in my chest. There can’t be another fight now, but I’m human and weak, and I need this to end. I need Ryan and Chelsea to be definitively over, and I need to know it for sure. I press my head against the wall, straining to hear over the sound of my racing heart in my ears.
“We used to laugh at them. Golden boy and gossip girl.” Ryan’s voice is low and difficult to make out. “They have it so easy. They have everything and they stillwant.I’ve only ever wanted one thing, you know this.” I feel dizzy, like I’m having an out-of-body experience. This is a scene from a movie, but in the movies, it’s a romance, and the guy gets the girl. In real life, it’s horrific. He doesn’t deserve her just because he wants her. She doesn’t want him. It hits me so hard then, how much I’ve tortured myself pointlessly with questions. Whatever happened in the past, she doesn’t want him, she never did—not while we were together. The only time that matters.
“Everyone wants,” she says softly. “It’s human.”
“I love you, Chelsea.” His voice cracks and I close my eyes. This is not happening. Not here. Not now. “You know Kennedy doesn’t get you the way I do. You don’t have to lie to me, because I know you and I love every bit of who you are. You don’t have to live up to any bullshit standard. You’re perfect to me, Chelsea. And you know I would do anything for you. I would. You know all of this is true. And I would never,neverlet you go.”
“You have to,” she snaps. There’s an awful, gaping silence.
“Please, Chelsea.” His voice goes whisper soft; the house is silent. “You’re the only thing that makes sense anymore.”
“I know it feels that way.” Chelsea’s voice is muffled, and I force myself not to look through the glass pane of the door, but I know his arms are around her, her face pressed into his shoulder. I know she’s holding on to her friendship, afraid that saying the wrong thing will shatter it, and he’s desperate to cling to something else. It hurts to hear.
“Then there’s nothing left for me here,” he says, bitterness saturating every word.
“I’m still here,” she says.
“You are so long gone.” He laughs dully. “I’ve been holding on to a fucking ghost.”
I hear the door slam and peek my head back into the room. Chelsea is still sitting cross-legged on the floor, sobbing into her hands.
“I said nothing to make him believe—”
“I know.” I put an arm around her.