“Why do you have to piss him off like that!?” she demanded.

“Uh ..., because it's, like, my purpose in life?” he offered.

“You're such a dick. He wouldn't be half as bad, if you weren't always provoking him,” Tate pointed out. Ang rolled his eyes and handed her cell phone over.

“Just because you're butt-crazy in love with him, doesn't mean the rest of us are – I'll probably still be making fun of him when you're both old and gray,” he laughed. She gasped.

“I am not butt-crazy in love with him!” she yelled, then pushed away from him, getting up off the couch.

“It's okay, Tate,” Ang said, getting up as well.

“I know it is, but I'm not.”

“Stop. It's okay. Like I said to Satan, I'm over it. If there's anything this whole fucked up situation has taught me, it's you can't choose who you like, who you love. It's okay that you love him. I'm not mad,” Ang assured her. She stomped into the bathroom.

“But I don't. Till a couple days ago, I was planning on ripping his heart out and eating it for breakfast,” she pointed out, grabbing a rubberband out of his medicine cabinet and using it to put her hair up. She finally turned to face him and he was smirking at her.

“Yeah. Seems to me you'd only be that angry at him if you were in love with him. Why else would you go through all this shit together?” he asked.

The breath flew out of her body and Tate slumped against the sink. Ang asked if she was okay, dipping his knees so he could look her in the face. If she had been shell shocked earlier, she was blasted now. Obliterated.

She didn't love Jameson. Couldn't love him. Sometimes, she was pretty sure he didn't even like her. How could she be in love with someone like that? Sure, she was growing more accustomed to the idea of just being with him, in whatever capacity she could, just like old times. But love!? No. No, she refused to believe it.

“I can't love him, Ang,” she said softly.

“Huh?” he asked, his hands gripping her shoulders.

“He'll never love me back. I can't ..., that would be it. Game over. He would own me,” she whispered. Ang smiled.

“I think he already does,” he pointed out. She closed her eyes.

“I didn't want to like him. When this all started, remember? I just wanted to play. You told me not to lose my heart. What happened?” she asked.

“He's a lot better at whatever game it was you were playing.”

“Too good. I thought we were only playing for sex,” Tate laughed, looking up at Ang. “I didn't realize we were playing for hearts.”

“Pity he doesn't have one.”

She cried then. She hated crying.

Goddamn Jameson Kane, you make me cry even when you're not around.

~6~

They stayed up and ate pizza and ice cream. Talked about boys and girls. A good old fashioned slumber party. Ang admitted that part of what had drawn him to Ellie had been her good girl-richie varnish. But he had liked her. He was so chaotic and crazy and over-sexed. She was so structured and crazy in her own way and repressed. It had worked. Or at least, he thought it had worked.

Tate admitted she felt guilty for wanting to be with Jameson. He had treated her like garbage, had hurt her so badly. What if he did it again? It was her constant fear. What was wrong with her, wanting to be with a person like that? Ang pointed out that all of that just came with the territory of being in love. She tried to make him eat a pillow.

She was not in love with Jameson Kane. She refused to believe it.

“I always thought I was just a freak in bed. Why is it so much easier for me to listen to one guy talk filth, than to listen to one say something nice?” Tate asked, looking at pictures of Nick on her phone. She hadn't talked to him in about a week. Why couldn't she love him? He was such a better option.

“Guilt,” Ang replied so matter-o-factly, she almost missed it.

“Huh?” she asked, lifting her head off his bed. He was sitting on his floor, playing some race car game on a playstation.

“You feel guilty, about what you did to your sister,” he said. She frowned.

“But I like it, so it's not much of a self-inflicted-penance. I mean, I love the way Jameson talks to me. I beg for it.”

“But then you freak out when he says nice stuff. Because you think you don't deserve it.”

“That's not true.”

“Okay.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

She laid her head back down. God, was that true? Tate had never really thought about it. She hated when Jameson said nice things, because she didn't believe him. She always figured he was just talking, patronizing. Saying what he thought she wanted to hear, not how he felt – that hurt. She couldn't stand that feeling. Why couldn't she believe him? Did she really think she didn't deserve his affection?

He's so much smarter than you. Classier than you. Worldlier than you. He would never love someone like you, trash like you. You're just a waste of time. He'll leave you.

It was like Ellie's voice, her father's voice, everyone in her family's voice, had been living in her brain, her whole life, and Tate was just now realizing it. A little whisper, always running up and down her spine. Warning her away. Telling her she was only good for one thing, so just ignore everything else. And Tate had – she just ignored everything, and became very good at that one thing.