Mistakes and I had always been hand-in-hand, partners in crime (but resentfully so) since it was all my childhood comprised of. When I was merely one, I swallowed a big chunk of carrot without trying to chew, and had to be smacked on the back for. When Liam was nine and I was five, we were running all across the living room, diving headfirst into sofas and cushions and anything remotely bouncy until I had head-butted the wall instead. I'd gone to the doctor. They'd said all was fine, but I knew I was growing up with severe brain damage. I knew it would completely change the trajectory of my life. I just never realized the impact would be so intense.

Sincerity held my words. "What if I. . .flee the country?"

Stella slapped my arm. In the past hour-and-a-half, she had done that action so many times, I was sure my arm was going to bruise. "For the last time, Laura," she glared. Chloe looked my way for the briefest of seconds, grinning. "Shut the fuck up."

This time, I was done for. There were no probable outcomes in my favour, because I actively chose to make the worst of decisions. And said decisions had varied over the past week, tier-ranked based on their atrocious nature—foul and acidic residue being all that left in their wake. It almost included all that had taken place over the impulsive road trip: the lack of preparation for Physics (which had now come to blow up in our faces), the aftermath weariness setting us up for failure (because we were still reeling from the weekend's adrenaline, I supposed), and my favourite: the drunken shenanigans.

Of course, the last one was specific to me. Only I was stupid enough to display such idiocy.

Stella and Chloe knew. I had managed to hide it well until we stepped foot into our city—after which I had drowned myself in schoolwork to right all the wrongs, knowing that the second midnight hit and my overthinking tendencies took over, I would be flooding their messages.

And I had. It wasn't my proudest moment, especially after I'd let Stella know she was delirious for thinking anything could've possibly happened the night she'd walked in on Evan and me being tongue-tied on the terrace.

She had screamed through text regardless. Chloe had muttered a couple of prayers. I had been in a fragile state, and it was downright shameful how it was still the state I was in, three days later.

The city's biggest public library stretched lavishly, embracing the whirring noises that resulted due to the commotion of visitors in a monotonous routine. There was a distinct comfort lining us as we tossed between us questions regarding Kinematics, the wood-scraping and knee-jerking noises swelling as time passed by.

No matter what fleeting comfort it provided, however, my chest was filled with uneasiness. I could've almost thought I had an upset stomach because of the sushi I'd consumed last night. Anxious study sessions two days before the exam were proven to not help my state.

"Uh, twenty-first," Chloe took a sip of her drink before she passed me a couple of loose sheets, lips frowned. "Also, we told you we were proud, didn't we? So, forget and focus."

I glanced over the problem marked as twenty-first, sighed, and then scribbled on the space next to it. If I wasn't enough for my mental insanity, I could always count on Physics. "What exactly are you proud of?" I murmured. Stella had been given a stern eye before this conversation when she'd been impulsively loud, and it had made me wince.

Clearly, nobody else but us were this distracted here. "Stop condoning reckless behavior."

Stella rolled her eyes. "We need to get you drunk more often, man," leafing through her textbook, she threw her head back in an attempt to get the bangs out of her eyes. "You're just unpleasant when sober."

Chloe snorted. I dropped my pencil, eyes widening. "Unprovoked, Stels."

"No, but really," Chloe nudged my arm. "Now you tell him it wasn't just a drunken act. I mean, you said it yourself—you meant it."

Of course I did. I would never go around kissing people, no matter how intoxicated. That just wasn't who I was. "That...isn't easy," I groaned. "You know we are friends. Were. I don't know what we are now."

I'd kissed him because I was drunk and foolish, driven on propulsion and a strange want. What was his excuse for not stopping? He had been in his right mind.

Stella cut through my thoughts. "Simple. Now you're more than that. Congratulations on your promotion!"

I rolled up a couple of sheets and hit her on the head. "I came to the wrong person for advice."

She grabbed the paper roll mid-air and winked at me. "I think you meant the best in town."

▂

GROCERY SHOPPING WAS STARTING TO GROW ON ME. Maybe not in its entirety, since I hated asking for something I so desperately needed but couldn't find. I would've rather walked the whole store thrice, backwards, if that was the cost of finding the exact type of dishwashing soap. In my defense, I was feeling antsier than usual, feet bouncing to an irregular pattern. The only reason I was forced out of the house was because Liam had threatened me to buy shit so that we could consume something which did not result in immediate food poisoning.

Mom and dad were supposed to arrive yesterday, but emergency struck and flights got postponed. It should have been the reason for my unease, since Mom was practically my rock and dad knew how to flip the switch for the better always, but I was feeling distinctly reminiscent today.

The aisle brimmed to life as two kids bumped their shoulders and shared a smile. I grinned, reflexive, and waved at the blonde one who stared at me. Transporting oneself back into time was easy, I supposed, because suddenly the kids were three and their arms stayed interlocked, elbows knocking into each other erratically. One was falling behind, breathing heavily, and the one right in front mimicked the action, arising an annoyed grunt in response. The one in the middle smiled worth a billion watts. Always.

On that day, in that instant, he had been pulling us along by our sleeves. Sebastian. Elizabeth. Me. It was sad how I had no memory of what he had so excitedly shown to us, but I'd remembered his face. That remained far more important to me.

His eyes were glowing. They had always been the colour of soil, yet I clearly remembered seeing gold in them. His smile lit up like a firecracker. His face was always so warm, drawing. I understood why everyone loved him even though he was hard to keep up with. I understood completely why he had given me a hand when I was trying to make teacups in pottery class in fifth grade, and was failing so royally that all the kids laughed.

He didn't want me to be laughed at.

I had known him since then. Sebastian was a giant monster to the rest. He was taller than the average bunch. His head would peek out of his hiding spot in a game of hide & seek, and he would always lose. He would be easily spotted in the crowd. While other guys in middle school were going through puberty with weirdly pitched voices and blotched skin, he could woo every twelve-year-old girl in an instant. He was a menace to be around, and Elizabeth and I swore to die on that hill no matter what. Once, he'd added siracha to our seventh grade Math teacher's Himalayan tea, stirred it well, and proceeded to choke on his laughter as the poor man choked on his tea.

The teacher vowed to never teach him again. I respected him for not strangling a seventh-grader after finding out, because I might have. I knew Sebastian regretted making that decision, since he'd gone home and tried the poisoned tea himself to "suffer the consequences of his actions." I never understood what exactly he'd meant by that.

And he was always helping. I'd asked him once, "What about your own work?"

He'd joked. "You've got my back, right?"

Of course I had. But he never needed anyone to tend to his messes. He was doing his own thing while simultaneously picking up others from the ground. I couldn't fathom how he did all that at once. He was there for others first. It was always others first for him. He couldn't care less about himself. Elizabeth and I used to scold him for how recklessly he made decisions for himself, while talking centuries to deal with anything that included us.

He acted like he was on the run all the time. He was a terrible liar. He had every single thing planned to perfection unless he was doing it for himself.

I should've known how obvious it all was, and maybe I did. Maybe I'd realized it the second it was too late, and had to block everything out of memory to let my limbs work again. Maybe Elizabeth had known that I had known. That could've stemmed the blame—shouldered it wholly on me. The feeling of it was vice-like then. Sometimes, I feared, if I let it out in the open now, it would consume me whole.

A gentle nudge brought me back to reality. It couldn't have been the first time my attention was being called out for whilst I fed it to the wolves in my head, since the shove wasn't gentle. I muttered a shaken, "Yeah?" but I was zoned out for so long, I started panicking.

What if I was standing right in front of the very cereal someone wanted, and they'd been telling me to move for an hour?

I wasn't sure it was dread or confusion I let my face morph into. It was Evelyn, smiling brightly with not a pinch of hostility.

I remembered I didn't have to panic in front of her. She wasn't her brother. I didn't even want to think about her brother at all. She was my friend, as we had previously established. Her hair bobbed on her collared shirt, and I realized it was shorter than I remembered seeing.

"Hey." I let out a smile. "You cut your hair?"

She touched the ends consciously. "Uh, yeah. It was being bothersome." She paused. Her eyes were so clear, like the reflection of the whole sky. Evan's were darker. At least they had been the last time I looked into them.

I blinked. Realized I was just stalling. "Sorry. Under the weather a bit today. How's it going?"

She laughed. "You looked so lost here, I almost thought I nudged the wrong person twice." She pointed at her trolley, which was just filled with snacks. I spotted Reese's and grinned. "Successful trip, I see."

"Very." She momentarily closed her eyes. "You should come over sometime. Don't let my brother know, though. He's looking for every opportunity to rob you and escape."

Words solidified in my throat. "Sure." I just couldn't not ask. She'd brought him up, and I was thinking about him all over again. I hadn't seen him in four days, now. He could be dead. The thought in itself closed around my chest so harshly, I found it hard to breathe. "How. . .is he?"

I wasn't meant to ask that. I wanted to know more about his whereabouts, since he didn't attend school anymore. I was more interested in what he had going on. Not how he was. He hadn't messaged a single thing or tried to contact me. Didn't even react to anything on the group chats—which by now we have twenty of, at the very least, all thanks to Leo and Raymond.

And here I was. I couldn't muster the strength to drop a hey. This was peak despicable, I knew. This was my rock bottom.

She noticed me sway on my heels. She was too smart for my good, because she smirked. "You could ask him that yourself."

Lying was so easy. It scared me. "If only he would respond."

That did it. "Really?" She furrowed her brows, lips pulled to a side. "There's no one else he'd reserve time for but you, though."

My heart twisted. Was I playing into her hands or was she? At this point, I just needed answers and air which did not smell like the citrus air purifier this store was religiously using since I moved here. "You put too much faith in him. He's not been attending school, so that's why I asked."

"Ah." She clicked her tongue. See-sawed her heels. "That's because he's been seeing someone."

I almost nodded along, but then the sentence unravelled and started making sense. It was too much information, and she had said two words. Seeing. . .someone?

I couldn't believe I said what I said. "As in, a therapist?"

We both slapped a hand to our mouths at the same time, but for different reasons. She covered her giggle, whilst I covered my stupidity. "No, no. At least, not yet." She rolled her eyes. "I think he went on a date yesterday. But don't worry, that's not why he's been bunking school. He's had a lot of work suddenly, so that's mainly why, but he also found someone. He hasn't really spoken about it, though."

He...what?

She pulled her lips into a pout. "Um. Can I tell you something?"

What option did I have here anyway? I nodded. She grinned. "I always thought you two were together, you know, and I was really happy for him because I don't see him sad whenever he's speaking about you or going out with you." Her sigh was so loud. "So I. . .I don't know what happened."

Was laughing a sane reaction to that? In my head, I had replied: Same, girl, but physically, I was having an out-of-body experience. It felt like I had been plucked into the air and all the gravity in the universe was tugging at me. Like those dreams where you were just falling, falling, falling, only to be woken up with a jerk. This was real-time, however, and so much worse.

"He doesn't tell me anything," she continued when I didn't react, a sheepish grin tugging on her mouth. "But I know he will tell you anything. So you can ask him!"

I didn't know what was funnier: the fact that she thought I would brazenly ask about his love life, or that he'd ever feel obliged to tell me a single thing. Both were equally ridiculous, so I laughed. And then laughed some more.

He found someone. He. Found. Someone. Why was that so funny? Why had I disregarded him as a scum on earth who wasn't worthy of dating or being desired? He was a fucking model. For all I knew, he could be having multiple relationships in the span of one. What did I even know about him?

Before I could let any emotion take over, I asked a sane question for my personal sanity, which probably made me seem insane in her eyes. "How, uh. . .when did he meet the someone?"

Her mouth opened. She held up two fingers, still eyeing me, but I let myself allow a sigh. That was many days after the party, the inebriation, us. I was worried I had done something irreversible there. I wasn't so keen or ready to be a homewrecker of sorts.

That was the sensible part of me. The sympathetic, generous, kind. And that was all it had to offer.

Then it gave way to the miserable part.

He had found someone. That was a great way of summarizing whosoever we were talking about, clearly. It reduced them to two syllables. And I simply nodded away at the rest of the talk, but a distressing, frightening part of my brain was on an entirely different train. While most of my body went on autopilot as I waved her good-bye and paid for my stuff and left, tiny holes ruptured my lungs and made breathing difficult. The air hit on my face in harsher blows and gripped my fingertips in an icy hold.

Whatever that night held, it had slipped right out of my hands.

I needed to stop making so many mistakes. They could very well end me.

▂

THE LIBRARY WAS EMPTIER THE SECOND TIME WE DECIDED TO DROP BY. We had been doing this a lot lately, finding places that would provide the apt amount of white noise so we could focus on the task at hand: studying. Before we went to see Evan perform, we'd picked out our favorite library from the three libraries in the locality, and even studied at two parks—one which ended up being disastrous because a kid fell over Stella and dropped his orange juice all over my notes. Luckily, I hadn't handwritten them, so I could just print them out again.

That did not mean I wasn't upset, though. In fact, in the same breath that I cursed, I remembered muttering, "I am never having kids."

I'm sure his mother heard.

"Laura," Stella sang. It broke me out of my trance. "Stop zoning out. By the way, any updates with Mr. Celebrity?"

I was trying to ignore thinking about him, and she kept bringing him up. If I told her he was out-of-bounds now, she would pluck all my hair out because she knew it would happen. "None," I tried to be nonchalant. My heart still squeezed so hard, it hurt. This feeling was a disease. Infatuation was so gross, my stomach doubled up. I was going to be sick for no reason. Great. "We're going in reverse now."

I shouldn't have added that. I don't know why I did, because now even Chloe's attention wired to me. "What?" she pressed her lips. "What does that mean?"

That means nothing. I don't know what it means. None of it means anything. I'm going insane and feeling sick while doing Physics. This is the worst time to be alive.

My phone lit up with a message, which I gladly let myself get distracted by. It was a notification of the weather app, telling me how there was a sixty percent chance of rain right now. Eighty percent tomorrow. My eyes inadvertently went over the time. It was getting late in the afternoon, and I was done discussing my humdrum love life. "Do the sample papers, Reyes. It shows that it's going to rain soon. I'm not getting wet, so I will leave you both here if we don't finish this up."

She rolled her eyes. "I brought you here, you ass. And we're done."

I bit back a scoff. Stella punched my arm, and then added, "One last thing, though, listen to your gut. It's wiser than you think."

"I have digestive issues and terrible anxiety and my gut is always telling me to abort mission." I deadpanned. "That's not good advice for me."

Both of my friends looked like they were going to leave me behind in this freezing library, so I gave up on comedy. Huffed a tired breath, which formed a cloud in front of my eyes. It was so cold; I wasn't wearing enough layers on me.

But then: before we could backtrack to what remained a part of our syllabus and wrap things up, Chloe grimaced. "You're one to say, though. When was the last time you listened to your wise gut?"

And when Stella Reyes was the one to lose some colour from her face, I couldn't hold the grin. "Oh, you—"

"She didn't tell you?" Chloe prompted.

"What is there to be told?" I shot back. "Stels, what am I hearing?"

"Nothing?" She reclined on her chair. "Since nothing happened?"

"You don't answer questions with questions."

"Yeah. Especially with shitty ones."

"Look," she facepalmed. "We've got to leave, and it's going to rain—"