Chapter Fifteen
then. I should’ve told him. If there’s anything that’s ever screamed “Joaquin and Ivelisse’s perfect moment,” it’s us sitting on the hood of his car in a parking lot critiquing slushies. It could’ve been a fantastic metaphor for our entire friendship: how Elmwood is as dull as dirt, but having Joaquin here makes it worthwhile. That, when we’re together, watching cars head somewhere more interesting can feel exciting. Like the best kind of adventure.
But I didn’t.
I thought I was ready, the words locked and loaded, but I couldn’t find the strength for that final push. The doubts that’ve been swimming through my head since that afternoon at Marco’s came back full force. Thoughts about how Joaquin doesn’t feel the same, or how we’d never work out as more than friends, or how the Joaquins of the world never wind up with the Ivelisses. How, even if we might work out, we’re doomed for disaster once I’m two hours away. I already have one failed relationship with an uber-popular guy under my belt—do I really want to lose the most important person in my life for a chance at a second, probably short-lived romance?
It took the rest of the week and a mental slap in the face to get out of my head. I can’t keep acting like a baby, running away from my emotions. If I’m brave enough to uproot my entire life for a gut feeling and a chance to start over with a clean slate, I can be brave enough to do this. Start taking chances now, instead of just in the fall.
Clearly these feelings aren’t just fading away like I was hoping they would, and unless I want to spend my last few months with Joaquin feeling like I’m on the brink of exploding, I have to be honest with him.
And now I have approximately twenty minutes to either get my shit together and tell him how I feel or watch him prompose to Tessa in front of the entire senior class and every patron of Dino World.
I leap from my seat on the bench across from the employee area when Jonathan finally appears, decked out in his Diana the Diva Dino costume, sans the head. It’d be an unsettling image if I wasn’t on a mission.
“Hey!” I call out to him, not getting his attention until I’m blocking his path.
“Oh.” He glances up from his bag of Takis. “Hey. I’m going to meet that Tessa chick, like you said.”
“Great. There’s been a change of plans, though. Joaquin needs you to bring her here instead.” I pull a map of Dino World out of my pocket, opening it and pointing to the bright red circle I marked on the far-right edge. “Tell her to go through the whole thing, and he’ll be waiting on the other side.”
“Uh. Okay.”
While my gut doesn’t totally trust Jonathan not to screw this up, I don’t have time to hold his hand and make sure he gets Tessa to the Haunted Hadrosaurus, all the way on the opposite side of the park from where Joaquin’ll be waiting. Even if she speed-walks through the warehouse outfitted to look like a prehistoric nightmare, it’ll buy me at least an extra half hour.
Wasting Joaquin’s money on a promposal that’s bound to be ruined does make the guilt harder to swallow. I try to tell myself it’ll be worth it as I head back toward the bathrooms, where I told Anna I’d meet her after I conspicuously slid away while she waited in line for a turkey leg. Tessa will get the scare of her life, and if I don’t make a total ass out of myself by telling Joaquin how I feel, he’ll still walk away with a prom date by the end of the night.
Except I still have no idea what to say.
“So,” I say to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. “I know we’re best friends and that this might complicate things a little bit. Or a lot. But I…like you. I mean, of course I like you, you’re my best friend, I mean I love you—like, romance movie love, not cousin love. Not that I think you’re like my cousin, I mean—”
No. Nope. Terrible. I take a breath, tap the Elmwood Sucks sticker on the corner of the bathroom mirror twice for luck, and start again.
“Joaquin. Good evening.”
Fuck no. I sound like a Victorian vampire.
My entire body slumps until my forehead quietly thumps against the mirror.
This is impossible.
How do you sum up over a decade of friendship and two weeks (or, possibly even longer—who knows how long this has been just sitting inside of me) of not-just-friendship feelings into a succinct monologue that’s swoony, complimentary, and not completely embarrassing?
A slam makes me jump, and I momentarily wonder if the answer has come to me via an indoor bolt of lightning. But nope, it’s just a middle-aged blond woman and a toddler with puke down their shirt. I rub at the red spot on my forehead from where I was pressed up against the mirror, suddenly regretting getting that close to it. Nothing in an amusement park is sanitary.
I wait on a bench outside the bathroom for fifteen minutes until Anna returns, turkey leg in hand. “You throw up?” she asks in between wolfish bites.
“No, I’m fine.”
“You sure?” She raises an eyebrow before waving her turkey leg at me. “You don’t exactly look it.”
Fair point. Between running around looking for Jonathan and panicking about having to confess my feelings, I’m not exactly at my best. And since I don’t carry makeup around with me like a rational teenager, and Anna’s on an all-natural kick right now, I’m stuck the way I am. Frizzy baby curls galore thanks to the unexpected spring humidity, and ghostly pale due to my lack of appetite this morning.
You can’t blame me, though. Confessing your love for your best friend is a lot to deal with on a Friday night.
“I’m fine, promise,” I reassure her, wiping my clammy hands on my jeans. “Have you seen Joaquin?”
My texts letting him know we were here went unanswered, which I’d half expected. Joaquin made plans to head over early with the rest of the baseball team to scope things out—serve as the unofficial welcome wagon for any Cordero senior brave enough to skip class.
Anna shakes her head, both of us scanning the crowd. She offers me a bite of her turkey leg, which I decline. Taking a hunk out of a massive piece of roasted meat probably isn’t in my best interest right now.
“Let’s go on some rides first. The lines always get super packed before closing,” Anna proposes, jutting her chin toward the growing line for the Brontosoarus. “We can meet up with him later.”
“No!” I reply too urgently, her sauce-stained mouth tugging into a suspicious frown. Jonathan’s probably almost done with Tessa’s mini-tour of the park, which means Joaquin must be getting into position at the gazebo. I recover quickly, gesturing to Anna’s half-eaten turkey leg. “Finish your meat leg. I’ll find Joaquin and be back in twenty.” Or less. Or more. Depending on how things go.
Anna shoots me a questioning gaze. “First off, I could finish this in two minutes. Tops. Second of all, what’s up?” She crosses her arms, careful to keep her turkey leg a safe distance from her mustard-yellow Mercury is in Gatorade crop top.
“Nothing’s up,” I insist. My attempt to walk past her is swiftly blocked by her standing in my path.
She waves her turkey leg like a weapon, preventing me from making a run for it unless I want to take a bone to the head. “You’ve been acting like you’re a minute away from passing out since I picked you up.”
I exhale slowly. “I need to talk to Joaquin about something.”
Anna’s lips part, and her grip slackens so much her turkey leg almost tumbles to the ground. “You’re gonna tell him,” she says, breathless. Before I can ask what she means, her eyes bulge to the size of the $10 lollipops in the gift shop. “Holy shit, it’s finally happening!”
“What’re you talking about?”
She shoves my shoulder gently. “You’re finally telling him you’re in love with him!”
“I…I…What? How did you know?” I ask in as quiet a whisper as I can muster, worried that one of our classmates overheard her.
“Uh, hello, it’s obvious.”
When I don’t respond with anything except a puzzled expression, she takes the liberty of explaining. “Say whatever you want about how ‘you really are just friends’ and ‘you’d never thought of him that way until now’ or any of the hundreds of other excuses I’m sure you’re trying to come up with right now but know this…” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Whether you knew it or not, you have been head over heels for that boy since the day I met you.”
My throat goes dry as the Sahara Desert, unable to choke out the dozens of questions I have for her. “Why didn’t you say anything? If you knew this whole time?”
“Because that’s not my business,” she replies casually. “Don’t you watch rom-coms? No one ever tells the protagonist they’ve got it bad for the love interest. They have to figure it out for themselves. Or else, where’s the fun?”
“So you waited four years for me to figure it out?”
“To be fair, I didn’t think you were going to figure it out until after college,” she says. “Do the whole ‘see other people, go through your own heartbreak, then find your way back to each other over the summer’ thing. Very cliché. Very Hallmark.”
While the reassurance that my emotions aren’t just some jealous, spiteful part of me trying to sabotage Tessa at the expense of my friendship is validating, it doesn’t ease any of my nerves. If anything, it makes them worse. We’ve already dated different people before. Sure, both instances were brief and not exactly sweeping romances for the ages, but why didn’t we find our way to each other then, if that was all we needed to realize who was standing right in front of us? More importantly, if it’s always been this obvious how I feel, does Joaquin know too? And if so, that opens a door to a nebulous world of possibilities.
Mainly, that he doesn’t feel the same way about me.
The thought of Joaquin shutting me down makes my knees weak, a startling cold seeping through the humidity and deep into my bones. Anna notices the shift in my posture, the way I hunch in on myself.
“This is a good thing,” Anna reassures me, gently gripping my shoulders. “Being honest is always a good thing. No matter what comes next.”
I want to ask her how she knows, but a piercing velociraptor roar startles us both. The roar subsides, a cheery voice blaring through the PA system to announce that the light show will begin in fifteen minutes.
“It’s go time,” Anna announces, taking my hand and pulling me into the crowd.
We almost lose each other in the sea of parents, children, and classmates, our hold on each other so tight Anna’s violet coffin nails leave marks on the back of my hand. Like the pep rally, we’re able to make it through the throng of bodies mostly unscathed but drenched in sweat. For a fleeting instant, I almost wish I’d taken a shot of Raspberry Unicorn for strength. Anna hops onto a nearby bench, shielding her eyes from the glare of the setting sun as she scans the crowd.
“Found him!” She lets out an excited squeak before hopping off the bench and bustling me toward the right side of the park. It doesn’t take long for me to see Joaquin too. Alone, solid as an anchor as crowds come and go around him, in front of the Ferris wheel instead of at the gazebo like he’d originally planned. He’s dressed up for the occasion, wearing black jeans and a white button-down rolled up to his elbows. His jaw seems sharper, too, more defined. Like he was carved by the angels themselves. I swallow hard. He’s unbelievably beautiful, and I can’t believe it took me this long to notice.
“Maybe I shouldn’t do this,” I mumble, already prepared to head back the way we came.
“Oh no, no, no.” Anna hooks an arm around my shoulders, yanking me forward before I can make it more than five feet. “No chickening out.”
She tries to push me forward, but I’m rooted in place, terror keeping my limbs locked. “What if he doesn’t feel the same way?” I ask under my breath, a question I don’t expect her to have an answer to but need to purge from my brain regardless.
“Then he doesn’t,” she replies calmly. “But at least you’ll know.”
I could remain standing here and try to decode the sadness in her voice, the way her hands tighten around me as she says it. But this isn’t about prying truths out of her, and with every minute I waste wondering if this is the right decision, I’m one step closer to losing my chance for good.
“Okay,” I say after what feels like an eternity of watching Joaquin scour the crowd for someone I know isn’t me and start heading toward him.
Each step feels like a thousand miles. Closing the short few yards of distance shouldn’t take as long as it does, but the voice that’s plagued me since Joaquin came home from spring break ramps up to full volume as I let my body carry me forward. This is a mistake, he’ll never feel the same way, if he did he would’ve told you by now, he’ll be happier with someone else. Taunts and doubts on loop, overlapping one another until I can’t think straight. But when he finally turns to see me, my mind goes quiet.
“Hey.” A smile breaks out across my face as our eyes meet, the worry melting off me. It’s impossible not to feel weightless when he looks at me, my body rushing to close the last bit of distance as I wait for that same smile to take over him too. The one that feels like he’s reserved just for me.
But it never comes.
His lips tug into a frown as I finally reach him, his sharp jaw clenched as if he’s been gritting his teeth. Everything about him becomes startlingly unfamiliar. The balled fists and locked shoulders, his warm brown eyes turned dark and cold.
“Are you okay?” I ask, quickly scanning him for any signs of what might’ve gone down.
He doesn’t respond, shifting his steely gaze away from me to somewhere off in the distance. “Did something hap—”
“You told Jonathan to take Tessa to the Haunted Hadrosaurus?” Joaquin cuts off my question with one of his own.
The harshness of his voice catches me off guard, the boom of it knocking me back like a shove. “How did—”
“He just told me he left her there,” Joaquin finishes for me. Across the crowd, I spot Diana the Diva Dino slipping a vape pen beneath the edge of her oversized head.
Every part of me goes into hyperdrive, my body trembling from the effort of keeping myself upright. Tears burn my vision before I can even open my mouth, the guilt I’ve been swallowing for so long crawling up like bile. “I…I…I’m…” Everything I come up with falls short of everything I want to say, and the things I can’t explain. Because what am I? Sorry? A liar? A shitty excuse for a friend? All of the above?
“I…I’m sorry, Joaquin,” I eventually manage to stammer out.
“So you did it on purpose?” he snaps, the tears clouding my vision answering that question for me. “What the hell, Ive?!”
“I didn’t…” Again, I can’t find the words.
“Didn’t what?” His voice is harsh in a way I didn’t think was possible from him. Not to me. This is what I’ve made him—angry and bitter and cold. Suddenly, his expression shifts as something clicks inside him. “Wait…is this why all of my promposals went sideways? Were you just sabotaging all of them?”
“No!” I reply quickly, as if that makes what I did any better. “Not the whole time.”
“How long?”
“Just since the pep rally.”
He runs a hand down his face, massaging at the tension in his jaw. “Fuck, Ive. Seriously?”
It’d be easy to break down and sob, beg for forgiveness. Standing my ground is harder. “I’m so sorry, Quin. So, so sorry.”
He plows right past my apology. “So, the whole thing with Coach Mills’s car…you did that on purpose?”
I shrug, the movement making me ache. “Kind of. I promise I didn’t know it was his car specifically, though!”
Joaquin gazes somewhere beyond the trees, so deep in thought his face has become unreadable.
“Why?”
I wish he’d asked me anything else—how I did it, how I planned it—anything except why. The truth I’d carried in my heart when I got here, a wish for a future with him as sweet as the funnel cake we’d eaten together last week, turns sour on my tongue. I may not have understood how I felt when I made the first move, but there’s no way I can tell him the full truth now. Even if he never speaks to me again. I won’t tear myself open, pour myself out to him, give him the rawest and most vulnerable part of myself in the same breath I used to tell him I’d sabotaged him.
We won’t get our happy ending, but he still deserves better than that.
“Because it was her,” I mutter, the lingering bitterness I thought I’d squashed coming back with a vengeance now that the walls I built around my feelings have crumbled. Not the whole truth, but it’s not a lie either.
“For real?” he scoffs. “Danny’s a shithead for what he did to you, but you can’t put all the blame on Tessa for something he did.”
“It doesn’t matter!” I snap. “They hurt me—she hurt me. You saw how terrible I felt after that. How I blamed myself and always felt like I wasn’t good enough—”
“You’ve always been more than enough—”
“It doesn’t matter!” I interrupt, ignoring the sincerity in his voice. “I’ve been afraid of love for years because the one guy who actually seemed interested in me only cared about me for two weeks, and threw me to the curb once someone better came along. And now I’m losing my best friend to her too.”
“You were never going to lose me, Ive,” he says, his voice tense, caught somewhere between frustration and sadness.
“Well, it feels like I already did!” I shout, tears stinging my eyes. “All we talk about is Tessa, about prom, about all of these promposals. And can you blame me for not wanting to see my best friend get publicly humiliated like every other Cordero High dope because he decided to ask out someone who gets off on crushing people like cockroaches?!”
He crosses his arms, voice quiet as his gaze falls down to his sneakers, unusually shy considering how fired up he’d been seconds ago. “It would be different.”
“What if it wasn’t?”
“Then it isn’t!” The vulnerability is gone as quickly as it appeared as he throws his hands into the air and lets them fall limply back to his sides. “And that’s my choice to make, not yours.”
“I…I know, but—”
“But nothing.” He stomps his foot as if to punctuate the statement. “You don’t get to do this, Ivelisse. You don’t get to be a freakin’ puppet master, pulling the strings on my love life.”
“I wasn’t…” I exhale sharply, cutting myself off as I pivot from excuses to focusing on what’s more important: apologies. “I said I was sorry, Joaquin. And I’ll say it a thousand times, and then another thousand more if you need me to, but please, let me—”
“Just stop,” he says, his tone clipped and to the point, a sense of finality to it. He turns his back to me. My fingers twitch, resisting the urge to wrap my arms around him. Cling to him one last time. Inhale and try to remember the scent of home before it walks away from me for good.
“You don’t get to do this,” he says again, his voice quiet but rattled, like it’s taking everything in him not to shout instead. “Not after I poured my heart out to you, and you pretended it never happened.”
“You…what?”
But he never hears my question, already gone by the time I’m able to squeak it out through the fog of confusion. I have no idea what he meant, and I guess now I won’t know. Again, I’m rooted in place, unable to chase after him even though every part of me screams at me to do it. But I can’t. I’ve hurt him enough for one day.
So, I let him walk away, likely to find Tessa, leaving me with a thousand questions.