I never thought I'd return to Tommy Aster's house, except maybe after a drunken night out with the express purpose of flinging a bag of shit at the front door. Or throwing toilet paper over the carefully trimmed hedges.
Or maybe with a match.
"Valerie," Tommy said on an exhale when he opened the door, and he said my name with reverence, as if it were a prayer. Fucking hell. He looked better than he had in weeks; hair freshly cut, the curls falling into his eyes in a way that was more artful than messy, and those eyes were no longer bloodshot or underlined with dark circles. His lips were curved into a pleased smile when he took me in, but it quickly dropped. At my unimpressed countenance—folded arms, impatient frown, raised eyebrow—he cleared his throat. "Uh, come in."
I stepped past him without a word. I wasn't here to exchange pleasantries. If that was what Tommy had expected, well, more fool him.
Tommy's house was familiar to me after so many years. It was nicer than Kai's, and homier than Jameson's, and I'd always loved the oak panels and stone pillars and the fountain in the garden. The Aster's were wealthy, astronomically, but the house still felt lived in, worn in like an old glove that moulded comfortably to an acquainted hand.
Some of the charm had worn off in the last few months. Because the Aster house wasn't just cosy; it was a shrine to their only son. Old footy trophies lined the cabinets, certificates for the paltriest achievements hung from the walls and photographs of Tommy progressively aging were crammed onto almost all the available surfaces. I used to find it cute. Maybe because I was charmed by him, and enjoyed seeing a record of his life up to the point he met me. Now, I didn't particularly care about the life story of Tommy Aster, as long as it never again bisected mine.
Tommy followed me to the kitchen. I could navigate the veritable mansion with ease, and Tommy seemed pleased by my familiarity.
"It's nice seeing you here again," said Tommy, offering me the smile I used to find irresistible; shy and sheepish, self-conscious of his own happiness. The only smile I wanted now was cocky and unreserved, from a different boy entirely. "We had some good times here, hey?"
"Sure," I said, as if they all weren't tainted by what he'd done.
We did have fun, though, once. As much as I didn't want it to, seeing the house again was a reminder that I'd once considered this boy the love of my life. And we had been happy, for a time.
Curled up on the couch watching Criminal Minds, his fingers through my hair and mine reaching for his heartbeat, enjoying the thrum of its pulse beneath his skin. Dancing around the kitchen with a hairbrush to old Taylor Swift hits, and laughing when the chorus to You Belong With Me kicked in and the previously reluctant Tommy jumped onto the counter to serenade me, spatula in hand and moonwalking prepared, until the final notes sounded and he would jump down to spin me and place a gentle kiss on my forehead. The first time I'd been drunk, Sydney and Tommy and Jack and Rebecca, all passing around a bottle of vodka that tasted like poison, but made my head spin pleasantly, until the nausea kicked in. Tommy held my hair while I puked into the rosebushes, and I'd cried because I was confused and anxious about what his parents would say about the roses. He'd just kissed the nape of my neck and said don't worry, love, I'll just tell them it was me. The first time we slept together, when I was sixteen and nervous, and he'd been careful and considerate, and I'd thought I would never be this in love ever again.
It didn't make me want to go back. Tommy was vain and vengeful and had the capacity to hurt me in irrevocable, painful ways. He was insecure and prone to streaks of jealousy. But it made me feel less stupid, at least. It reminded me that I didn't date him in spite of a dozen red flags, blindly walking into a relationship that refused to give anything back.
We had been good together, until we weren't. We might've stayed together, if he hadn't collapsed everything we'd had in one night.
"You remember it, don't you?" asked Tommy, his eyes trained on my face. "I can't stop remembering it. It's all I think about."
It was a chapter of my life long since closed, and he was the one forcing me to reread it over and over again. As if it was a favourite book from childhood that I'd outgrown, but that nostalgia had him reaching for over and over again, until the spine was a mess of creased and the pages yellowed with age.
Because I didn't want him anymore. I wanted a tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed boy with confidence and charm in spades, who made me a better, more fun rendition of myself and filled my life with friends and laughter; friends who, unlike Tommy's, did not abandon me when we fell out.
"What did you say to Kai?" I asked. I didn't yell, or scream. The drum of my fingers on the counter was the only concession that I cared for his answer, and even that seemed like a thoughtless, casual habit to signal the passing of time.
Tommy looked taken aback. "What?"
"What. Did. You. Say. To. Him," I repeated slowly.
"I try not to speak to Kai Delaney at all, if I can help it," said Tommy, lightly. Then he grabbed my hand and looked at me with an earnestness that made me want to squirm in his grip. "C'mon, Ally. I don't want to talk about him."
I snatched my hand away. "Do you think I'm actually here for any other reason?"
Tommy's hand still lay in the space between us, but he withdrew it slowly when he saw the incredulous rage on my face. He clutched that hand to his own chest, as if he were a wounded animal who had not expected to be bitten. He adopted an air of haughty indignation. "If you wanted to talk about Delaney, I don't know why you'd come here. Since when have I ever had anything to do with him?"
"Since I know you said something to him."
Tommy's eyes flashed defiantly. "No. I didn't."
I shrugged and turned away from him. "Okay."
He grabbed my wrist as I tried to walk away and I let him. I wanted him to know that I had the upper hand; I was willing to walk away, to never speak to him again. But I also wanted him to know that I would stay, if he acquiesced to my demands. Firm, but willing to yield. Uncompromising at face value, but letting him think that, just maybe, if he played his cards right, there would be something for him to gain. So, I allowed him to guide me back, gently lead me to one of the bar stools and gesture for me to sit down. I obliged.
He took the seat opposite me, and took a moment to consider his words.
I decided to help him along. "You don't know what I know," I said. "If you decide to be dishonest with me at any point, I will leave. I won't come back, understand? I am here because Kai isn't speaking to me, and I know that it is your fault. Okay?"
Of course, I already knew what Tommy had done. Well, I knew that Tommy knew the truth, and that he'd spoken to Kai. I could guess the rest, but I wanted to hear it from him. To hear how thoroughly he wanted to betray me; and to know why. It just seems kind of stupid that you never found out why they hate each other. For fifteen, Sophie was remarkably astute. And just because I know longer suspected Kai of secret treachery, it didn't render the question inconsequential. That hatred had started this, had stoked Tommy's rage and prompted Kai's agreement in the first place.
How had I allowed them to omit its origins?
Tommy searched for any hint of weakness in my face, and found only iron sincerity. He sighed. "Fine. What do you want to know?"
"Do you promise to be honest?"
"Do you promise to consider forgiving me?"
It didn't surprise me, that request. It was all Tommy had asked of me since we'd broken up. A second chance, one that he seemed certain he could convert into a future. He was deluded, but it didn't change my answer. "I'll consider it."
"Then I promise."
It felt like we were sitting on opposing sides of a chess game, each of us beholden to promises we didn't particularly want to keep, but aware that it was only by fulfilling them that the other would uphold theirs. Desperate to be the one that profited most from the exchange.
He was expecting me to ask the same question again. What did you say to Kai? I could almost hear the turn of cogs in his mind as he prepared his answer.
"What started the feud between you and Kai?" I asked.
Tommy jolted in his seat. Didn't expect that one, did you? "How is that relevant?"
I folded my arms. Moved my metaphorical chess piece forward. "I decide what's relevant."
Tommy tapped his toes against the floor, the way he'd always done when he was nervous or contemplative. There was a crease between his eyebrows that used to appear when he was doing homework or concentrating on a video game, and once upon a time, I'd had a habit of kissing that little divot until it flattened. Now, I hoped it was a canyon that would widen so astronomically that he could fall through it.
Or, you know, something vaguely less irrevocable but equally as mean.
Tommy sighed. "I dated his sister."
"Isabelle?"
Tommy nodded, looking miserable. He couldn't even meet my eye. "For maybe three months. He's hated me ever since."
Izzy and Tommy were two people that never existed even vaguely in the same realm, so immovably separate in my mind, that it took me a moment to comprehend what he'd said. Tommy Aster and Isabelle Delaney. Technically, she was his type; I was the outlier, to an extent, in Tommy's stereotypical love interests, who were all vivacious and outgoing with glossy dark-hair and perfect elegant features. Not that I wasn't pretty, but I was short and button-nosed with strawberry blonde hair. So, yes, okay, Isabelle was his type. Except for one deeply important thing.
I made a face. "She's three years younger than you, Tommy."
Isabelle might have a bit of a taste for soon-to-be graduates, if Jake Bodrum was any evidence But the onus wasn't on her to avoid older guys; it was on those guys, who should know that fifteen is far too young for a legal adult.
"Barely two years," Tommy said defensively. "She's a November birthday, and I'm in September. When we were dating, I was sixteen and she was fourteen; it was all above board. And it's not as if I knew she was younger when I met her; she was at one of Jameson's parties, and I was invited back then. How was I supposed to know that the girl downing Sambucca shots with Kennedy and Torres was Delaney's little sister? She only started at school that year; it's not like she was renowned back then like she is now."
Tommy, evidently, had practised this spiel before. I was not the first person who'd questioned the age gap. He was right; on a technicality, there was nothing wrong, but—"When you have to do Maths to justify why you're not a creep, Aster, you're a creep."
He bit the inside of his cheek, and I hoped it helped to choke off whatever words he'd planned in his defence. He didn't bother trying. "Yeah, well, I doubt Delaney was thrilled about it," said Tommy. "I asked her out after the party, but he didn't say anything. Kennedy rocked up here—" he gestured to the walls enclosing us "—a few days after we started going out about ready to rip my head off. Told me that if I didn't treat her right, he would." It didn't surprise me; Will wasn't as overbearing as Kai in his protection of Isabelle, but he would do anything for her. Tommy swallowed. "But that wasn't the problem."
I swallowed. Sophie had told me that I needed to know why they hated each other; what, exactly, had precipitated the feud that I had exploited in the first place.
But I wasn't sure I wanted to know, now. Not if it was about Isabelle. Kai was a fundamentally good person; though I'd once loved Tommy, I'd never thought of him as that. Decent, perhaps. Not good. If Kai hated Tommy, it would not be for petty reasons. And there was a part of me that didn't want to know what the boy I'd dedicated two years of my life to was capable of. "What happened, Tommy?"
His knuckles were white where they clutched at the counter. "I can't tell you, Valerie."
"You promised. You already broke the only promise I ever asked of you—to be mine, and only mine—and so you owe it to me not to break this one."
We stared at each other. His eyes were brown, the colour of honey, and it used to be one of my favourite features. Now, I only saw the slightly crooked edge to his nose; the ears that stuck out just a little bit. Imperfections that love had once made endearing, that nonchalance made inconsequential, but that hatred rendered glaring flaws. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me, now.
Except he wasn't looking at me. His eyes were fixed to a spot just above my head, as if knowing it would be kinder to him in the wake of what he had to say. "I slept with her, and then I fell in love with you."
He was despicable. Unforgiveable. My heart broke and was simultaneously refused with molten iron. Little Isabelle Delaney, who was the soul of Kai's life, who had learned to be so loveable because her mother could never spare any of hers. Not once had Izzy ever begrudged me, or shown even the slightest hint of it. The realisation felt like walking directly into a brick wall that had been invisible only a moment prior, the wind knocked clean from my lungs.
Tommy must've seen the expression on my face. The bewildered disgust. Because he raised a hand as if to deflect a blow. "Valerie, it's not like that. I fell in love with you so quickly. It was like a—a bolt of lightning. Don't you remember?"
I did remember. I knew Tommy Aster from school; everyone did. He was athletic and good looking and unobtainable, in the way that universally well-liked boys of sixteen are. The first time we really spoke was at Sydney's sixteenth birthday. She'd been casually dating Jack Heath that summer, and wanted to impress him by throwing the biggest party of the year. They'd been all over each other, and Tommy and I were thrown together as the respective best friends.
I was cleaning some of the trays in the kitchen when Tommy came in. I remember being a little starstruck, but I'd always liked flirting. Wasn't even half-bad at it, if I had a decent sparring partner.
Hey, Tommy said. I don't know if you know me. I'm the best man.
I remembered finding it charming, that he considered I wouldn't know him. And calling himself the best man made me laugh as well. But I was desperate to play it cool, so I didn't say whether I knew him or not. Looks like we'll both be in the market for a new best friend soon. I think ours are on the verge of eating each other's face off.
And just like that, we were attached at the hip. We spent the whole night talking, laughing at our friends and discussing everything about our lives. And never once did it occur to me that kissing him by the pool that night would break some other girl's heart.
"How long?" I said quietly. "How long between sleeping with Isabelle and Sydney's sixteenth?"
"Valerie."
"How long."
Tommy winced. "It only happened once, Valerie. And it was about a week before I met you."
I shut my eyes. I couldn't look at him. I wouldn't. What he'd done to me felt so far out of reach. I was better off for it, really. Not that it excused his betrayal, but I was happier than I'd been with him. But Isabelle... fourteen and probably enamoured, and dumped by a guy one week after sleeping together.
"Okay," I whispered, and I felt a tear track the side of my cheek. I couldn't cry here. I wouldn't. I opened my eyes. "So, why do you hate him?"
"What?" Tommy said.
"I mean, we've confirmed you're a dick. Not that we didn't know it anyway, but it's nice to have things reaffirmed. I just don't know why you've always hated him."
"Because he almost ruined my life!" Tommy exclaimed. His face had gone the bright shade of red that Kai had always inspired.
After years of being together, any attempts to ask what his issue with Kai Delaney was, I'd only ever received a dark look and an I don't want to talk about it. But historically, Tommy hadn't hated all that many people. He'd been critical of Sydney, combative with Jameson, but had only ever had real loathing for Kai.
It had always confused me. I didn't know Kai all that well, but he'd always been perfectly pleasant, if a little prone to being a player. I'd always put Tommy's aversion down to Kai's bad boy reputation, considering it some pathological butting of heads with Tommy's golden boy image. Kai's hatred made sense, now. Tommy's did not.
"I was almost expelled because of what he did," hissed Tommy, his even, placating tone vanished in the face of his rage. "You never heard about it. Dad had to make a gigantic fucking donation to make it go away. I didn't mean to hurt his sister, but he fucking meant to hurt me. Do you know what it could have done to me if I was expelled, Valerie? It would have ruined everything."
I didn't really care about Tommy's image. "What did he do?"
"I was... taking Dexys at the time," Tommy gritted out, and I almost wanted to grin. Not so squeaky clean after all, Tommy Aster. Then again, Tommy was old money squeaky clean. A future lawyer who would develop a cocaine problem. It didn't surprise me, really. "I was behind in school, and I was using them recreationally as well. I mean, for fucks sake, it was only Dexys."
"But Isabelle knew about it. She saw me put them in my locker, and she must've told her brother. I kept them in the front pocket of my bag. Two weeks after I dumped Isabelle a teacher saw that my locker was propped open. Someone had jammed some wooden shit in the lock so that it could be forced open. After I went to class, someone opened it and moved the Dexys to the fucking doorway. And so I was hauled to the principles office for bringing Dexys to school that I wasn't prescribed. I only got out of it because we could argue that, with the door being open, they could belong to anyone. Plus a huge donation. But Delaney saw me hauled into the office, and he gave me this fucking smirk. He did it, Valerie."
It was exactly the kind of thing that would wound Tommy the most. There was nothing he hated more than being caught out, and nothing he prized more than being viewed as the good guy. Exposure by the reputable bad boy of the school would damage Tommy's pride unequivocally.
Tommy, however, was a fucking idiot. In no world was being exposed for something you actually did worse than hurting a fourteen-year-old girl.
He was also a fucking idiot, because there was only one member of the Delaney family who was shit hot at carpentry, and it sure as hell wasn't Kai. At least Isabelle had enacted revenge, in her own way.
"Okay." I didn't give him the satisfaction of either my sympathy or my anger. Instead, I simply moved on. All Tommy wanted was to talk to me, and I would not give him an inch. "I'm glad I have the backstory. Now, what did you say to Kai?"
My diversion—talking about their feud, about Isabelle—had worked. Tommy was no longer prepared for the question; no longer ready to cast himself in the best possible light. He had expected me to spend more time on the background, and hated that he couldn't anticipate my next move.
"How do you even know about that?"
"None of your business," I said primly. "Answer the question, please. Now."
Tommy's jaw worked. "I told him that I knew the relationship was fake."
"Yes?"
"I wanted to know what he'd say. I was angry that he'd been playing me for a fool, and happy because it meant you cared—" Uh, it meant fucking what? But he continued "—I figured he'd gloat or something. But instead, he begged me not to tell anyone for your sake."
Oh, Kai. He was so good. So genuinely, completely good, all the way down to his core. I'd never met someone so utterly without fault in their humanity. We were all flawed, of course; I was easily led and occasionally a bad friend. Cora was prone to anger and jealousy. Sydney was insecure and thoughtless. Tommy cruel and manipulative. Jameson had his bottle and a streak of selfishness. Kai was not a perfect person; Maria Delaney had left him with emotional scars that may never heal and an aversion to conflict that bordered on self-destruction. But nothing had touched his heart.
"He said that if I'd ever cared about you, I would keep my mouth shut. But I know that I still care about you, Valerie, and caring means keeping you away from a... a fucking lowlife. So I told him I would keep my mouth shut so long as he stays the fuck away from you."
"And he agreed to that?"
Kai wasn't a pushover. Why would he not tell me this? I would never choose to keep my secret over keeping him, and he would know that if he just fucking talked to me.
Tommy looked nervous. "I—I didn't tell him how I knew about the relationship. I just told him that if I could find out about that, when only four people knew, did he not think I would find out if he spoke to you?"
My eyes shot daggers. Tommy looked as if he were about to piss himself. He ran a hand through his mop of curls, squirming beneath my gaze as if it were a tangible thing that was pinning him to his seat, but that he was desperate to escape.
"I didn't know he cared about you until then," said Tommy carefully. He winced as he said the words. "I thought it was all fake. I thought I would confront him, and he would laugh at me. I was ready to hit him, but I couldn't hit a man who was basically pleading with me. I thought I was helping, Valerie. You can't actually care about him."
"Of course I do," I fired back. "And you knew that, or you wouldn't care enough to make him cease all contact with me. He is the most decent person I've ever met in my entire fucking life, and I am happier with him than I ever was with you. Especially since he would never even think to hack into my private fucking accounts, Thomas."
He at least had the grace to looked ashamed for that, even as he mouthed Sydney's name. So, he knew my source, at least. That could be Sydney's cross to bear; she owed it to me.
The complete invasion of privacy made my skin crawl. I wondered what messages he had read; how far back he had gone. You didn't trawl through someone's account and draw the line at reading through all their messages. I wondered if he'd gone back through years of conversations with Sydney, looking for evidence of a romance that had never been there. Whether he'd read my friendly messages with Jameson, exchanging barbs back and forth, and judging the flirty undertone that was apparent in all conversations with Jamie. Whether he'd read through the group chat, obsessed with my newfound camaraderie. And my messages with Kai; god, I hated that he'd seen those. They were mine.
There was nothing he could say to justify reading those messages.
"e I don't know that you understand, Tommy. Ruining my relationship with Kai isn't going to make me fall back in love with you. You need to stop acting like a wounded animal, because I didn't destroy our relationship. You did. And it's not my responsibility to pick up the pieces of you just because I've already managed to gather the shards of me."
I was done with him. There was nothing else I needed to know. I climbed off the chair and fixed him with a look of pure loathing. He was so pathetic, my ex-boyfriend, that I almost pitied him. Almost.
"I could still tell everyone, you know?" said Tommy, but it lacked any heat. As if it were an afterthought; the final card he had left to play.
But sometimes, you don't need to craft the next move with conniving precision, or scheme your way to victory. Because it doesn't matter what hand someone plays against you when you hold the royal flush. "I know," I said, with a small smile, turning away from him. "I just don't care."
"You promised you would try to forgive me," said Tommy. "Are you really going to break that promise?"
I did not look back. "Well, now we're even."
A/N: I thought this chapter was going to be short, and a little boring to write, but I actually really love it. I hope you enjoy. Not long left to go. I hope you're ready to say goodbye, because I'm not!