Karmic Revenge: The Girl Next Door's Glow-Up

One hour before the final that would decide the rest of my life, the boy I'd been in love with for ten years leaned into my ear and said it slow, said it clear.

You're ugly.

His friends' laughter tore down the hallway.

He'd promised to marry me one day. Now he was shrugging it off, easy as anything. Just a dare. Relax.

He stood there and watched me turn into the joke of the room. All to impress the new it-girl at his side.

My nails bit into my palms. I changed my college list without a word, and set my eyes on a future that didn't have him anywhere in it.

He had no idea what those two words would cost him.

Fifty points off his own exam. A lifetime on his knees, sobbing my name.

By the time he understood, I'd already be gone. And I would never once look back.

Chapter 1

One exam left. Just one. Then the whole brutal stretch of finals would finally be behind me.

The rain had hammered down for days straight through that week. Only now, on the last day, right around noon, had the sky cracked open and let the sun through.

Lunch break was short. Tristan, the boy who'd lived across the hall from me my whole life, told me to grab food and hit the library with him, rest up before we went back in.

We hadn't been there ten minutes before I regretted it.

Tristan and I weren't in the same homeroom. He spent the whole time with his own crowd, comparing answers from that morning's test.

I didn't want to listen. I heard anyway. A couple of questions I'd probably gotten wrong.

Tristan was lit up, trading answers, laughing louder by the minute. Nobody asked how my morning had gone. Nobody thought to drop their voices for the girl trying to rest right next to them.

Less than an hour until my last exam, and I couldn't get my eyes to stay shut.

Whatever I'd gotten wrong was done. No taking it back, and stewing over it now would only wreck my head.

I needed the little time I had left. To rest. To review. To nail the last one.

All around us, other kids had already put their heads down.

I cut into their fun, keeping my voice low.

"If you guys want to talk, can you take it outside? There's another exam this afternoon. People are trying to rest."

Tristan blinked.

Then he grinned, warm and easy.

"Fair enough, Hazel. I'll pull them out right now."

He herded his friends toward the hallway. One of them threw me a little mock-salute on his way past.

"My bad, wifey. Get your rest. Go crush it this afternoon."

Tristan smacked the back of his head.

"Knock it off. What are you even yelling about."

Then he turned back to me, smiling.

"Don't mind them, Hazel. Do your thing."

I put my head down, sure I could finally get some quiet. Maybe even sleep.

But the study room and the hallway were split by a single glass wall, and the door hadn't shut all the way.

Their voices kept leaking through, thin and needling, like a mosquito you can't find in the dark.

Every so often, a burst of laughter.

I lay there with my eyes shut, worn out, and couldn't drop off. The clock was eating my rest. Soon I'd be back in that exam room. The more I thought about it, the more wired I got.

Then someone tapped my shoulder.

I blinked awake and pushed myself up. Tristan.

He'd bent down close. So close his hair brushed mine.

My pulse tripped. Heat crawled up my face.

Ten years of loving him in secret, and now he was inches away. I'd be lying if I said it did nothing to me.

His breath spilled warm across my neck.

I leaned back. He followed, pressing in, like he'd caught a scent.

Like the sliver of space between us didn't bother him at all.

"You"

I wanted to ask what he thought he was doing.

I got out one word before he cut me off.

"You're ugly."

Clear. Certain. Every syllable on purpose.

And his face. Cold in a way I had never once seen on him.

Out in the hallway, the laughter went up again. Delighted.

The guy who'd saluted me, called me wifey, was the loudest.

"Real big and bossy when she kicked us out, huh? Golden boy calls her ugly and now she can't even squeak."

Someone jumped in.

"Honestly? Every guy needs a girl next door. Train her a little and she falls right in line."

"Look at Hazel's face, she's stunned. Don't tell me she thought he was about to confess?"

His friends lost it. One doubled over. One pointed straight at me.

And there was one more of them in that hallway now.

Roxanne.

Chapter 2

Lips pressed into a small smile, eyes curved sweet, she watched me. Pretty enough to hurt.

If I hadn't known it was mockery, a girl that pretty smiling at me, I might've been flattered.

Roxanne was a repeat senior, our school's brand-new it-girl. And the only girl in that hallway full of boys.

I didn't know when she'd shown up. Didn't know how well she knew Tristan. They weren't even in the same class.

"Hazel, a few of us couldn't focus so we were playing a game. I lost. Picked dare. The dare was to walk up to a girl and call her ugly to her face. That was my punishment. You have no idea how much it killed me to say it to you."

He rattled it off, didn't wait for me to answer, and walked straight back to his friends.

Turned me into the punchline. Then left me sitting in it.

Something in my chest went cold, an inch at a time.

Was this even the Tristan I'd fallen for?

The old Tristan took a fist to the face for me once and didn't flinch.

A week ago he'd sworn that no matter what, we'd end up together.

In the hallway, the boys weren't done.

"Golden boy's a legend. Using Hazel as bait to reel in the it-girl."

"With Queen Roxy standing right here, obviously he's gotta say Hazel's the ugly one. Right, Roxy?"

Roxanne didn't answer. She just smiled, shy and pleased, color rising in her cheeks. She swatted the boy's arm, but her eyes slid to Tristan.

And Tristan, like he'd caught every word, smiled back.

So that was it.

Tristan lost a game, came to call me ugly, and Roxanne had been there for all of it.

Which meant a boy that smart could have found a smarter way. Dodged the dare. Spared every girl in the room the embarrassment.

Instead he picked me. Said it to my face. In front of her.

If I had to guess, the two of them had been circling each other for a while now. While I had no clue.

This time last year, Tristan was the one who'd insisted we make a promise. Once finals were over, we'd finally be together.

He never knew how happy that made me. Years of quiet, hopeless fluttering, finally answered.

That night I read a romance manga and pictured the two of us, kicking my feet, rolling around the bed, grinning like an idiot till the sun came up.

Now every bit of it, the hope, the stupid schoolgirl daydreams, was a punchline.

I'd handed my heart to the wrong person, and it made a clown of me.

It kept looping. Tristan's mouth shaping the words. His friends howling. That little smile he traded with Roxanne. My throat pulled tight with every replay.

My eyes were already stinging.

Tristan was still deep in it with his friends. Hadn't glanced back at me once.

And it landed on me all at once. These tears weren't falling. He wasn't worth them.

I dug my nails hard into my palms.

Used the sting to hold the line. Don't cry. Don't hand them a bigger joke.

A wrong answer stays wrong, no matter how long you ache over it.

A person who's changed stays changed, no matter how good you were to them.

The only thing left to do was walk forward. And from here on, make the right calls.

I wasn't going to waste one more second wondering when exactly Tristan had rotted through.

One hour until my last exam. And every minute of it belonged to me.

Not him.

Chapter 3

A few deep breaths, and my head cleared.

I packed up fast and stood to go.

Tristan was after me in a second, catching my wrist, holding tight.

"Hazel Ellis, they're my friends. It was a game. You blow it into some huge deal and it's no fun for anybody. Lighten up. Don't make a scene."

Called me ugly, and now I'm supposed to lighten up.

I'm not that generous.

A week before finals, Tristan and I had been doing practice sets together and hit one multiple-choice question. The wrong answer was built to trip you up. I got it wrong. He got it right.

On an exam like this, a single point can drop you a thousand spots. One question could be the line between two different schools, two different lives.

I asked him, "Could one wrong answer send us down totally different roads someday? Split us up for good?"

His smile in the sunlight was warm and bright. Every good word you could think of.

He was so sure of it, back then.

"No way. No matter what, we end up together. Wherever you go, I go. Nobody splits us up. Least of all one dumb multiple-choice question."

And now? He lost a game, and his move was to humiliate me. Never mind my afternoon exam hanging in the balance.

Forget the test question. This choice, right here, was enough. We weren't the same kind of person anymore.

I gave the hand around my wrist a light little shake.

"You said it yourself. Just a game. I'm not mad. My stomach's a little off, I'm gonna hit the bathroom. I'll probably just go straight to the exam room after, so don't wait for me."

I even gave him a small smile, so he'd buy it. Admit I was angry now and he'd latch onto it, drag it out forever.

I wasn't letting him near my exam again.

He finally let go and ruffled my hair, gentle as anything.

"Knew it. Hazel's the best. Go on. Good luck this afternoon."

I nodded and smiled, sweet as sugar.

Then I turned, went up a floor, found a quiet corner, and locked into my review.

Don't worry, Tristan. I'll give it everything. Every ounce. Every second. Sprinting toward a bright, wide-open future with no you in it.

The last exam went smooth. Even the parts I wasn't sure about, I filled in all the way.

When I walked out, the clouds had pulled apart. Sun everywhere, blazing across a wide-open sky.

My whole chest felt lighter.

A few steps out of the building, I ran into Tristan and his crew. Still mid-conversation, but every one of them turned to look at me.

I walked right past, like they weren't there.

"Hazel! Not even a hello? What, bad mood? Did the exam go badly?"

Tristan strode up and grabbed my shoulder.

"Come on, let's go eat. Anything you want, my treat."

His hands on me used to set my heart racing. Now they just turned my stomach.

I glanced back at him, flat.

"I'm going home. You guys have fun."

Chapter 4

Tristan's brows pinched together.

"Why? We said we'd hang out tonight after finals, remember? Are you doing this on purpose because you're mad at me? Over one thing I said at lunch? I explained it. It was a game. Saying that stuff hurt me too. Why can't you put yourself in my shoes for once, feel a little bad for me?"

I made my face go apologetic.

"My head hurts. I just want to go home and rest."

Behind him, one of his friends called out, loud.

"You sure you wanna bail? Roxanne's coming tonight. You don't keep an eye on your man, that wifey title might just change hands."

Tristan leaned in too, dropping his voice by my ear.

"Stomachache at lunch, headache now. You'd better not be inventing excuses to skip out. I'll say it one last time. You were the only girl there I actually know. I barely know the others. What was I supposed to do, walk up to a total stranger and call her ugly? You're one of us. The person closest to me. That's the only reason I picked you. I didn't mean it. How could you ever be ugly? You're the woman I'm going to marry someday. Just think about it. Are you in for tonight or not?"

Right on cue, Roxanne walked up. She waved at him, all excited.

"Babe, I'm here. Sorry to keep you waiting."

Ha. Perfect timing.

So getting close to Tristan meant becoming his buddies' punchline.

Fine. If Roxanne wanted the wifey title that badly, she could have it.

Without a second's hesitation, I shook my head at him.

"My head really hurts. I'm leaving."

He just tossed the words at me, cold.

"Don't come crying later. If I get drunk tonight and end up kissing or holding somebody, that's on you for not watching me close enough."

After that, Tristan didn't reach out. Not once.

Never asked about the headache. Made up as it was.

Guessing he had a great night. Things with Roxanne going just fine.

The boy who used to panic over a single sneeze from me. I still missed him a little.

But that boy was gone. Like something had climbed into his skin and hollowed him out. Might as well be dead.

I didn't see Tristan again until the next day, back at school to move out.

My parents and I were outside the gates, loading bags into the trunk. Mom was muttering beside me.

"Where'd Tristan run off to? He came by the house so eager, swore he'd help us carry everything, and now he's nowhere."

Dad was staring at something across the way, his face gone dark.

"Isn't that him right there? Take a good look at what he's so busy with."

I followed his eyes.

Under the big oak tree, Tristan stood hugging two fat cardboard boxes. Scrawled across them in thick marker:

Roxanne Blake, Homeroom 13.

The girl beside him reached up and wiped the sweat from his temple, glowing.

Striking enough that you couldn't miss her if you tried.

Roxanne. Of course.

Tristan's lips moved. I couldn't hear what he said.

Then Roxanne rose up on her toes.

And kissed him on the cheek.

His whole face lit up. His grip slipped.

A few notebooks slid off the top of the stack and hit the pavement.

Grid covers, every color. I knew them on sight. The subject notes I'd stayed up building, one careful page at a time.

Senior year, Tristan had come down with a rough case of COVID, a fever that wouldn't break, and missed a whole week. That was when I'd started making him his own copy of everything I wrote. Kept it up right through finals.

And now every last page of them was sitting in Roxanne's box.

Every late night. Every careful page. I'd called it love.

To Tristan, it had only ever been a party trick. Something to gift-wrap and hand to another girl.

Chapter 5

Tristan looked down at the notebooks on the pavement. He went still, then started to crouch, boxes and all.

Roxanne stopped him cold.

"Are you dumb? Why pick up stuff you don't even need? Just toss it. Lighter load for you anyway, babe."

He hesitated. Half a beat.

Then a small grunt of agreement, and he let her drop everything I'd bled over into the trash.

My parents knew those notebooks, of course.

I could've been asleep by midnight most nights. Instead I'd stayed up the extra half hour, building Tristan's copy first, photocopying my own after.

They'd watched me do it for months.

I hadn't told them about yesterday at lunch. Old loyalty, maybe. But now I didn't have to say a word. They got it. Whatever Tristan and I had been, always stuck together, it was past tense now.

Dad's face was stone. He hauled the last of the bags into the car in one go.

"Stop looking. It's bad luck. Let's go home."

We'd barely settled in when Tristan came scrambling over and rapped on my window. There was a panic on his face I almost never saw.

"Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, hey. Hazel, when did you guys get here?"

Mom rolled her window down.

"We've been here a while. Watched the whole thing."

Sweat rolled down his forehead in fat drops, from the heat or the nerves, I couldn't tell. He rushed around to the passenger side to plead his case to her.

"Mrs. Ellis, please don't get the wrong idea. She's just a friend. Her parents are out of town, couldn't come, so she asked me last minute to help carry her stuff. I hadn't gotten the chance to tell you."

Inside the car, the three of us said nothing.

That only wound him tighter. He called past Mom, to me.

"Hazel, say something? You know Miss Blake and I are strictly platonic. Don't let your parents think the wrong thing."

Platonic? Looked a lot more like friends-with-lips from where I sat.

Before I could get a word out, Mom beat me to it. She put on a face of pure surprise.

"Friends kiss each other on the cheek these days? Is that something your old man taught you? Because if so, I'm not so sure I want my Hazie being your friend either."

Tristan flinched, face going red in a heartbeat.

"No, my dad never taught me that. She kissed me. I had the boxes in my arms, I couldn't dodge. Mrs. Ellis, please don't tell my parents. It really is just a misunderstanding."

Mom waved a lazy hand at him.

"Sweetheart, you don't need to explain all this. Finals are over. Who you date is your business, not ours. The only thing we care about is this. If you were seeing someone, you should've said so sooner. If Hazie had known, she'd have kept her distance. She wouldn't have been staying up making your notes. And those notes wouldn't be sitting in a trash can right now, dumped by your girlfriend. What you did wasn't fair to either girl."

"Your girlfriend's still waiting on you. Go on."

She didn't leave him room to argue. The window slid up.

Dad hit the gas, and Tristan dropped away behind us in a blink.

In the side mirror, he was still there. Standing at the curb. Not moving. Just watching us go.

Like the girl right beside him was made of air.

Chapter 6

It didn't last. They shrank fast, small as grains of sand, until the street swallowed them whole.

It left a strange ache I couldn't shake.

If there'd been no Roxanne, would Tristan and I be in this car together right now, giddy, mapping out a graduation trip?

But there were no ifs.

Bigger skies. Better views. I'd go see every one of them, Tristan or no Tristan.

I let out a small, loosening laugh and opened Instagram to look up travel ideas.

The joke was, the algorithm knew me too well.

It dropped a viral post from the school confessions page dead center on my feed. Starring Tristan and Roxanne.

The tipster said that on the last night of finals, Tristan's whole crew had been out partying late. Everyone else went home. He and Roxanne didn't.

Attached was a photo from the next morning. The two of them walking out of a hotel together. Roxanne tucked in close against his side, arm looped through his. Tristan, hands in his pockets, head down, wearing a small smile.

The comments were one long lovefest.

Commenters: [Knew something was off with those two. Finals end and boom, they go public. So happy for them.]

Commenters: [Those faces together?? Match made in heaven. Power couple. I'm obsessed.]

A few people brought me up.

Commenters: [Wait... does nobody remember the OTHER girl he was always around? I heard SHE was the childhood sweetheart?]

Commenters: [Hot take. If it weren't for the girl next door, golden boy and the it-girl would've gone public ages ago. Wouldn't have had to sneak around this long.]

But the top comment was this one.

Roxanne: [omg that's me haha thank you all for the love, we're gonna be so happy]

The avatar was a selfie. Hers.

I tapped into the profile. Her, all right.

Latest post went up in the small hours of this morning.

The cover shot was Tristan asleep across from her, warm hotel light pooling over his bare chest. The kind of photo that only means one thing.

Her caption:

Roxanne: [no more hiding anything. our summer, just the two of us, starts now]

Give her credit. She knew exactly how to word it. The post blew up even bigger than the confessions thread. Comments praising her, comments calling it scandalous, comments dragging me.

I scrolled. Nearly every old post of hers had Tristan somewhere in the frame.

So that was where the Saturdays went. Every afternoon he'd said he was playing basketball, he'd been out with her.

So that was our walk home. The first stretch, Roxanne's route ran with ours, and she was always ten feet ahead. Every time Tristan strolled beside me, talking, his eyes had been on her back.

And those days he was out with COVID, when I brought him his notes and saw the red mark on his neck. Not a mosquito bite, like I'd told myself.

A little strawberry. Left there by Roxanne, just for him.

Like some peeping stranger, I was only now getting to see the whole year of sweetness they'd kept behind my back.

The signs had been there the entire time. I was just too slow. It took him saying those two words to my face, you're ugly, before I finally cut the one-sided fantasy loose.

I couldn't look anymore. I killed the screen like I was running from it.

My heart slammed against my ribs. It hurt.

I was the one who'd been kept in the dark. The actual fool. And somehow, in Roxanne's little running diary, I was the villain. The thief. The girl who'd stolen their right to love out in the open and forced two poor souls to sneak around for it.

Chapter 7

Honestly, it wasn't hard to guess who'd fed the post.

The star of the whole scandal had shown up in her own comments to pump it, after all.

Still, I owed Roxanne a thank-you.

Without that post, I'd never have known what last night actually was.

That the entire night I spent flipping over in bed, sick over Tristan, he'd spent tangled up with her. The two of them. All night.

The last flicker of hope I had left for him went out right there.

Maybe it was some survival instinct kicking in. Where the blind crush and the waiting used to sit, something new was budding, spot by spot.

Disgust.

So when a text from Tristan actually came through, there was no flutter, no leap in my chest. Just a deep, bone-level exhaustion with him.

I opened it. His late, air-quotes apology.

Tristan: [Hazel, your mom's words really landed with me. Whatever went down these past two days, right or wrong, I'll put it all on myself. It's all my fault. I'm sorry!]

Tristan: [Flowers are already ordered. I'll bring them to your door myself in an hour. We hit a little rough patch, sure, but we're going to spend our whole lives together. Let's just let the small stuff go, yeah?]

So. Humiliating me in front of a crowd, an hour before the exam that could've torched my future. That was "the small stuff" to him.

Did Tristan honestly think he could knife me in the back as many times as he liked, and I'd keep taking him back, grateful for the privilege?

When I didn't answer, another one landed.

Tristan: [Your poor Tristan has one tiny favor to ask.]

Tristan: [You didn't tell your parents about yesterday, right? Please don't go running to Mr. and Mrs. Ellis about it. I'm scared they won't trust me enough to let me marry you someday.]

So that was why he'd cared so much about my parents at the gate.

Upsetting me was nothing to him. A few sweet words, a bouquet, and I'd cave. Maybe even skip down the aisle after.

But my parents were another matter. A bad impression with them didn't wash off. And the "you're ugly" stunt before the exam? Even he knew that one had gone too far.

He was sweating over whether I'd told them.

Familiarity breeds contempt. Turns out that saying holds up.

No matter. We wouldn't be familiar much longer.

From here on, crossing my line came with a cost. A consequence.

I typed back.

Me: [Tristan. You hid a whole thing with the it-girl and kept me dangling on a string. You took my notes, handed them to her, then threw them out without blinking. You called me ugly right before finals, with zero thought for what it might do to me. And you want to talk about a lifetime together? You think you've earned that?]

Me: [For the sake of old times and our two families, I've only told my parents what they saw with their own eyes at the gate. Nothing else. Whether they'll accept a guy who hurt and lied to their daughter as a son-in-law, well. You're not stupid. Do the math.]

Me: [I really am grateful for the boy who used to look out for me. But this is where our road ends. That's enough.]

I hit send.

Then I blocked him. His number too.

Chapter 8

Mom had been worried sick.

She waited until I finally set my phone down to say anything.

"Hazie, you okay? Still texting Tristan?"

I shook my head and gave her a watery smile.

"All done. Just blocked him. No more talking. Ever."

At the red light, she twisted around and pulled me into a hug.

"That's my girl. It's a gorgeous break coming up. We are not wasting it on things that make you sad."

I sank into her, half-whining.

"Can we just leave on a trip right now? I don't want to see Tristan. Out of sight, out of mind."

He lived directly across the hall from us. I could already picture exactly how much of a headache he was about to be.

My parents said yes without missing a beat. Just like that, we were gone.

Under half an hour at home to pack. Another half hour to the airport. Somewhere in the middle, they put in for PTO and booked the flights.

Everything moved smooth and easy. And it felt a lot like happiness.

All I'd lost was one piece of garbage love. Look how much good love I still had.

At the gate, waiting to board, the doorbell-cam app pinged. Someone was loitering at our front door.

I pulled up the feed. Tristan. Standing there with an armful of roses.

The bell went unanswered a dozen times, and his face wound tighter and tighter. Then he started talking to the door, loud.

"Hazel, I know you were just venting. I really do know I messed up. Please, give me one chance. Everything you brought up, I had my reasons, I can explain all of it. Let's just talk. Don't let a few misunderstandings wreck what we have, okay?"

Nothing answered him but silence.

His mouth twitched into something bitter.

"Hazel, I don't know if you're actually not home or just won't open the door. Don't keep freezing me out like this. It's killing me. Holding back, not seeing me, not talking to me, it hurts you too, doesn't it? Same as always. When you've cooled off, come find me. I'll be right here. Waiting for you to come back to me."

He sat outside our door with those flowers for two solid hours before he gave up and left.

His back looked beaten. Nothing left of the cocky, glowing boy from before.

So the Tristan who'd called me ugly, so proud, so cold, could look this wrecked after all.

By the time we landed in New York and checked into the hotel, a message request was waiting. From Roxanne.

Roxanne: [Miss Ellis, it's Roxanne. I'm sorry, okay? Please, will you just make up with Tristan? He won't eat, he's only drinking, acute gastritis, they just rushed him to the hospital!]

Roxanne: [I know you saw the confessions post. I'm the one who sent it to that account. We never actually slept together. Those comments trashing you, I paid for them.]

Roxanne: [The photo of him asleep, I took it in secret. I did all of it behind his back. He's innocent! You're the only one he really wants. I swear on my life I'm not lying.]

Touching.

A message request only lets you type so much. To save Tristan, Roxanne fired off three in a row.

Funny. I never once realized she wanted to be my friend this badly.

Chapter 9

For all her earnestness, I accepted the request. Then I sent her a message.

Me: [You saw that post, which means you saw my comment under it. Every word of that comment was true. I don't like Tristan even a little.]

Me: [He won't eat. He's drinking. He's in the hospital. Poor, poor guy.]

Me: [But why is any of that my problem?]

Roxanne's name flipped straight to typing...

She was clearly winding up to fire back that second.

But I couldn't scrape together a shred of interest in her, or Tristan, or whatever came next.

So I blocked her too.

Out the floor-to-ceiling window, towers and streets crisscrossed the dark, light spilling over a city that hummed.

Honestly, with the Manhattan skyline lit up like that in front of me, it was hard to remember a boy named Tristan even existed.

My one regret was this. How had Roxanne gotten the confessions page to take the post down? My comment under it had climbed to the top and racked up a tidy pile of likes.

If I do say so myself, it was a solid reply.

Me: [I'm the girl-next-door everyone keeps bringing up in the comments. I don't like Tristan even a little, and I fully hope he and the it-girl are endgame. Ship away, folks. Just don't catch me in the crossfire.]

I flew home with a head of big, blazing orange waves.

I loved the new hair. My parents said I looked like a ray of sunshine.

A lot of people didn't recognize me. Tristan, who'd grown up right across the hall, included.

When our paths crossed again, I was up on the second floor of a coffee shop, facing the door.

He walked in with one of his friends, glanced at me, and looked right past.

He didn't know me. The boy who'd once sworn to protect me for life sat one table over and saw a stranger with orange hair. I slid my phone out without a sound, framed him in the shot, and hit record.

Every word he said from here on would have an audience.

It had been a while. He'd visibly thinned out, stubble growing in ragged.

When his drink came, he just stirred the ice with his straw, silent, not a word to his friend.

The friend broke first.

"Golden boy. I dragged you out today because we need to talk. Figure out what's actually going on in your head, let the guys help. We can't stand watching you mope around like this. At first we all figured you and Hazel would go the distance. Married, the whole nine. Then Roxanne transfers in and you two start acting weird. You even had us set the whole thing up, that game right before the last exam, so you could call Hazel ugly to her face and score points with Roxanne. Finals night we saw you two head off to a hotel, and we all figured it was sealed. We were happy for you, man. You'd finally landed the it-girl. And now? You torch it with her and go crawling back to Hazel? Is this even the golden boy we know?"

"We're your boys. Level with us. Who do you actually want? Say the word and we'll make it happen."

Tristan let out a long breath.

"The one I've always wanted is Hazel. Never Roxanne. I didn't think it'd blow up like this either."

The guy across from him nearly laughed.

"You want her, and you still had us rig a whole game to call her ugly? What is wrong with you?"

Chapter 10

Tristan's straw went still in the ice.

"I didn't have a choice. If I didn't prove I was all in for Roxanne, she wasn't gonna sleep with me. A whole year of work, straight down the drain. I just didn't count on her getting this greedy. Wanting to make it official. Going behind my back, blasting it all over the internet, making it look like we slept together, like we were a couple. That's what tipped Hazel over the edge. If it were only the ugly thing, I'd have smoothed it over with her weeks ago."

The friend lit right up, face starving for the gossip.

"Okay wait, back up, what's the actual deal with you and the it-girl? The whole 'nothing happened, I'm just buttering up my girl-next-door' story, that's a bluff, right?"

He waggled his brows and knocked Tristan's shoulder.

"Come on. What's the it-girl like?"

Tristan shook his head.

"I said we didn't, we didn't. Pure as they come."

The friend gave him a look that bought exactly none of it.

"Bull. We're your boys, quit being stingy."

Only then did Tristan cup a hand to his mouth and drop his voice.

"Everything leading up to it, you know how it goes, we handled all of it. She's got the body, she was into it, definitely not her first rodeo. But right before the main event, she suddenly goes, actually the 'not a virgin' thing was a lie, this is her first time, she's scared it'll hurt, wants me to take it slow. Then she says, on top of her first time, she wants to give me her first kiss too. Wants the real thing. Same college, same city after, dating straight through to marriage."

"And just like that, I lost all interest. Turns out she wasn't as easy-breezy as I figured. Everything Roxanne wanted, I only ever wanted to give Hazel."

His friend nodded along, like it all tracked perfectly.

"Heard Roxanne tanked her exams last year over some guy, got shipped back to repeat senior year by her folks. And what's she do? Learns nothing, sinks her claws into you instead. Roxanne. Roxy. Yeah, name checks out, she's exactly as easy as it sounds. She really overstepped here, though. Being the wifey isn't just a pretty face and a nice body. You need the right family behind it. Next to Hazel, Roxanne's money doesn't even come close. When it's time to talk marriage, the new girl never beats the girl next door. All that thirst gets her nowhere."

By now the gloom on Tristan's face had cracked into a faint smile.

"Exactly. My wife's going to be Hazel. It has to be. Her whole world is small. Small enough that it's just me in it. Sweet. Obedient. The kind that lets you breathe easy. Hazel's genuinely naive. Back when I had COVID and she visited me at the hospital, she caught the hickey Roxanne had just left on my neck, and she thought it was a mosquito bite. I almost laughed out loud. So cute. So pathetic. In that second, my need to protect her, to own her, hit a whole new high."

His friend laughed, delighted.

"That's the move. You marry the good girl. Girls like Roxanne are for losing your V-card, nothing past that. Try to build a life with one and forget it, too many guys circling, and she knows exactly how good she looks. She'd run off the first real chance she got. Take that orange-haired girl over there. Bet she's the same breed. What's that line girls like her love? Oh, right. 'I smoke, I've got tattoos, I dye my hair, but I'm a good girl.'"

They'd dropped their voices way down by then.

I still caught every single word.

Chapter 11

It wasn't disappointment, mostly. It was shock. And fury.

I'd known Tristan had rotted. I just hadn't known it went this deep.

The saving grace was that I'd already learned to cut my losses, to pull back every ounce of the liking, the trust, the hope I'd poured into him.

I hoped Roxanne could learn the same.

I unblocked her and sent her the video I'd just taken.

Then I went downstairs, unhurried, straight toward Tristan and his friend.

Tristan shot to his feet. His eyes cycled through it in stages. Blank. Then stunned. Then flooding with joy.

"Hazel! You're finally letting me see you? When did you get back? Why didn't you tell me?"

His friend, unlike him, had gone a shade pale. He forced a smile my way and stood up fast.

"You two talk. I'll get out of your hair."

Tristan didn't even clock him leaving. His eyes were pinned to me, a smile in them, like he liked what he saw.

"The new hair's gorgeous. First time I've seen you like this, it really suits you. And all that nonsense from before, let's just drop it for good, okay? You're beautiful no matter what. I love you no matter what. How could you ever not be good enough to marry me? Off having fun abroad for a week, so you've finally cooled off? I only heard from my parents. No more of that, all right? Next trip, you're taking me."

He reached out to ruffle my hair. I knocked his hand away, my voice like a blade.

"Touch me again and I'll report you for sexual harassment. In public."

He froze. Disbelief flooded his face.

"Hazel, you've changed. How can you talk to me like this? You were never like this. The girl standing here right now, I don't even know her."

Cold, I said, "You were the one who stood up at lunch on the last day of finals and called me ugly in front of everyone. That was the moment we stopped being the same kind of person. It was your choice. Your hands did that. That's what split us."

The shock on him deepened. His voice went frantic.

"You can't be serious. Childhood sweethearts, all those years, and you're throwing it out over two little words? How many times do I have to tell you it was just a game?"

I threw it right back at him.

"Just a game? Not a setup you rigged to impress Roxanne? You gambled with my exam, my whole future, and you sacrificed my dignity, all to buy yourself one night with her."

Tristan sucked in a sharp breath.

"Everything we just said. You heard it?"

The corner of my mouth curved up.

"Every word. Your friend, by the way, is smarter than you. He took one look at me and bolted. And I didn't just listen. I sent the whole recording to Roxanne. So she could hear it too