“What do you mean?” Tears spring to my eyes, hot and fierce, and my voice is shaking, my whole body is shaking. “Don’t you know? I was the one who told Warren, and I—I ruined everything, and I’m—” I collapse onto the edge of his mattress, my hands over my face. “I’m so sorry, Noah. There’s no excuse.”
“No,” he agrees after a minute. “There’s not. It was a shitty thing to do.”
“I didn’t know what would happen,” I say. “But I know that doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes some things,” he says. “You…you know what you did wrong. You don’t need me…to point that out.” He’s still breathing a little hard, but his voice is steady, calm. “Asha’s talked a lot about you.”
I peek at him through my fingers. “She has?”
“At first I thought you kind of deserved what was happening to you,” he admits. “Some days I still do. I mean, I woke up and first thing got to have a very awkward one-sided conversation with my mother. ‘Hi, Noah, so happy you’re not going to die. By the way, everyone knows you’re gay now.’” He pauses, a slight smile touching his lips. “That’s a joke. You can laugh.”
Except I don’t find it funny at all. “I took something important away from you. I had no right.”
“Would it make you happier if I told you to go to hell?” he asks. “Look. I’ve spent the past month with nothing to do but think. Try to figure out what’s worth being angry about. It’s a long list. I could be angry about all of it and I’d probably be justified. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being mad about what happened. About what Warren and Joey did. I don’t even know if I should stop being mad. But I’m trying not to hate them, even if it’s what they deserve, even if no one would blame me for it. I don’t want to live like that. I’m not going to spend my life hating you, either. You’re apologizing, I’m accepting.”
“But why?”
I don’t understand. I need for him to make me understand.