“I’m with him because I need someone. I need an ally,” she admits.

I laugh because it doesn’t matter anymore. I kick off her arms, which are hugging my shins. “Who do you think was my ally, Sylvia?”

“Daria is my enemy,” she moans.

“Gus is mine,” I retort.

I won this battle and lost the entire fucking war. It’s like crawling back home defeated and finding your home burned to ashes once you enter the gates of your fallen kingdom.

I take a few more steps, then stop at the threshold and pivot to her. “My only regret is trying to pacify your sorry ass and breaking things off with Daria. I loved you when no one else did. I grieved for you. I thought you were dead and tortured myself, blamed myself. But my actions never intended to hurt you. I made a mistake. You did all this on purpose. So now I’m leaving you, just as you left me. Only I’m four years too late.”

When my mother was still into poetry (and life in general, I guess), she used to read us passages every night. There was one that really stuck with me for years afterward. Not the entire thing—that shit sucked as a whole. Just the one sentence.

Love is humbling.

Those three words boggled my mind. What could be humbling about love? Love is celebratory. It is victorious. It is the exact opposite of humbling. Even back then, I understood the definition of the word love but not the meaning of it. Now, as I stand in front of Daria’s closed door for the first time in weeks, after not exchanging a word, or a kiss, or a fucking glance with her all this time, I am truly, devastatingly, shoot-me-in-the-fucking-face humbled.

I knock on the door before deciding it’s a stupid-ass move. A real man would barge in and hoist her up over his shoulder. The man I was at Lenny’s when I still had the confidence I could have her.

But that was before I caved into my sister’s wishes.

Back when I really was a real man.

Fuck. This is hard.

“Come in.” Her voice is throaty and callous and distant.

I push her door open and step in. Closing it, I keep my back to her so I don’t have to see her face and what’s on it.

“Talk?” I ask, still staring at the door. Since when do I use question marks? Since I fucking lost the right to tell her what’s up.

Say yes.

Say yes.

Say yes.

She says nothing instead.

I wait. And wait. And wait. I deserve this. All of it. My phone pings, and I take it out of my pocket.

Talk.

A tired smile finds its way to my lips. We’re still us, and there’s some comfort in that. When you don’t talk to someone you see every day, you start to wonder if they blocked out your existence. But Daria remembers. The Ferris wheel and ballet studio and the woods. The pool house with Vaughn and the locker room in All Saints High.

I text her back, my back still to her.

I’m sorry.

She replies.

So am I.

I text back.

Gus has your journal. He asked me to throw the game unless I want it printed out.

She types back.

Gus is a coward. And good luck to that idiot trying to work a copier.

Chuckling, I shake my head. Daria and Sylvia as I’ve never seen them before. One sacrifices herself for me, the other sacrificing me for herself.

Can I turn around?

She answers. I don’t know if it’s a good idea.

Breathe, motherfucker. Breathe.

I need to see your face when I type this next thing.

Two minutes pass before she relents. Okay.

Turning around, I drink her in. She is sitting on her bed, wearing oversized pajamas. Her hair is braided the way I like it and flung over her right shoulder. My heart is staggering like the drunken town fool right out of the brothel and into the arms of the Disney princess that are no longer stretched open. And I’m stupid because I let her go, but maybe I’m smart, too, because I realized my mistake.

I just hope it’s not too late.

I look down, my thumbs flying over my phone screen. Look at me.

I watch her reading the text. Her face screws up and tenses in agony. She doesn’t look up.

I try again. I’m throwing the game and retrieving your diary. I’m sorry it took me so long to get my head out of my ass. It was dark back there. Hard to see right from wrong. I was my sister’s keeper for so long, I never once wondered if she was worth keeping.

She still won’t look at me. Tears roll down her cheeks. I suck at this. I don’t know much about girls. I know even less about girls I like. And apparently, I know next to nothing about girls I love.

Love. Four letters can’t cover what I feel for Daria Followhill. They seem too trivial, too small, too overused.

Via made me choose between you two. Said she’d run away back to Mississippi if I made the wrong choice.

Her fingers are placid, hovering over her screen. She is not saying, or typing, or doing anything. And love IS humbling, I know now because I want to punch myself in the face for being the smug bastard who assumed he’d just walk out of this shit unscathed. The tin man didn’t ask for a heart—but got one anyway.

I love you, Daria Followhill, and I think you love me, too. In fact, I think we fell at the same time. You, like rain, in drizzles, over the weeks. Me, like the fucking sky above my head, all at once, crashing without the faintest chance of stopping.

Her fingers are moving. I’m mesmerized. She types, looks up, and meets my gaze through the screen of her tears, then puts her phone down.

“It’s too late.”

Rushing toward her, I fall to my knees, wrapping her waist in my arms and burying my head in her thighs. She doesn’t move.

“Skull Eyes?”

“Don’t lose the game. The journal will eventually get out. It’s already out of our control. You shouldn’t deprive yourself and your teammates of this win.”

“Fuck the game. What about you? What about us?”

What about the fact I just ripped my fucking heart out and dumped it at your feet, waiting for you to pick it up, and you kicked it across your room? Huh?

I look up. She bites her inner cheek. Her nose is pink, and her eyes are glittering, and I realize I no longer enjoy her suffering. It’s ripping me apart.

“I told you I love you,” I remind her quietly as though she wasn’t here two seconds ago.

“If this is how you love…” She shakes her head. “Then I don’t want your love, Penn Scully.” I open my mouth to say something, but she beats me to it. “Besides, you have Adriana and Harper to take care of.”

“Adriana and Harper are complicated.” I rear my head back about to spit out some real shit.

“I’ve known Adriana ever since I was a kid. Adriana developed a crush on me, but I never reciprocated. I was stuck in the girls-are-disgusting stage when she started noticing boys. That didn’t stop her from frequenting my house almost every day. I warned her so many times not to, especially as the years passed and things got worse at home. Mom was out of it, and Rhett became more violent. One day, just before sophomore year, she came over while I was at practice. Rhett opened the door and told her I should be in any minute, so she waited. He raped her.”

I watch Daria’s eyes widen, then she swallows hard, so I continue.

“She got out of there, shocked and ashamed. She didn’t want anyone to know. Three months later, she found out she was pregnant. It was too late to do anything about it.” I clear my throat.