The spray pulsates over me, and I’m already too close to stop it. I hold onto her, her forehead pressed into mine as she watches what she does to me, and my orgasm crests, so wound up it takes no time for her to get me there. Heat floods my stomach, my thighs shake, my knees go weak, and I hear voices and lockers slamming shut just as I cover my mouth with my hand and scream.

Fuck. I shake, and I don’t know if I’m crying or what, because it feels so good.

“You don’t feel with him what you feel with me,” she whispers. “Do you?”

I shudder and grip her, every muscle clenched, and I can’t stand it. Nothing feels like this. Nothing. “I hate you,” I murmur in her ear.

But still, I don’t let her go, grazing her skin with my lips.

Oh, God. She lets the orgasm run through me before placing the showerhead back on the hook, and then she leans into my ear, the showers around us filling with people. “It’s a shame you’ll be wasted on him,” she whispers, steam billowing around us. “We would’ve had so much fun.”

Would’ve.

I don’t look up as she takes her towel and leaves. I sink to the floor, unable to move another inch for minutes as everyone showers, dresses, and the first bell rings for class.

Would’ve had so much fun, she’d said. Would’ve.

When I finally come out, her locker hangs open and empty.

• • •

Over the next few days, word spreads that Oliver Jaeger is finishing the school year from home—some story about her family needing her, but almost everyone knows it’s because of me. Sideways glances greet me when I pass students in the hall or cafeteria, some with smiles of approval and some with hints of fear. Speculation is abundant on what I supposedly did to scare her off, but no one knows for sure.

On Wednesday, I pass her main locker, noticing the flowers were still there, dried and yellowed. Did she see them before she left? She would’ve taken them if she’d wanted them.

I have to hand it to her. She wasn’t bluffing. She hadn’t come back to school. She was serious.

I sit in calculus, our fifth-period class we share—or used to share—her desk to my left and at the very front still sitting empty. It’s nice not to have her here anymore. She always had to look so different. All that silver in her ears, glinting with the sunlight streaming through the windows, hugely distracting.

The slutwear, the short skirts and the fire engine red lipstick that no one understood the point of. I mean, was she trying to get the boys’ attention? Because she did, which seemed opposite of what you’d think she’d want.

Still, though. The lipstick really was perfect for her skin tone. The little braids peeking out of her ponytails looked like they grew that way, and it was hard not to look at her.

It was hard for anyone not to look at her.

I draw in a deep breath and exhale. The school is more peaceful now. I’m better. Clearer.

The shower comes back to me, and fuck, it felt good, but if anyone found out, I’d be ruined. My friends might understand, but their parents wouldn’t. My grandmother would send me to therapy, and my parents would break, thinking they’d failed after so much loss already.

“Yes,” I hear Ms. Kirkpatrick say. “Come in, come in.”

I look up, the rest of the students filling their seats as a young woman holds the strap of her backpack over her shoulder and hands the teacher her schedule.

She leads her to a seat—Liv’s empty desk—and smiles, handing her paper back to her.

“Class?” She says loudly. “This is Chloe Harper. She’s joining us from Austin.”

The girl turns her head, offering everyone a smile with her shade of pink gloss that could easily be mine. Her eyes land on me, and she hesitates on my gaze, nodding once in hello, a beautiful, small smile grazing her lips.

She turns back around, and I shake my head, looking away. That’s Liv’s seat. So quickly filled like she was never here at all, and sun streams through the windows, making the world bright and beautiful as if everyone has just moved on.

The talk has even started to die down. Most people have stopped mentioning her.

She’s not in the locker room. The weight room. The lunch room. Her desks don’t exist anymore. She was never here.

Classes end, and I head to practice, passing her locker and see something drawn on it in red nail polish. I stop, reading Dyke written vertically down the long locker.

And I straighten, glaring. Who did this? How dare they?

Even though I know I’m one of the culprits who’s been calling her that name for years.

People wrote things on Alli’s locker too, I’d heard. I’m sure it was hard to have someone be cruel—I can certainly dish it but can’t take it—but I finally realize it was probably more painful to see the taunts in full view of everyone who passed by. Hundreds of people are invited into your suffering.

I blink, charging off to the locker room to change into my gear. I throw on my clothes, grab my equipment, and head out to the field with my friends, needing to run to get rid of the urge to scrub the front of her locker with nail polish remover. The janitors will take care of it tonight.

My head overflows with lava, and it just keeps coming and coming, the fact that she’s not here. And she won’t be here tomorrow.

Krisjen takes up Liv’s place on the field, Amy and Ruby laughing and joking around, everyone carrying on their conversations like she’s not gone. Like she wasn’t important.

She’s smart. She works hard. She’s in that theater every night, without pay, no one more devoted to earning everything she deserves. She comes from nothing, works her ass off, is honest, and a good person. She’s the muscle on the team, and they’re all just acting like we actually have a shot without her. Like she isn’t irreplaceable.

But to them, she’s nothing. She’s just the dyke who once went here.

“Come on!” I yell when Krisjen misses the goal again.

“I can’t…” She gasps. “Clay, I can’t. It’s too fast.”

“Too fast?” I bark, getting in her face, the numbness of the last few days gone. “Are you kidding?”

Krisjen backs away from me, scared.

“Gibbon’s Cross is gonna be a lot harder on you. Stop pussing out!” I yell.

Everyone stops, sweat coating my back and no one’s fucking laughing now.

“I’m not losing the biggest game of my senior year because everyone wants to get lazy all of a sudden!”

The game is in two days, for Christ’s sake!

“Collins…” Coach warns.

But I throw down my stick and my eyewear, sprinkles of rain hitting my arms. “God, you guys suck!”

I stomp off toward the locker room. Coach grabs my arm, but I yank it away.

“Coach, it’s okay,” I hear Krisjen tell her as I keep walking. “We’ll go.”

I leave, heading for the locker room without looking up.

It’s fine. Everything is fine.

I yank my locker door open, but I haven’t had enough, and I do it again and again, tears spilling down my face as I dig in my backpack for the pill bottle.

I fumble with the cap, finally giving up and resting my head on the locker next to mine, the cool metal feeling like heaven after the heat of the blood rushing under my skin.