Toni wakes up the next morning with a massive hangover, slowly goes over the night in her head and then panics, but she has a text waiting from Fatin promising not to tell anyone, and it calms her down just a little.
She knows Shelby should be the only one scared to be found out. Like, what the fuck does Toni even care, honestly; she's openly gay and she's been hooking up with a girl she argues with a lot, big deal. That's how Toni should think of it, anyway, but in reality it's so much more complicated than that, firstly because she genuinely feels for Shelby, doesn't want her secret exposed against her will and her entire community turned against her, not to mention the people who will mock her for being a hypocrite. Even if things stay the same with Shelby's family after the full truth comes out, Toni doubts she'd survive the whole ordeal with a single friend left. Maybe Becca, but only if Shelby's lucky, because her family is probably shitty too. And who knows what Shelby's church would do, if they'd even let her stay, and Toni knows that's important to her, plus there's her pageant career, which in Shelby's case seems largely religiously oriented. Almost every aspect of Shelby's life would completely fall apart.
On top of her being concerned for Shelby—and Toni doesn't like to consider this one as much—it's kind of embarrassing that it is Shelby. She's a far cry from girls like Regan and Fatin, that's for sure, and that's okay enough, but everyone will say that Toni's head over heels for someone so—just, for someone like Shelby, who lives the life that Shelby does, who clearly wants nothing to do with Toni now, and she can't handle the vulnerability that would come with everyone knowing that she fell for Shelby Goodkind a little bit and then Shelby chose to have nothing to do with her in the end.
Fatin hadn't laughed at her for it, though. Fatin had spent most of her night hugging Toni, trashing Shelby's dad, and making jokes about how Shelby's actually really fucking hot now that Fatin knows she likes girls and isn't a bigot. They hadn't spoken about Shelby's summer at all and honestly Toni's thankful for it because she still feels like it's partially her fault that Shelby's fucked up now and she usually starts tearing up if she thinks about it too much.
Toni feels bad about the whole night, though, given that it was Fatin's birthday, so she sends Fatin a text apologizing, and of course Fatin eventually replies to tell her to shut the fuck up, because unlike Toni, Fatin's a nice person.
She knows she should probably tell Martha, now that Fatin knows, but she just can't. Fatin might not bring Shelby up ever again as long as she senses Toni genuinely doesn't want to talk about it, because there's kind of a healthy emotional boundary there between them, but she lives with Martha and Martha will want to do what Toni probably should do, which is to sit down and talk about everything and figure it all out, and Toni is so completely not ready for that, would literally rather up her running to ten miles a day and spend every evening punching walls than spend therapy sessions with Martha sorting through all the things she feels about Shelby.
Who, apparently, ultimately can't stand to be around Toni because she's a temptation. Toni hates that Shelby fucking told her that, basically just said "I literally can't be near you because I'm worried that I'll want to have sex with you too much" and then just expected Toni to fucking live with it, to have that in the back of her mind all the time to fuel her own desire but then she also gets to feel like a worthless reject because Shelby simultaneously wants her too much and doesn't want her enough, apparently. Like that isn't a mindfuck to have to sit on until further notice. Fuck Shelby for that one, and for making it clear that Toni isn't even her second choice, is more like her fifth, judging from the list she'd given, as though Toni needs any more evidence that her lack of any sort of sense of self-worth is justified.
She drags herself through school for another week and then her History teacher announces a new project they'll be doing in groups of three and Fatin grabs Toni with one hand and Shelby with another, and Toni decides right there and then that actually, Fatin is worse than Martha, and her drunken admission is potentially about to cost her in spades.
