Always/Never

Chapter 18 / Get What You Deserve (in the End)

Accha pulled into the parking lot, and so came the end of the journey, the worst part of every drive.

I eyed the belt buckle. The door handle on the passenger side. Both of us sat there, not moving. I could have kept driving for another few hours, even though my legs needed stretching and a sharp pain thrummed across my shoulders.

"I've been meaning to ask, actually," I said, "if you still have your phone?"

She shrugged. "I don't even think I brought it. But I can fetch it. Why? Are you planning to fix it?"

With a nod, she led me to the apartment. Tossed the keys to Jessamine as she opened the door, handing me the phone. She moved through the room like a ballet dancer, all seamless and without having to check where she was headed.

"You know..." She motioned for me to shut the door and leaned against the wall. "You know that no matter what, what happens has to happen. Right?"

"Yeah," I said, without having to ask what she meant. Every statement that included the words 'what happened' or ended with the word 'right?' was about our relationship. Quite frankly, every vague mention of it got less and less detail, as we both knew what happened. Right? End of. No need to make a fuss over it. The more we skirted around it, the more we admitted it was done, in the past, over with. "Yeah. It does."

And I meant it. In every reality, Michaela and Rory had to break up. I didn't want it to be true, but it was.

"We haven't talked about it. Even after it happened."

"I didn't want to." My voice sounded weak. "I don't know where I'd start. It's too much, and anyway... I can't stop it. I already—"

"—cheated," she interrupted. "Evidently."

"On my exams."

"Cheated." She didn't change the timbre of her tone.

I needed to clarify it again, though. I met her gaze, taking a step toward the window. Her curtains lifted an inch, as though batted by the wave of a breeze. Outside, the crisp blue sky shone from above the parking lot. Nothing moved outside. Time froze, even for me, until I spoke again to cement that I wasn't leaving this one. Not this time. "On my exams."

She shot me a glare that could have cut through stone. I kind of deserved it.

"Rory... even the essay for your scholarship."

Slowly, I nodded. I hadn't thought of it as cheating at the time. Weston's website boasted about past essays and kept them in an archive. I combined them, rewording until it sounded similar enough to get through their filtering algorithm but different enough to feel like a winning essay. That was where it began.

"You should have gotten it," I said. "My selfishness stopped you from being able to try. And I knew that. I knew it then, and I still do now."

"Rory." She spoke the name quieter the second time, almost like an acknowledgment. Something in her voice broke. "Rory. It's not possible to know what should have happened, and it's pointless to think about what could have."

"It's—I—" I tried to explain. Why all of it was unfair. Why I'd even bothered to come to university when I hadn't fought to get there half as much as her.

She crossed her arms, placing her head against the wall. When she moved in, she painted over them, filling in the push-pin holes from every poster and tapestry that lived there before. Painted white, I traced the brushstrokes, like the arc of a rainbow.

"I'm sorry," I said. There. After all this, I apologized for what I actually needed to, instead of everything else. "I kept it as an awful secret, because it is, and back then, I thought I deserved this. As if because I wanted it, that meant I should be able to get it at any cost."