Chapter 2
"Oh, him." Emma stopped there.
She put the swab away.
"We broke up."
Brayden's eyes settled on her, and nothing in his face gave anything away.
"Why? Weren't you two supposed to be on a date today?" I asked.
"He's getting married."
As she said it, Emma looked over at Brayden.
"He fell for someone else."
Brayden held her gaze, and his voice came out flat.
"Is that so."
He bent down and helped me to my feet.
"Does it still hurt? Do you want to get it looked at?"
Emma's next words died in her throat, and she let out a strange little laugh.
There was an edge of mockery in it.
I pushed Brayden away.
"Forget it. You could write code for a month and still not cover one visit."
Brayden's whole body went stiff.
Brayden wasn't that kind of guy.
We'd grown up side by side for over twenty years without a single real fight.
How could he do this to me over someone who'd come along so much later?
Especially after the Carter Family went bankrupt, he'd been splitting one frozen pizza across two meals.
How could he possibly give Emma a Bentley and a mansion?
And the two of them had been at each other's throats for years.
In my cramped apartment, I scrolled through Emma's videos over and over.
Not one of them showed her boyfriend's face.
She never used his name and called him B.
B for Brayden?
"What are you thinking about?" Brayden asked.
He set a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup in front of me and crouched down with a smile.
"Your man pulled in an extra seventeen dollars on QuickEats today. Not bad, right?
"Don't worry. You can rest up, and I'll still keep us both going."
I looked at him and said nothing.
He paused, then smiled and ruffled my hair.
"Don't worry, babe. I'll make real money one day, and whatever Emma has, I'll get it for you."
The ring was gone from his finger.
I didn't call him out on it.
Once he was back at his computer writing code, I kept scrolling through my phone.
In one of her oldest videos, I finally found a tag pointing to her own burner account.
She had a burner account?
How did I, her best friend, not know about this?
My heart was pounding as I tapped in.
The header image showed her holding hands with her boyfriend.
There was a birthmark on that wrist.
That was Brayden's birthmark!
How could that be possible?
The two of them had been circling each other like enemies from the day they met.
Emma had complained to me about him more than once.
"You're amazing. How did you end up with a guy like that?"
But every video on that burner account had been sorted into one series.
She'd given it a name.
[Love Notes with B]
It started the year Emma transferred into our high school.
Video after video tracked two students whose grades ran neck and neck.
There was one about B picking on her on purpose and beating her by exactly one point every time.
There was another about the lollipops he gave her with notes tucked underneath telling her not to cry.
And then, I showed up in one of her videos.
Emma: [His girlfriend is so plain. She doesn't belong next to him at all.]
After that came photo after photo of my failing test papers.
It finally hit me.
All those tutoring sessions weren't really about helping me.
She'd been looking down on me the whole time, photographing my wrong answers and posting them.
Then she'd liked every comment that called me an idiot.
[Oh my god, my sister in first grade could do this in her sleep. Is she really going to pass the SATs? LOL]
[Is this a joke account? What kind of guy falls for a girl this clueless?]
Emma had replied: [Guys can never resist a Little Miss Innocent.]
My hands were shaking as I kept scrolling.
There was our official announcement on social media after graduation.
Under the flood of congratulations, one comment sat in her draft box and never went out.
Emma: [If I'd met you first, would you still be with her?]
The question had the whole comment section aching over what might have been.
Everyone was sighing that B had chosen wrong.
Everyone was waiting for B to notice the girl who'd stood quietly behind the two of us all along.
And then he'd understand his own heart and know who he was supposed to love.
Finally, one night I was out running late deliveries when a photo went up of the two of them holding hands on the Ferris wheel.
Emma: [They say couples who kiss at the top of a Ferris wheel never break up, even the ones who have to stay hidden.]
The comments turned into a celebration.
[My ship is finally canon!]
[Go, Emma. Put that homewrecker in her place.]
Only a few comments asked whether she was the homewrecker herself.
But those comments were quickly buried by her fans.
Among the congratulations, I saw Brayden's profile picture.
[Where no one can see us, you and I hold on to each other.]
My stomach turned over.
Tears dropped one by one into the pork rib soup.
I'd been out hustling through the dead of winter to keep our little home going.
And the whole time, my fiancé had been at the top of a Ferris wheel kissing another woman.
The man I believed was broke and buried in debt handed Emma a Bentley not long after.
The burner account carried a caption.
Emma: [Where the money goes, the love goes. And some women don't even know he's already worth 30 billion dollars.]
I scrolled through the info she'd posted about Brayden.
There were coding projects worth 30 billion dollars and code running in systems across the country.
None of it looked anything like the ten-dollar freelance jobs Brayden talked about.
I looked up.
Brayden was sitting on our old peeling couch, scrolling through his phone.
Moonlight came through into the dark room.
His eyes were full of complicated emotions.