"No way," Juliet said, twirling pasta around her fork. "I can't believe he's already told all his friends about it."

"Wait, you can't?" Romeo squinted at her. "We are talking about Nicholas, right? The same guy whose mouth is bigger than Mount Fuji?"

"I mean, I can," she said, narrowing her eyes at him, "but I was just expressing my shock like a normal person. Which you obviously don't get."

Alicia barely paid attention to their little squabble.

She needed to get the letter back, and she needed him to tell his friends that it was all a misunderstanding. She couldn't have Theodore thinking she was in love with his friend if she was going to confess to him.

"I have to go talk to him," she blurted out as she stood up from the table.

"Wait, now?" Juliet whirled around and grabbed her wrist. "Are you serious? He's sitting there with practically half the cafeteria!"

Juliet had an inclination towards dramatics. There were maybe a total of ten people sitting at Nicholas' table. Granted, that was kind of a lot, but it was not enough to deter Alicia from her new mission.

"Well, when else am I supposed to do it?" she whispered back at her as someone who passed by gave them an odd look. "In class, where everyone else can overhear?"

"Do it after school," Romeo said, finishing his final bite of mac and cheese. "You're only going to deepen the misunderstanding if you go there now and ask to talk to him."

A list of new possible actions raced through her mind.

"Or maybe I should shout at the whole table that I'm not even a little bit interested in Nicholas."

"Okay, you seriously need to calm down," Juliet said, grabbing both of her wrists now. "Is this really how you want Theodore to find out that you like him? By embarrassing his best friend in front of the whole school?"

"Can you stop exaggerating for once in your life—" Alicia began, but Romeo interrupted her.

"Looks like you won't have to go anywhere."

"What?"

"He's coming here."

She spun around to see Nicholas striding towards her. Alicia couldn't decide if the churning in her stomach was due to dread or hope. Maybe it was both.

"Hi," she managed to say when he reached their table and stood before her with an expectant look on his face.

"Hi," he said.

"Can I talk to you for a bit?" she said.

"Well, yeah, I figured that was what you might want, since you've been looking at me for the past ten minutes," he said, raising an eyebrow. "I know I'm good-looking, but you're overdoing it a little, Cameron."

As she forced herself to take a deep breath, Alicia clenched and unclenched her fists.

Don't hit him, she reminded herself. You can't hit him.

Turning back to her table, she said, "I'll be back in a bit."

Romeo inclined his head towards her and returned his attention to his juice box.

Juliet sighed and waved a hand at her. "Bye."

She glared at them indignantly. Why did none of her friends seem to think that she was capable of not screwing this up?

Shaking her head, Alicia followed Nicholas out of the cafeteria. They entered the nearby garden where pretty much nobody except for the school gardener ever went.

As usual, it was devoid of people. A few birds perched on a couple of the oak trees they were standing next to chirped out conflicting melodies.

"So ... why were you staring a hole into the back of my head?" Nicholas started, and Alicia knew that the following conversation could only turn out to be horrible.

Actually, who was she kidding? Any conversation she'd ever had with Nicholas was awful and left her wishing she hadn't encountered him that day.

"I'm beginning to think that maybe you did mean that letter for me," he said, his lip curving up into that terrible smirk she absolutely hated on his face.

"You wish I was admiring your face," she snapped. "You'd never be my type in a million years."

The nasty smile slid off his face in less than half a second, but the cruel sense of satisfaction she got from it lasted only until he opened his mouth again. "For the record, you aren't my type either."

"Good," she said huffily. "The only type I want is Theodore, so I really couldn't care less."

"So why were you staring so hard? It was getting awkward for me, you know. My whole table noticed," he said, his voice cold and hard.

Alicia wanted to burrow into the earth and never return to the surface again.

Juliet was right to have stopped her from going over. She really would have drawn even more attention to herself. Apparently, she had been so obvious even the astronauts in space could see her staring at Nicholas.

"Di-did Theodore notice?" she asked before she could stop herself, and Nicholas snorted.

"He was the one who told me to come over and talk to you," he said. "They think I haven't given you an answer yet."

An answer. As if he really had been the one Alicia had confessed to.

"This is horrible," she said faintly. "Can this day be any more of a nightmare?"

"You're the one who made the mistake. I'm not paying for it," he said, rolling his eyes. "I just came here to tell you to stop staring at me."

Alicia felt like a deflating balloon that Nicholas had taken a pin to.

"You need to tell them, please," she begged, clasping her hands together. "Please set this straight. You don't even have to say that it was for Theodore. Say it was for someone else—anyone else, I don't care—and somehow I accidentally put it in your locker. Please, Stevenson, please!"

When she grabbed his hands and gave him the most pleading look she could make, Nicholas sniggered.

"Fine," he said. "Since you're begging me so nicely, I'll just tell them that we talked and agreed that we wouldn't work out because I don't want a relationship right now."

"What? No!" she cried, staring at him incredulously. "You are not making it out like you rejected me!"

She was positive that his heart was sculpted from ice when he shrugged.

"Take it or leave it. At least this way you still get to chase after Theo if you want."

"I've liked him for years! There's no way I'm letting him get the impression I've somehow been in love with you all this time!"

Lazily, he raised a hand. "I have two words for you: too bad. See you around."

The awful agony of despondence flooded every cell in her being—Alicia didn't even care that she was probably gawking at him in the ugliest manner possible. He had just effectively ruined every chance she had with Theodore, and all because he apparently couldn't bear the thought of his friends finding out that one girl, out of the hundreds of them in their school, wasn't in love with him.

Every part of her body felt frozen, as if by not moving she could somehow bring time to a stop so that she wouldn't have to face what was coming after this.

Nicholas began walking, but before he passed her entirely, he bent down so that his head was barely an inch away from her frozen one.

"For what it's worth, Cameron," he said, his lips brushing just the slightest pressure against her ear, "I don't think Theo would have accepted your confession anyway. Your 'love letter' sounded like a stalker's confession."

The ice in her veins melted in the face of the rage that rapidly arose at his blatant taunt.

Wasn't it enough that he had to ruin the rest of her high school years?

Did he really have to add fuel to the fire?

"How could you do this? Do you even own a heart?" she demanded, whirling around so that they were facing each other. "You know that if you don't tell them the truth, Theodore will just think of me as the girl who likes his best friend—and I don't even know how someone as sweet as Theodore became friends with you since you're literally the worst—and I don't want him thinking that I moved on to him just because you rejected me!"

At this point, the despair had overridden any sense of self-consciousness that she had, and so when she felt the burning sensation at the back of her eyes, Alicia didn't even bother trying to suppress it. The tears flowed generously down her cheeks as she ranted, unabashedly wiping them away with her hands whenever her vision got too blurry.

"You've completely destroyed my chances with Theodore, and you don't even care that it's your best friend I'm talking about," she said in between gasps for air as it became harder and harder to breathe smoothly. "Obviously Theodore would believe his best friend over me."

Only acutely aware of the horrible falling sensation in her chest, Alicia barely even registered herself squatting down and hugging her legs so that her chin met her knees. The ground didn't even feel real beneath her feet. There was nothing around her she could grab on for support.

"You have no idea how much I like him," she babbled, unable to help it when a few more sobs escaped from her mouth. "I've never even looked at anyone else for these past few years. All I wanted was to be able to properly confess to him and at least be able to tell him my real feelings, and now he probably won't even believe me since you're his best friend."

Not even caring that they were in an area in school where anybody could walk past, she let out an anguished cry as Theodore's open and friendly face swam to the front of her mind. She had no problem picturing the pity that would no doubt appear on his face the moment he heard the lies that Nicholas planned on feeding him.

Hiccups shook her entire body as she forced words out, dimly surprised by the sight of Nicholas' legs still standing in front of her.

She would have expected him to already have left by now.

"None of this would even have been a problem if you could have just kept it to yourself for one night," she continued. "You and your big mouth!"

At the last sentence, she burst into another fresh wave of tears. She had finally run out of words, and all she could do was cry.

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AN: Hi, thanks for checking this out! This is a sample of The Wrong Locker, my Patreon-exclusive novel. If you'd like to read more of it and support my writing, head on over to my bio to find my Patreon link! As a patron, you can find ALL the rest of the chapters of The Wrong Locker there. It's already complete ʕ •ᴥ•ʔゝ☆ Polar Bear Tier supporters will also get the compiled EPUB file once I finish tidying it up. Thank you for considering it (ﾉ'ヮ')ﾉ*: ·ﾟ𓇼