“Ruby,” she inhaled my name, wildly.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to pull a Back to the Future. My random black hole hadn’t appeared either. I’d shut the screen of my laptop as if that would magically make the letters disappear.

But I knew the truth.

And Aaron knew the truth.

I’d sent him that xoxo.

Closing the screen hadn’t done a single freaking thing.

When I’d opened my laptop again, those letters had still been there on the screen, mocking me.

“Why would you do that?” Tali busted out, her hands still going up to cup her nearly maroon cheeks. Her dark blue eyes, which were the only thing we had in common, were glassy like she wasn’t pulling enough oxygen into her brain from how hard she’d been, and still was, cracking up.

She was going to make me relive it even more than I already had. Why was I surprised? “I didn’t do it on purpose. One second, we were messaging each other, joking around, then the next thing he types ‘bye,’ and before I realized what I was doing, I wrote that.” I thought about raising my hands directly in front of me where we could both see them, so I could shake them and shame them for what they’d done. They’d betrayed me. They’d gone rogue on me.

After all we’d been through….

My sister threw her head back and laughed, loud, finally, her entire body vibrating. Even while she was cracking up, she was one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. I didn’t miss her fingers wiping at the tears I was sure pooled at her eyes. I’d known that was going to be her exact reaction. I’d known it. I’d expected it. That was why it had taken me days to fess up. Because if it had been the other way around and she’d been the idiot who wrote a friend “xoxo,” I would have been the same way.

“And he didn’t say anything afterward?” she somehow managed to ask even as she cracked up.

I shook my head as I watched her pinched face, scowling. “I closed my computer screen and he’d logged off.”

I shrugged and let them drop in defeat, in total freaking failure. At this point, half my life seemed like a failure. What was one more?

I was starting to sound like Jasmine with her “the world is working against me” crap.

“Oh, Ruby,” Tali half sighed and half choked like she could feel my pain but also thought it was hilarious. “Did you e-mail him after?”

I waited until after I took another sip of water before telling her the truth. “No, I thought it would make it worse.” What I didn’t tell her was that I’d stayed in bed for two hours going over that sequence of two letters like a broken record, wishing I could go back in time and relive those three seconds again so I could stop myself from possibly ruining a friendship that I’d really started to care about for over the last nine months.

That was an understatement I was still lying to myself over, and probably would keep lying to myself over for the rest of my life.

Friendship.

Like that was all I felt for this man whose face I had never seen. That’s how I knew I had it bad. I didn’t even know what he looked like and I had such a huge attraction to him it didn’t matter.

He was nice, but not too nice. Funny. Honest. Spiteful enough to be real. And he wasn’t a creep. He understood me and still liked me.

So it wasn’t a surprise that I liked Aaron Hall. I liked him a lot. A lot, a lot. More than a lot. If I really let myself think about it, I wouldn’t even call what I felt for him being along the lines of “like.”

Even though I knew there was a thousand and a half things he wasn’t willing to share with me.

But that thought only lasted until I reminded myself that I was dumb and had no business having feelings for anyone, especially him. I’d already spent more than half my life pining away for someone who didn’t see me as anything more than his best friend’s little sister even after we’d… done something. I’d learned my lesson. At least you’d figure I would have learned my lesson. I wasn’t about to go down that road of unrequited love again. I was fully aware of the castle I’d built and what it was made of, and it was friendship.

Case closed. The door was locked and deadbolted. I wasn’t going there, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. No, thank you. My castle lived in Denial’s city limits, and it was and would have to be perfectly fine there.

“What are you going to do if he messages you again?” Tali asked as the server approached our table. Neither one of us said anything as he dropped off three plates of food with a sleek smile aimed at my sister that went unnoticed because he wasn’t a woman with at least a D-cup breast size.

I dragged my Reuben and fries toward me as I smiled at the server still looking at Tali’s pale skin, dark red hair, and blue eyes, with so much hope. Poor guy had no idea he never could or would stand a chance with my sister. Been there, done that. I knew what that was like. I told her, “Either pretend like nothing happened, or say I’m sorry and that I don’t know why I wrote that and I regret it big time.”

My sister snickered as she picked up her own Reuben with both hands, oblivious to the server still hanging around, arranging the silverware around the plate he’d set next to mine. “You want to keep being friends with him, don’t you?” she asked.

It wasn’t like I didn’t talk about Aaron. I did. My whole family knew about him. There wasn’t a whole lot I kept from them, except this whole giant-crush-on-a-practical-stranger thing. All I’d told them was that we were friendly. “Yeah…,” I said, watching the neglected server shoot Tali one last look before finally huffing and walking off.