Upon my soul, a lie, a wicked lie.

You feel a bit faint suddenly. "Scott?" you ask, wishing you could back away from them both, except your legs feel too unsteady for that, and a little numb. "I asked you earlier when did you lose your virginity and you said, winter break our Freshman year—did you add that thing about it depending on your definition—did you say that because it was... with a boy? With Dex?"

Scott looks at his feet. Dex looks at you, like he wants to go over and hug you, except he has known you long enough to recognize this isn't the right time. So he stands there and says nothing.

Their silence is answer enough. "Um. But how come you never told me?" you ask in a small voice, feeling suddenly rather heartbroken that neither of your two closest friends felt able to share something so important with you. "How long? Exactly?" you ask, scrubbing at your eyes, which are suddenly swimming with tears.

Dex looks at Scott, who has remained frozen in place since the very second you named him as a participant in a queer love affair, and sighs. "About when you said, till... a couple days before that awful fucking party," Dex tells you.

You gasp in dismay. "Three years you were together? And you kept it from me? I knew you were bi... but I was starting to wonder if you were actually ace and hadn't figured it out!" you say to Dex in shock, wiping at your eyes.

"Nope," he says after a moment. "I was just madly in love with somebody who professed to feeling the same but wasn't ready to be out as queer to anybody in his actual life. Madly enough that I settled for being his dirty little secret because I thought one day things would be different."

"So... what happened that made you guys like... this?" you ask, motioning helplessly between them to indicate, well, whatever the fuck this is.

"One day it became evident that things would be different, just in a lot of ways I never expected," Dex says, then adds to Scott, "Come on, man. You don't want to speak up at all to address any of this? You'd rather I paint an incredibly unflattering, totally biased, picture of you based on how fucking thoroughly you trampled my heart?"

"It just... I'm sorry, but... it wasn't love. It was just a weird phase," Scott mutters, and you and Dex both stare at him. "People go through those. Who the hell even knows what they like or who they are, at sixteen, seventeen years old?" He looks up at you. "And... are you seriously looking judgy at me right now for being... confused about my sexuality, Bridge? After he literally just told you he's the reason you got hauled off to jail for no better reason than he was jealous of me!"

You sniff back your tears, hugging your arms to yourself. "Are you seriously acting judgy at me right now for questioning your principles after you outed me on the skinny dipping thing just to have something nasty to fling in his face?" you say, feeling rather ill to your stomach about it. "Which, by the way, I don't feel like you represented that conversation very faithfully. Apart from I did really want to be with you, back when I felt a lot more confident you actually give a shit about me." It really seemed at first like you were going to get through that speech all right, but at this point you just let out a foolish-sounding **** sound as you begin to cry. "Do you even actually like me?" you sob at Scott.

"Of course I—" Scott begins, then leaves off when Dex takes a half step toward you.

You shake your head so vigorously that Dex freezes in place.

"No—no—I need to take a beat," you say thickly, backing away from his stricken look and fumbling for the handrail to the steps leading down from the deck. "Not just Teddy," you say quickly when Scott starts to move toward you. "Both of you."

"Bridge," he pleads. "Come on! After how bad he fucked you over, you're lumping me in with him?"

You stare at him in patent disbelief. "And yet, you kept saying all that low-key shit to me like, Dex is the one leaving himself out of things, how can we help that if he doesn't want to be included, poor Dex, but he's not your responsibility to take care of, Bridge—blah, blah, fucking blah!" you flare at him.

Scott huffs a little. He doesn't like you pointing that out. "And you don't think he's had plenty of chances to get his digs in?"

You round on him. "He sure has! And obviously it's been wearing me the absolute fuck out, but at least he mostly says it to your face in the open and he doesn't act fine in front of you and talk shit in private! The way you're talking to me right now really makes me feel like he's on to something with that gaslighting shit he said!"

"You don't really—" Scott begins, but you're so fucking fed up by now that you can't bear to let him finish whatever it is he wants to tell you you don't really.

"—I am very fucking pissed at you both right now," you shout at him, "but that is between him and me," you gesture violently at Dex, "and you and me," you repeat the gesture at Scott, "and you don't get to weigh in on him!"

"Oh, sure, but he gets to—" Scott begins angrily, but you cut him off.

"—yeah, he fucking does get to," you cry, "because he's been my friend since before I stopped wetting the bed, and we both spent the last twelve years banking any second chances we'd ever need with each other. So there is no world where I automatically turn my back on him without at least letting him explain first!"

"God, Bridge, you act like--"

"—Really? Your actual instinct right now is really to double down?" you shout at him, then realize how shrill you're getting and stand there heaving with adrenaline for a moment before you realize you have to calm yourself down. You swallow hard, wipe your eyes, and say in a less hysterical voice, "I need to—to, uh, take a walk or something. Be on my own a while."

You turn on your heel and stalk down the deck stairs. There's nothing but silence behind you, and then heavy footsteps moving for the stairs, and Dex's voice. "Don't. You'll only make it worse. She needs us both to fuck off right now." You hear him sigh and sit down too heavily on one of the deck chairs, followed by more angry footsteps and the sound of the screen door slamming. By then you're in the trees and immensely grateful to Dex for insuring they aren't actually going to make you literally run and hide from them just to get enough peace to clear your head.

As you tramp angrily through the woods you can't shake the ridiculous mental image that the two of them have no idea they just pulled your arms off fighting over you, then tried to hand them back to the armless mess of a girl they just created, while each blaming the other.

Most of all, though, it feels like something really special is just... unceremoniously over. And it feels more like it has been for a while and you didn't notice because you couldn't bear to.

After you're well out of earshot, you sit down on a broken tree limb, bury your head in your hands, and begin to helplessly sob out your collective grief and stored tension from the last six months.