Chapter 3

By the time I got home I was soaked through. I dropped my keys twice getting the door open. The house was dark and empty, the way it usually was.

My phone chimed.

Chloe almost never posted anything. That night she updated her Instagram.

Meet my boy Mark Montgomery.

The comments blew up inside a minute.

[QB and cheer queen.]

[Finally. I KNEW they had chemistry.]

[Homecoming king and queen energy.]

Then one more, from a name I didn't recognize.

[Julian Stinson must be crying into a pizza right now. He really thought Chloe Aldrin would pick him.]

By the next morning the memes had started.

A picture of me from last year's yearbook, my cheeks round, my shirt too tight, with the mascot's face photoshopped over mine.

[Mascot material.]

[Bro thought the cheerleader is his girlfriend.]

I turned my phone face down and curled up on the couch.

The house creaked. Rain kept hitting the window.

Not her type.

Ugly. Fat.

Those two words had followed me since I was nine years old. They were the first insults I ever learned to expect, the ones I could hear coming from down a hallway.

Chloe was everything Riverton loved. Beautiful, fit, the American sweetheart with a ponytail and a smile for the bleachers.

I was the plus-size boy next door. The invisible boy. The one guys used as the punchline and then forgot they'd used.

But Chloe always protected me.

Once, in tenth grade, a guy in the lunch line said I'd crush a football if I sat on one. I could feel my ears going red. Before I could answer, Chloe was already turning around.

"Say that again," she said.

"Come on, Chloe, it's just a joke."

"It's not a joke unless the one being joked about finds that funny." She looked at me. "Julian. Do you think that's funny?"

"No."

"Fine, I'll stop. Geez, Chloe."

She smiled at me and said, "No one talks about you like that."

Later, we started dating in secret.

We kissed in my dad's truck with the radio on low. We held hands in empty hallways, both of us listening for footsteps. When she'd had a bad day at practice, I gave her a shoulder to lean on and she stayed there until her breathing evened out.

"I only want you, Julian," she said.

But at school she always stayed three steps away when people teased us.

Three steps. Always the same distance, like a rule she'd measured out. When somebody made a comment, she didn't panic, didn't blush, didn't move closer. She said the same thing every time.

"He's just my friend."