Their eyes widen, and the shrieking begins again as they rush toward the door in a single unit.
“Under-eighteens pay double,” Mia hollers after them. She shoots me one last glare before she stalks off to empty everyone’s pockets.
My eyes skitter across the room as it empties out, avoiding the people I love most. I can’t face any of them. Not Deiss’s detached acceptance of the situation and my part in it. Not Phoebe’s hurt realization that we’ve been keeping secrets from her. Not even Mac’s inappropriate enthusiasm for our sex life. The temperature of the room drops with the disappearance of so many bodies, and I shiver as I move to reinsert a record someone has left sitting on top of a bin. Through the front windows, the night sky is black.
“So,” Phoebe says, her voice abnormally high, “am I to understand that, after all these years, I still don’t know your real name?”
Deiss puts a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs it off. “Of course not, Phoebes. I’ve never lied to you. Brendan Davis is just a stage name. It’s made up, exactly like the character I played. You’ve always known the real me.”
“How can you say that? Apparently, I don’t know anything about you. You have a whole secret life where you’re rich and famous. And sleeping with my best friend.” Her voice wavers in question at the end, making me flinch.
Immediately, I understand how bad it is that I haven’t told her. It’s not the breaking of the pact that will hurt her. It’s that she’s shared her feelings about Mac with me, while I’ve chosen to hold mine back from her. I’ve created an imbalance in our friendship. My silence speaks, and it says I might be the person she tells everything to, but she’s not the same for me.
“I wanted to tell you,” I say quickly. “I should’ve. I know that. It’s just so new, and Simone reacted so badly to it. I was scared it would get ruined if we were forced to defend it this early.”
“Defend it?” Mac’s voice cracks with incredulity. “This is awesome! They broke the pact, Phoebes. It’s over. Now we can date.”
“Seriously?” She looks at him in disbelief. “All they’ve done is proven why we needed the pact. Simone has lost her mind and gone Machiavellian on Deiss’s life. Who knows if our child superstar is ever going to forgive her for that. And we haven’t even gotten to the part where Deiss and the Ice Queen split up. Once that happens, we’ll be lucky if any of us ever speak to each other again.”
“That’s . . .” I start my contradiction without thinking it through. I’d sound idiotic insisting that’s not going to happen to us. Especially now, after I failed him so terribly just hours into our relationship.
“I don’t care about them,” Mac says, filling the silence my nondenial has left behind. “They’re stupid.”
“Nice.” For a moment, Deiss’s mouth curls with genuine amusement, making him look like himself again. Just as quickly as it arrived, the smile disappears.
“I mean it.” Some internal determination causes Mac to straighten to his full six feet four. His shoulders square, making him larger than life. “I don’t care if they break up or if they spend the next ten years holed up in Deiss’s bedroom and we never get to see them again. I just want to be with you, babe.”
For the second time tonight, my mouth drops open. Phoebe doesn’t look nearly as shocked, though, and it occurs to me that she’s been keeping secrets of her own. Her feelings aren’t one-sided, which strikes me as a pretty big omission.
“This isn’t about us,” she says. “It’s about Liv and Deiss.”
I look to Deiss, but he doesn’t meet my gaze.
“It’s always about everyone else.” Mac’s eyes sharpen in a way I’ve never seen. It makes him look like a man instead of a giant boy. “And maybe that was my fault at one point. But that was years ago, Phoebe. It’s not where we are anymore. So, you need to figure out if you’re down to move forward with me or if this is where we choose to go our separate ways.”
As if to illustrate his point, Mac steps around her and walks down the aisle of bins and right out the door. It’s almost as shocking as everything he’s said; I don’t think I’ve ever seen him go anywhere alone.
“Are you happy now?” Phoebe breaks the stunned silence, hissing the words. Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears. “Everything is ruined.”
I feel the accusation like a punch in the gut, because she’s not wrong.