Not now. Please, not now. I looked up at the clock. The football game was minutes from starting. Cheering erupted around the bleachers. It was the game Ben and his team had been anticipating for months. I couldn’t become a distraction. I tried to steady my breathing even as my heartbeat quickened. Blood rushed to my cheeks. I thought I’d be able to handle the crowd. I’d been to several games this year already and coped. But now that I sat here, I wanted nothing more than to run. The noises surrounding me were deafening—the cheers, the music, the stomping. It all echoed in my head at once. The sickly sweet smell of Abigail Hudson’s caramel corn filled my nostrils, mixing with the sour odor of Amelia Hudson’s vinegar chips. The feel of their shoulders rubbing against mine made me feel claustrophobic. And since we sat in the front row, the lights were twice as glaring. My palms were sweating as I clasped them together. “Are you all right, Sofia?” Amelia, Ben’s mother, looked at me with concern. She knew I experienced anxiety with crowds. I forced a smile and nodded. “I’m okay.” I looked out at the field and when my eyes found Ben, I forced myself to stare at him. I tried to shut out the stimuli threatening to overwhelm me and focus on him. My handsome best friend. His tall, muscular physique, strong jawline, light blue eyes… Normally it was all I could do to find excuses to steal glances at him, whether in school or at home, but now I found myself barely seeing him as a niggling doubt dug its way into my mind. A doubt I’d hoped I’d overcome by now. Nobody else in this stadium is having problems. It’s not normal to feel like this. Maybe I’m going mad like my mother. “Are you sure you’re all right?” This time it was Ben’s father, Lyle, peering over at me from his seat a few feet away. I bit my lip and gave him another curt nod, wishing they’d just let it go. They still didn’t understand that asking me if I was all right never helped the situation. At all. When the shriek of a whistle pierced through the maelstrom of sensations I was already drowning under, my resolve to not cave in disintegrated. Ducking my head down between my knees, it was all I could do to stop myself from shaking. I was thinking about my mother that brought on my panic attacks, for the other aspects of my mental condition I had learned to cope with. It was thinking of those green eyes, and the last time I remembered seeing her. Thinking that I might be doomed to end up like her. The inevitability of the idea sent me into a downward spiral. All rational thought shut down and the nightmarish doubt replayed itself again and again in my mind. I felt hands touching my shoulders. “Sofia.” It was Amelia’s voice. Yet more stimuli to cope with—her voice and the touch of her hands. She was trying to sit me upright, but I refused. I slipped off the chair and kneeled on the ground. Feeling the humiliation of it all, I wanted to disappear. “Sofia,” a different voice called out this time. A deep, male voice. Benjamin Hudson’s voice. Only his voice amidst the onslaught of other noises could have caught my attention in the state I was in. I looked up to see him jogging toward me, the ball under one arm, concern lining his face. Guilt tore at me. “No, Ben,” I breathed. “Go back to the game.” He closed the final distance between us and, gripping my shoulders, afforded me a close view of his face. Despite my anxiety, I couldn’t help but feel tingles run down my spine at his touch. Over his shoulder, I could see that all the players had stopped and were staring at Ben, looks of frustration and surprise on their faces that a captain would just walk off with the ball. Jeers and impatient mutterings exploded around the bleachers. Despite my guilt, my body was still quivering, a veil of panic still upon me. He reached for my chin and forced me to face him again. “Sit up.” His voice was firm as he kneeled down, placing the ball between his knees. I felt like I didn’t even have control over my own limbs. “I can’t,” I whispered. He frowned at me, a look of deep disapproval marring his handsome features. His face now only a few inches from my own, his blue eyes bored into me. “I know an excuse when I hear one. Don’t you dare deceive yourself into believing that you’re the victim, Sofia Claremont.” Almost as soon as Ben spoke those words—words he had spoken to me many times before—a wave of relief rushed over me. His strong hands gripped my elbows as he pulled me up and sat me back down in my chair. “You’re going to be all right,” he said, his voice still firm. I nodded, letting out a deep sigh and feeling my shoulders already beginning to loosen, my muscles becoming less tense, my chest lighter. The jeers ricocheting around the stadium were becoming louder by the second. Ben’s teammates were yelling for him and several had started running toward him. “Go, now,” I said, pushing him away. A smile lit up his face as he squeezed my hand and placed a kiss on my forehead. A kiss that let loose a dozen butterflies in my stomach. He took one last look at me before turning and walking back to the field. He cast his eyes around the jeering bleachers as he walked into the center and raised his right hand, pumping his fist in the air like a rock star. “Friends before football,” he roared. The jeers turned to wolf whistles. I felt the heat rise in my cheeks as hundreds of eyes fixed on me. I chuckled. Ben. Always knows how to turn a crowd around. Or anyone for that matter… “Are you okay now, Sofia?” I turned to see five-year-old Abigail standing next to me, her baby blue eyes wide with concern. I smiled and kissed her cheek. “I’m fine, Abby,” I whispered, not wanting to draw any more attention to myself than I had already. “D’you want a piece of my popcorn?” Her blonde ponytail bobbed on one side as she held out a sticky palm containing a single piece of popcorn. “No, thank you. Go sit back down next to your mom.” Lyle and Amelia had already returned to their seats—both now looking back at the game as if nothing had happened. Once Abby was seated safely back next to her mother, I leaned back in my chair, breathing out slowly. As the whistle blew a second time, I fixed my eyes on the field and watched the game take off. My eyes followed Ben around the field, his muscular physique easily outpacing the two guys who were chasing after him. It helped that he was also one of the tallest players down there. Football was never my favorite of games. I watched it for Ben’s sake since he was part of our school’s team. After about five minutes of attempting to concentrate and follow what was going on, I found myself drifting off into my own thoughts. What had just happened replayed in my mind. Two problems had plagued me throughout my elementary and high school years. Excruciating awareness of external stimuli and anxiety attacks. I’d seen countless doctors and psychiatrists. While none had agreed on what the former problem actually was—each had a different theory, ranging from Asperger’s to OCD—all of them had concluded that the two problems were related. It had been Ben, in all his twelve years of wisdom, who’d figured out that they were not. I smiled as I remembered the day it had happened. It had been at a game, much like the one we were at today. Only, Ben had been in the bleachers with us. The crowds had triggered off my negative thought process, as they had done today. When I descended into a fit, Amelia and Lyle had said that we would have to leave to take me to a hospital. Sorely disappointed at leaving before his favorite team’s game had even begun, Ben had gripped me by the shoulders in frustration and shaken me. And he’d spoken the same words he did today: “I know an excuse when I hear one. Don’t you dare deceive yourself into believing that you’re the victim, Sofia Claremont.” I wasn’t sure where he’d gotten them from—perhaps a movie or a book. But they’d stung. I wasn’t playing the victim, I’d thought. My concerns were genuine. After all that had happened with my mother, I deserved to feel this way. But the fact was, his words had worked. They’d cut through me and snapped me out of my fit. He’d just figured out the key to solving my anxiety issues. His frustrated, twelve-year-old self couldn’t have imagined how much those words would impact my life. As for my sensory issues, to this day we still hadn’t figured out what they were. Amelia and Lyle had given up on taking me to see doctors and psychiatrists since they all contradicted one another. But the truth was, I could handle the condition—whatever it was. It was hard, and overwhelming sometimes, but I could fight through it. It was only when I allowed myself to descend into self-pity by thinking about my mother that I completely lost it. I felt disappointed that I’d once again allowed myself to succumb to anxiety. In my moment of panic, I’d forgotten how I’d always dealt with this. I’d been trying to teach myself to prevent these fits on my own because I couldn’t count on Ben always being around. And it scared me how dependent I was on him already. Ben Hudson. My best friend. I liked to think of myself as independent, but if I was honest with myself, sometimes I couldn’t imagine a life without Ben in it. A tap on my shoulder broke through my thoughts. A long-legged girl with curly black hair loomed over me. “So are you Ben’s new girlfriend?” My cheeks flushed at the thought. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “We really are just friends.” “Good.” She gave me a stiff smile and walked back to her seat in the row behind us. Her eyes focused back on the field, most likely narrowing in on Ben, as if I didn’t exist. I looked back at Ben on the field. Screams and yells had just erupted in waves on our side of the bleachers. His team had just scored. Two guys hoisted Ben up as he raised his arms in the air. His eyes fixed on mine and I felt shivers again. I smiled, feeling guilty that I had missed the score. I looked back at the girl behind me, ogling Ben as she jumped up and down and screamed his name. Excitement and apprehension coursed through me as I imagined what my answer to her question might have been if she’d asked me in a few days’ time. The Hudsons and I were leaving tomorrow for a two-week vacation in Cancún. I’d already planned that the first day we arrived, I’d take a walk with him along the beach. And I’d finally tell him what I’d been bottling up all this time… if I could just maintain the

Iwas glad that I got to sit next to Ben on the plane. The aircraft was filled to the max, so Amelia, Lyle and Abby had to sit several rows behind us. I took the window seat, while Ben sat in the chair next to me. His eyes were closed, his head lolling to one side. We were an hour into the flight. His team had won the game yesterday and he’d stayed out later than he should have celebrating. I doubted he’d gotten more than three hours sleep before we had to get up and leave for the airport this morning. He didn’t wake up until a flight attendant came round offering us drinks. “A bottle of water, please.” He sat up straight, rubbing his eyes and looking at me. “What are you most looking forward to?” he asked after a pause. Two uninterrupted weeks with you. “The beaches, I guess. You?” “I don’t know… it’ll just be good to have a break. A change of scenery.” He pulled out a book from his bag and began reading, while I picked up my own book. But I couldn’t focus on the words. My mind was too distracted. I never thought the day would come when I’d actually even consider telling Ben what I felt for him. It had always seemed such a risky thing to do. What if he didn’t share the same feelings as me? We lived together in the same house. It would make things so awkward if he realized I wanted more from him than just friendship and he didn’t feel the same way. I was afraid that he might never look at me the same way again and ruin what we currently had. I threw a glance at him as he turned a page. Ben… he saw me the way nobody else did. I doubted that I would be as strong as I was today if it hadn’t been for him. He gave me the time of day when no one else – not even my own father – would. It was with Ben that I never felt invisible… except when his latest girlfriend was around. So yes, I was a coward. I was afraid of shattering what we had by telling him I wanted more. By telling him how much I wanted to kiss his lips last prom when he led me to a dance. How much pain it put me through when I saw him making out with another girl in the schoolyard. How much I wanted his friendly pats on the shoulder to turn into full-on, passionate embraces. But something had changed in me this last year. I didn’t know what it was exactly, but each new girlfriend I saw him with tore at my heart more and more, until it reached a point where I felt like I would burst if I didn’t finally reveal the truth. As the plane started descending and I tightened my seat belt, putting my book back into my bag, I tried to reassure myself that it would be all right. That, even if he turned me down, we’d still be able to continue as we were. But I knew that was a lie. If I pulled the trigger on this, it would be all or nothing. My pulse was racing as we arrived at the resort—the same resort we’d stayed at the year before. Ben’s parents liked it because it was all-inclusive and in a central location. Lyle and Amelia shared a bedroom, Ben had his own room, and Abby and I shared a room together. As we entered our room, Abby jumped up and down on one of the beds, grinning from ear to ear. By the time I’d unpacked her and my things, it was already time for dinner. We descended the stairs with Lyle, Amelia and Ben and found a table in our favorite restaurant a few yards outside the entrance of the resort. We picked up the menus and began ordering. I ordered the smallest thing I could find on the menu—a caesar salad—and even that I doubted I’d have enough appetite for. Once the food had arrived, Ben raised a brow at me while tucking into a plate of tacos. “Dieting?” “I’m just… excited to be here. Not really feeling hungry.” If I really was going to go through with this, this first night would be the best time to do it. If he agreed, we’d have the whole vacation together as girlfriend and boyfriend. If he didn’t agree… I put thoughts of that possibility out of my mind for now. I didn’t join in much of the conversation. It was mostly Amelia talking, going on about how much she loved this place, and reading through a brochure of all the things we could do while we were there. Once Amelia and Lyle called for the bill, I looked up at Ben. “Do you feel like taking a walk?” I asked. He looked tired, but his face lit up. “Sure.” He turned to his mother. “Sofia and I are going to the beach.” “Can I come?” Abby asked, jumping up from her seat. I was relieved when Amelia held her back. “No, Abby. It’s your bedtime.” She looked from me to Ben. “Okay, but don’t stay out long and don’t venture too far. Stay where other tourists are.” We parted ways and walked out onto the beach. Removing our shoes, we held them in our hands as we walked along. We headed toward the ocean, enjoying the feel of the waves lapping over our feet. I wish Ben was already my boyfriend. Everything about the scene was so romantic. The moon, the stars, the sugary beaches… I wished that by magic we’d already gone past the stage of getting together and he would just take me in his arms and kiss me now. After ten minutes, even though I was afraid that my voice might break, I couldn’t handle waiting any longer. Passing my flip flops along to my other hand, I caught Ben’s hand in mine, twining my fingers with his. He looked down at me and smiled, squeezing my hand. “Thank you for leaving the game for me yesterday,” I said. He rolled his eyes. “Don’t thank me for that.” I bit my lip, looking back down at the sand. The way his hand held mine sent chills down my spine. I stopped walking, pulling him to a stop too. I cleared my throat. “Ben, I wanted to tell you something.” He raised a brow, smiling at me curiously. “What?” I felt the tension in my body rising as his eyes fixed on me. I don’t know how to say this. I dug my feet into the sand in frustration. Just spit it out. I took a deep breath. “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way. I’ve debated a lot recently whether I should even be telling you this… but I realize if I want my peace back, I have to.” I paused, steeling myself for what I was about to say. “Ben, I—” “Ben!” A shout cut through my sentence. Ben and I whirled around to see who was approaching. My heart sank to my stomach. Tanya Wilson. One of his gorgeous blonde exes. She was running toward us in a thin bikini, her long blonde hair swept back behind her. She was dripping wet as she arrived. “Hi, Ben,” she said, gasping for breath. She didn’t look at me once. It was as though I was invisible to her. “Tanya? How come you’re here?” Ben asked, his eyes widening. “I came here with my family for a short break. We left a few days before school broke off to save money… Where are you staying?” Ben pointed toward our resort, which was clearly visible even at the distance we were standing. “I’m staying there too! Which room are you in?” “Fifty-four,” he replied. She gripped his hands, stretching her long legs to reach up against him and place a kiss on his cheek. “I’m not far away from you. Seventy-eight.” Tanya’s eyes finally fell on me. The disdain in her gaze was almost tactile. She looked back at Ben. “Could I have a word in private?” Ben looked down at me, hesitating. Tanya squeezed his arm harder. “I’m actually leaving in three days. It really would mean the world to me if we could talk… I promise I won’t keep you long.” Ben sighed and nodded. “Okay.” He looked down at me apologetically. “I’m sorry, Sofia. Do you mind if we have a word?” “Oh, sure. I’ll… I’ll just head back to the hotel, I guess.” “I’ll catch you later.” “Yeah…” My throat dry, my chest aching at leaving Ben standing there alone with Tanya looking like that, I turned to face the hotel and walked away from them. Friends before football. But not friends before lovers.

Isupposed that the moment I saw Tanya running toward us in that skimpy gold bikini, I already knew that I’d lost my chance with Ben. At least for this vacation. When Ben sought me out later that evening, it was to inform me that he’d made up with Tanya and they’d be hooking up for the next three days, after which she’d be heading back to California. She’d invited him to go on a scuba diving trip with her off the coast of Mexico for three days, leaving early the next morning, and returning late on the last day. As he was telling me, it was all I could do to keep my voice from breaking, my lips from trembling with disappointment. I acted as cool as I could. Three days. It meant that he’d be gone for my birthday. In his eagerness to hook up with the blonde again, he’d obviously totally forgotten. And I didn’t remind him. He’d already made his choice clear—Tanya was more important to him than me. I doubted that he would have ever forgotten her birthday. And could I really blame him? After all, I’d always be here in his shadow. He was stuck with me all the time. Whereas Tanya, she was a precious gem he might not have tomorrow. Thanks to my father, it wasn’t like I had anywhere to go. I supposed that deep down Ben knew this, and even if he didn’t intend it to, it played in his subconscious and affected his decisions and behavior toward me. The next three days passed slowly. On the third day, I supposed I should have been grateful that at least Lyle and Amelia hadn’t forgotten my birthday. They took me out to a restaurant of my choice for lunch and ordered a cake. I felt bad that I was too depressed to eat much of anything. I spent the rest of the day with Abby on the beach. Lyle and Amelia lay on the sand nearby reading, and joining us to build the occasional sandcastle. I excused myself early that evening, wanting nothing more than the solitude of my room. I’d managed to hold it in all day, but as I climbed into bed that night, I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down my face. I tried to not imagine what Ben might have been doing all this time with Tanya. While I’d been here stuck with five-year-old Abby for company. As I lay there, I tried to reason with myself that dates were harder to keep track of on vacation, since there was no routine to adhere to. Days seemed to merge into each other. But this was my birthday. I was his best friend. He shouldn’t have forgotten. I tossed and turned that night, unable to sleep. I always slept with earplugs in to help soften the noises that I was so overly attuned to, but that night even with my thickest pair of earplugs in, I found myself restless and showing no signs of falling asleep any time soon, even though my eyes were heavy from crying. I just wanted sleep to take me, to wash away the memories of today and hopefully bring in a brighter tomorrow. But I couldn’t. I kept thinking of Ben. And his blonde, bikini-clad ex. It was close to midnight when I felt a gentle hand touch my shoulder. I guessed that it was Ben, so I kept deathly still, my eyes sealed shut pretending that I was sleeping. I felt warm fingers brush the hair away from my face. “I’m sorry, Sofia,” he whispered. I didn’t know if he’d guessed that I was awake, or he just felt so guilty that he needed to apologize now whether I was asleep or awake. I opened my eyes and looked up at him. And I wished I hadn’t. His dreamy blue eyes looking down at me with concern just made me yearn for him even more. I pushed away the sheets, and without saying a word, walked out onto the balcony.