The break up was anything but clean.

In fact, it was worse than I could have ever imagined.

I walked to Maisie's, my backpack slung over one shoulder and my fluffy turquoise slippers hugging my feet. The night was quiet and the smell of rain still clung to the air. The image of Dan and Mallory in the back room still flashed behind my eyes and I was so angry. Angry, because my best friend would be heart broken, and completely and unbearably hurting.

Maisie was my ditsy best friend. She believed in true love, prince charmings and happily-ever-afters. She deserved exactly that.

Instead she was the victim of a coward who cheated. It wasn't fair.

Daniel's car was still on her street. I'd hoped he'd be gone by now, it was late. Surely they wouldn't be inside, I knew Maisie was more secretive than that. She wouldn't argue with him with her family around.

I was planning to let myself in and wait for her in her bedroom when I heard a shout in the distance, carried by the lazy wind.

"I bet this is just what you wanted wasn't it?!"

My head whipped in the direction of Maisie's voice. They weren't far from me, two silhouettes illuminated by a street light a little further down the road. I dropped my bag behind Maisie's violet letter box and tentatively walked further towards them. I was all for giving them privacy, but if they'd been fighting for as long as they must have been then maybe I should be there to step in.

I crouched by a prickly bush, not wanting to awkwardly intervene if they were handling things okay. The leaves rustled and dampened me with the droplets they still held from the rain.

"Maiz," Daniel breathed hoarsely. There'd definitely already been tears shed in this argument. Or maybe he'd been crying this afternoon. "I never wanted to hurt you. All along I couldn't hurt you."

"So instead of leaving me, you thought you'd just go behind my back?" Maisie laughed manically and I realised it had driven her to hysteria. She was pacing wildly along the footpath, back and forth.

"You just kept pushing me away! Every time I try to talk to you, you push me away again. You just hate to deal with my problems, and you're just pissed off when someone else does!"

"How does she deal with your problems?" Maisie said with a sweet sarcasm that made goosebumps erupt on my arm. I'd never seen her like this. Her voice rose even further. "Does she sleep with you? Have you slept with her?"

Silence. Then there was a smack and a cry and I saw Maisie sink to the footpath. She had collapsed and her shoulders were shuddering. I crouched up a little further, ready to intervene.

"Jeez, Maisie, get up. Please."

She swatted his arm away as his figure hunched to help her. "Don't touch me! Don't ever touch me again! You... you monster! You disgusting pig!"

"You know what, maybe you're finally seeing me for who I am. Maybe all of this pretending how perfect I am all of the time has done more harm than good. You didn't want to hear it when I was rejected into university, you just talk about stupid shit all of the time to tune out the real problems going on. You can't ignore it all your freaking life."

My fists tensed a little and I felt an overwhelming surge of violence towards him. The protectiveness I had over my best friend ran deep.

"Maybe you were just a piece of shit all along! Maybe you refused to accept that I saw the best in you, you just felt the need to prove me wrong, right Dan? Sleeping with another girl fixed things, didn't it? Because there is no best in you. You're just pathetic."

She straightened up abruptly and went back to pacing.

"We're done, aren't we?"

Her pacing stopped and she stepped towards him. "You think we're going to keep going on okay after this? You have the audacity to accept that we can just get over this?"

"No, in fact I was hoping we wouldn't, Maiz. We're done."

My breathing stopped as I anticipated the reaction that followed. Maisie raised her arms, her hair whipping around in a halo around her. She shoved his shoulders roughly, barely managing to move him an inch. "You think you have the right to end this? No way. I am ending this, Dan. Danny. We are over. So over, I hate you!"

Her fists began pounding on his chest and when his hands grabbed her wrists to stop her she began to sob. I straightened up, revealing myself from my bushy hide out.

"Leave, Dan," I told him coldly. "She doesn't want you. She ended it."

He released her, and I paced over to try and pry her from him, but instead she recoiled from both of us. "Are you serious?! You're just... spying?! Is that a thing now, you're just getting up in everyone's business!"

I stepped back in surprise. "What are you talking about, Maiz? I was coming around to yours and I heard the-"

"You kept this from me, for how long?!" She wailed. "You are just as guilty as him!"

I was mentally frozen, my fluffy slippers carrying me closer to her, to where she'd recoiled. "Maisie, I had no idea about any of this until today!"

"You work with them! Of course you knew!"

"Maisie, Val didn't know anything," Dan tried to reason. It was futile, she slung back at him.

"Shut your mouth, both of you! Both of you were lying to me!"

"Maisie, please," I begged. My eyes were glazing slightly and I felt tears prick.

"Don't 'Maisie please' me! You are so oblivious, Valerie. All the damn time. And the only way you can even talk to a guy is through stupid deals. How do you think Logan would feel, knowing that you've used him? Or Alastair? You don't even care that he's in love with you, you still rub it in his face every damn second! You're just as bad as him!" She pointed to Dan.

My heard dislodged itself from my hollow chest and fell to the ground. Tears spilled over and my breathing became shallow. Nothing hurt me more than seeing Maisie in pain, but instead of dealing with her pain she was spreading it to everyone around her. Did she really think I was so mean to them? How did she know about Alastair's feelings for me, when it took me so long to become aware of them myself?

I stepped back, so angry, so heart broken. Maisie was breathing heavily, her blonde hair waving wildly around her tear soaked face. Daniel was also backing away, his face horror-struck. My guess was that it had been a long fight.

Nothing came from my mouth. I wanted to tell her to shove it, and I wanted to hug her as tight as I could. But I couldn't do either. My steps back turned into stumbling backwards and before I knew it I was walking as fast as I could away from her. I was travelling in the wrong direction from my house, the tears falling silently onto my lips. Salty, like my kiss with Logan.

It took me a long time to get home, mostly because I was too muddled to direct myself properly.

She'll be sorry in the morning. She didn't mean what she'd said, I thought. She couldn't have meant it. She was Maisie, my best friend Maisie.

My muddy slippers were left outside. I crept in, climbing under my duvet and shaking uncontrollably. The tears had dried, but my thoughts were turbulent. My heart hurt. It hurt for the emptiness that had formed when Alastair had left. It hurt for my best friend. I don't ever remember us fighting before this, and it hurt every inch of my body.

The phone resting in my pocket was now on my bedside table and I looked at it hungrily. One call. One call and I could talk to him. I could hear his husky accented voice through the phone. I could tell him everything, and I knew he'd make me feel better. He always did.

But I couldn't. Because we weren't supposed to be friends. Because I would be rubbing it further in his face, according to Maisie. Because I was sure that even if she hadn't meant to say those words, that she was thinking it. And it was probably true.

I cried some more. And then I drifted off into a numb sleep. I don't think my body stopped trembling.

The beach was my refuge the next morning. Not because Logan was there, but because my reading spot was mine. It was where I always went when I wanted clarity, long before he started surfing there. It was the first of February. That meant I had less than a month before I was leaving. It made me feel as if my veins were freezing over, both from the uncertainty and the fear of leaving all of this behind.

Noah wasn't on the water again and I wondered if he'd taken up another hobby. Or maybe he wanted to leave me and Logan to be alone. I had no idea.

I lay on the sand, with no book by my side today. I let the sun soak my pores, drying out the tears from the night before. I wasn't at all surprised when Logan's shadow hovered over me.

"Hey."

"Hi, Logan."

"Can I sit?" he asked pleasantly.

"I guess so."

I opened my eyes as he shuffled in next to me. I felt him lean back and lay in the sand. The sky was a deep blue, bright enough to make me squint and close my eyes again.

"I've always wondered how you can just lay here in the sun every morning."

"It's more interesting when you have a book," I told him.

"Have you run out of books?" he asked.

"No. I just came to think."

"Sorry for disturbing you, then."

He was quiet for a while, probably letting me think. But I grew restless. "Maisie is going through a hard time at the moment."

"Really? Is she okay?"

"I don't know. But she said some mean stuff last night and it's just shocked me."

"Well, screw her. Even if people are going through a hard time, it doesn't mean they can treat you like crap."

I thought about that. But I didn't quite agree. If the situations were reversed I could understand the hysteria. Maybe not the conviction in her words, but her ability to spew hurtful things at anyone, just to empty the hurt from herself.

Logan and I laying side by side reminded me of the many things queuing in my mind that we needed to talk about. I literally had formed a mental list of questions that had begun to tug at my mind.

"Do you remember when Zoe asked you those truth questions on the beach a few weeks ago?"

"Yeah." His voice was a little tense. "Why?"

"Did you do something with her? You know, to trigger her to pry with that?"

He hesitated briefly. "Maybe. We kissed. New Year's Eve. It didn't mean anything to me, though. It was more because neither of us had anyone else."

You could have had me, I thought. If you didn't go off dancing with her. The vision that sprung in my mind of the two of them made my heart clench a little in jealousy, especially because I knew it would have only fuelled her infatuation with him. "Oh, okay."

"I don't like her, you know. She is very... persistent when she wants to be."

"What about your friends?" I asked. "What's with your obsession with being cool all of the time?"

He snorted. "What is this, interrogation time?"

"More or less."

"Well I hate to say it's just a guy thing, but... I don't know. We've been friends for ages and it's what we do. I'll admit that when you first made that move on me back then, I felt accomplished. I bragged, because I was proud of it. Catching your attention in that way."

"Is that supposed to be flattering?"

"No. It was a dick move. But I'll stop, I know it's not fair on you and most of the time it's not true."

"So you didn't want to sleep with me on Australia Day so you could tell your friends?"

He made a noise half way between amusement and surprise. "No."

"I don't believe you."

"Well, maybe. But that didn't mean I'd go through with it."

"You are such an ass, Logan." If I had more energy I'd roll over to slap him over the head. But I felt strangely mellow. Hollow. Nothing like that was really surprising anymore.

"I really am sorry you had to her that, I'm ashamed of it."

"You should be."

We were silent again and all I could hear was the crash of the nearby waves, the cawing of the gulls and our steady breathing.

"Can I ask you a question?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Have you slept with anyone before?"

My face heated and I was glad we were both laying with our eyes closed. It was a question I'd never been asked, and something I never really talked about with anyone but Maisie. "Why would I tell you that when you'll go tell your friends."

"I won't. I pinky promise."

I felt his hand outstretch to find mine. Our pinkys linked. I was still too embarrassed to tell him.

"Well, have you?" I asked.

"I asked you first."

"Do you want me to tell you or not?"

He sighed. "Yeah. I have."

No surprise there. I had expected that answer, he had had several relationships before and I'd be more shocked if he'd said otherwise. I took a deep breath, ready to reveal the very personal truth. "No, never."

His breathing didn't change. I pressed him further, "Why do care?"

"Curiosity. Don't tell me you don't think about things like that."

"Like what?"

"Like sex. Being with me."

I scoffed at his cockiness. But it made my joints turn to jelly. I'd be lying if I said sex was a huge, sentimental thing to me. It wasn't. But that didn't mean that I'd do it with just anyone. Not that Logan was just anyone, but with the way things were between us I wasn't sure I was ready for it with him. The trust between us was so fragile, I just couldn't go through with it.

But still, the idea was alluring and terrifying at the same time. I wanted to change the subject, I was becoming afraid that I'd divulge too much of my inner thoughts. So I went onto my next question.

"Speaking of being with you," I choked slightly. Even with all the progress we'd made I was still struggling with speaking about us out aloud. "What would that mean for us?"

"What do you mean?"

"We're going to different universities in less than four weeks. Different cities."

His tone was perplexed. "Can't we just take it as it comes? Work out where we are when it's time to go? Let it come naturally?"

I thought about that for a moment. "What if it doesn't come naturally in time? Or come at all?"

"Then nothing comes," he said.

Did that mean he didn't really care how things went? "Does that bother you at all?"

"Well, yeah." I felt him sit up, and I did the same. His golden hair had dried into blonde tufts. His eyes were striking against the clear sky. "But you can't force feelings, Val."

Something clicked a little. I had asked Alastair and Maisie how you love someone. Maybe, like Logan said, you just can't force love. "You're right."

"I'm always right."

I swatted his chest. "You wish."

"So how about we spend some more time together if you're so worried about us? You could come to my house Friday after the beach if you want." He was referring to the beach gathering our group had scheduled. "My parents will be out."

The idea of going to Logan's house was both terrifying and exciting. I don't think we'd ever been properly alone, in private. I thought about what his bedroom might look like. I imagined it filled with trophies and merit certificates, he might even have portraits of himself. His confidence was definitely big enough.

Being alone with him meant that things wouldn't be interrupted, like at Alastair's party. But that also meant I'd have to confront the decision head on. Did I want to sleep with Logan Mathews? That was just another problem floating around my buzzing mind.

"Maybe," I told him, mostly because I didn't want him to get his ego boosted again with a strong confirmation. "Maybe you should ask your friends first."

"I'm serious about that, Vally. It won't happen again." He looked genuine enough. But I was beginning to suspect that Logan was good at looking genuine when he wanted to.

Our conversation took my mind away from Maisie for a while. But that didn't stop her words returning to haunt me as I walked back up the steps towards home. And the only way you can even talk to a guy is through stupid deals. How do you think Logan would feel? Was I a terrible person because of the deal I'd made with Alastair almost two months ago?

Thinking about Alastair again brought the hollowness back, and paired with the aching I felt for Maisie it made me feel almost a little nauseous. I returned to my bleak looking room and changed into a cheery sky-blue outfit. Susan and I were working together, which was a good thing because there was no way I could face Dan or Mallory.

I didn't tell Susan about their disregard for the parlour the day before. Something in me decided that keeping that image locked far away for now would help things return to normal. And Susan wasn't stupid, if I'd suspected something between them from afar then I was sure she suspected it too. She knew what she was doing employing them.

I kept thinking that maybe Alastair would appear in front of the counter expecting to catch me on my break. He didn't. Sandy Cove without him and Lottie seemed so much smaller. It was beginning to feel like they'd never been here at all.