“Beach Day,” Kevin repeated with a lamenting tone. “Jesus Christ, Beach Day.”“It’s just a bunch of girls Morgan knows going to the beach. She wanted me there as her boyfriend,” I replied defensively, making sure everything was packed and ready. “Is that so weird?”“Quinn, the beach party is the place to be. It’s how you know you made it. And you don’t even know half of the people there.”“I told you, I can tell her that I’m not going unless you come too if you’d like.”Kevin flashed me a smile. “As much as I’d like that, you know how thrilled they’d be. Nah, I’m no crasher. I’m like a vampire, you gotta invite me in.”“Yeah, and you stay up way too late, and you reek of death,” I quipped. “And I’m gravely misunderstood and finally girls are catching on to just how hot I am,” he replied. I gave him a look of confusion and he waved me off. “Twilight meme. Never mind. Point is, if nothing else, I’m fuckin’ proud of ya.”“Proud of what?” I asked. “If it’s anything like the last few parties, I’m just going to cling to Morgan all day, barely talk to the others… I actually pissed off a few guys at the last party.”“Oh shit, huh? What did you do?”“Okay, so Crystal’s nudes got leaked by this one guy – wait, that might be sensitive info, don’t let anyone know I told you that…”“Quinn,” he began with a knowing smile. “Who am I, dude? I already knew about that shit. Nasty business.”“Oh. Yeah, I told off the guy that did it,” I concluded.“Ah, dredging up the past. Perfect recipe for drama,” he mused. “You know, the thing about-”I held up a finger as I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket and pulled it out. Morgan was calling me. “I gotta go,” I replied quickly as I picked up my bag of beach stuff. Kevin just shrugged and walked off as I was out the door, only putting the phone to my ear and answering Morgan once there was a shut door between my mouth and Kevin’s ear.The standard ‘we’re here’ and ‘I’m on my way’ conversation was expected, but one thing I was not yet aware of hit me – Joel was driving. For some strange reason, I expected Morgan to be driven by Doug again, but of course, she was going with her friends. As Kevin probably revealed, this beach party was a big thing to the popular kids, which meant that Taylor’s usual rule of ‘if Quinn’s going, I’m not there’ was out the window.I tried to avoid eye contact with her and Joel as I approached the car. Morgan greeted me warmly, showing off her new sunglasses and bikini, laughing at the fact that I was not dressed for the beach at all and would have to change once I was there. She was in the middle seats along with Lexi, and Taylor and Joel were in the front. As expected, neither addressed me, and I was ordered into the back seats with Crystal and Milo.I thought that would have been ideal, given Taylor and I had history and Lexi and I had, uh, recent history, but I quickly discovered that along with me, the gang picked up something else, something heavy: tension.I felt Crystal and Milo staring at me from the moment I sat down, and after a few minutes of driving with the others talking and playing music near the front of the car, I finally got the courage to look at Crystal, then at Milo. Of course, I had to be in the middle seat.“What?” I finally asked after a while. “Crystal’s pissed you slept with Lexi,” Milo pointed out. Classic Milo.“Wha-?! Oh my God, I did not sleep with her!” I protested, trying to keep my voice down. This was the last thing I wanted. “Who even blabbed about this?”“Le-”“Lexi did, yeah, stupid question,” I admitted bitterly. “Look, Morgan proposed it to me, Lexi really wanted me to, so…”“But, like, why did you do it?” Crystal asked with this weird tone to her voice. “If I asked you to fuck Milo, would you? You fucked my best friend, Quinn.”“I – ugggh,” I complained, raking my hands over my face. “Okay, first of all, we did not go all the way. Second of all, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t and still am not sure if I even wanted to for my own sake. I did it as a favor to Lexi. It’s complicated, but-”“You keep suggesting that, like, your lack of intent somehow makes you the good guy,” Milo cut in.“Is that what this is about??” I asked exasperatedly. “Look at it from our point of view,” he replied calmly. “Think about what I know about you, and how you got into our friend group.”“What do you mean by that?” Crystal asked.I sighed. “Please, just-”“So,” Milo continued, “that happens, and then you’re dating Morgan, and now we hear that you’re doing stuff with Lexi. It looks sketchy. Like, tell me I’m wrong for wondering if you’re just this skeeze that has ulterior motives or something.”“How’d he get into our friend group?” Crystal asked.In the nick of time, Morgan whipped her head around. “What’s going on back here?”“Nothing,” Crystal immediately and obediently replied.Morgan was not moved. She turned to Milo and asked, “What’s going on?”Milo gave a polite smile. “Just talking about recent events.”Morgan took her shades off to show Milo how amused with him she wasn’t. “Whatever you’re doing, knock kaçak iddaa it off, okay? Quit stirring the pot.”“You couldn’t even hear anythi-”“No, but I recognize that look Quinn’s giving,” Morgan replied dryly. “It’s Beach Day. Can you just knock it off for one day?”Milo leaned in. “He slept with Lexi and you expect me to overlook that.”“I am going to kill myself,” I murmured.“You know how seriously I take this shit,” he continued. “I don’t care if you gave him your blessing, I’m allowed to call out red flags when I see them.”“Wait, how is it a red flag if I wanted it?” Lexi asked, having turned around and getting fully into this conversation. “Why do I have to like it if Quinn is trying to seduce everyone in the friend group?” Milo continued.“Everyone?” Morgan asked with fake confusion. “Quinn only slept with me and fooled around once with Lexi, right Milo?”“I just don’t get why he’d do that with Lexi. Like, why? It’s just weird,” Crystal complained.“Wait, I thought-” Lexi began, though, clearly, Morgan did something below the backrest to make Lexi shut up prematurely.Angrily, I just turned away. More bullshit. More bullshit, and I was being blamed for it. What was even new at this point? If nothing else, at least this was giving me more ammo to convince Morgan to stop being such a yes-woman to… all of this weirdness.In my anger, I had darted my eyes around – out the window, at the floor… and towards the front. I had hoped that she wouldn’t have looked at me for the whole drive, but to my horror, Taylor was, without shame, looking right at me.She was wearing her own pair of sunglasses, but I knew, I just knew, she was looking right at me. And I looked back. Could she hear? I didn’t know. She was just… burning a hole through me with her stare. We stared at each other for a long time. I didn’t know what expression was on my face, but in that moment, I couldn’t do anything but looked back. For the first time in what felt like forever, we openly just stared at each other.***In an annoying bait-and-switch, Beach Day was gender-segregated. There were two sections of the beach: the guys’ section, and the girls’. I was kind of annoyed – I came here because my girlfriend convinced me, and now I had to spend the day with a bunch of guys I didn’t know? To add insult to injury, this just meant more time with Joel and Milo, the two boys I knew the most – to my own displeasure.In an accurate reflection of high school, I just found my own little part of the settled area away from most of the guys and minded my own business. I was still dressed in jeans and a t-shirt while the rest of them sported swimming trunks. The metaphor was almost too perfect. Occasionally, one or two of the guys would eye me with confusion, no doubt wondering why I was there, but they wouldn’t vocally question it. Sadly, someone else didn’t get the same treatment. As soon as he was settled, Milo was hit with a small platoon of muscle-y Chad-looking guys, some looking mildly apologetic, others looking annoyed.“Hey, uh, Sadie… we get the whole thing and all, but, uh… maybe you’d be happier hanging out with the girls. I mean, that’s the group you hang with, right?” one of them piped up.“Could you use my actual name, please?” Milo asked with a voice meant to be calm. It came across as shaky. “Ha, your actual name?” another guy with a more annoying voice asked. “Sorry, what’s the name on your ID? Can you give us some proof here?”“My name is Milo, and if we’re grouping boys in with boys, I should be here, shouldn’t I?” Milo asked.“If you’re a guy, why don’t you take off your shirt?” another one snickered.The first guy held up his hands in some kind of demonstration of ‘no harm intended.’ “I’m just saying, I think you should go with the girls, okay?”“What am I taking away from you guys by being here?” Milo asked, his voice cracking more with each protest.“Look, how’s about this – compromise. We call you Milo, but you join the girls. Huh?” the first one asked. “I’m not fuckin’ calling her Milo. If she wants to play make-believe, that’s on her, but she can’t make us do it too,” another one complained. “Nathan, just lay it down, man. Tell her to fuck off.”The first guy, whose name was Nathan I guess, gave Milo a polite, sad smile. “I’m sorry,” he simply said. “But yeah. Pack up your stuff, go over there. We, uh… the guys don’t want you here.”It may have been a silly little beach party, but something about this clearly meant a lot to Milo. I could see it in his eyes; he was crushed. And in a way, I kind of understood. He just wanted to be himself, and live the way he wanted, but other people kept insisting he do things their way because they were used to something else. Milo was right, it wasn’t costing them anything to even just not pay him attention, but they decided to dedicate energy just to making him feel bad for… being the way he wanted to be. I wish I acted earlier. By the time I got up, Milo was already walking back towards the girls. He was crying, but keeping it together. Slinging kaçak bahis my bag over my shoulder, I approached Nathan and cleared my throat.“He wasn’t harming anyone.”Nathan looked at me, confused. “Who wasn’t?”“Milo.”“Just call her Sadie man, she’s not gonna fuck you if you call her that,” one of them jeered. Another one joined in. “You’re really going through all these hoops, you’re just gonna make more people like her think they can get away with making us call them whatever,” another added. “Like, you can’t just shrug and leave, you have to… pretend to believe it too! Like, why?”“It’s Orwellian,” some other guy added.“Clint, you never read 1984, just shut the fuck up,” Nathan replied.“I mean… that’s what Milo wanted. For you guys to shrug and leave him be. You went up to him,” I pressed them.“Umm, yeah, after like a whole year of his – fuck, her, bullshit,” one of the guys replied. “It just seemed like here, he was minding his own business, and you guys made the effort to make it a problem. It doesn’t make sense,” I told them.“Sorry for standing up for ourselves?” one of them replied with a hostile tone.“You’re, uh, Morgan’s boyfriend, right?” Nathan asked. “Well, look man, if it bothers you that much, you could probably go hang out with them too. No skin off my back.”“Yeah, man. We didn’t invite you. We don’t even know you,” another one added.“I mean, this guy fits in with us about as good as Sadie does, so he might be happier with his girlfriend or whatever,” I heard from the boys.“Clint, we literally just said that,” Nathan replied, annoyed.As much I would have liked to make a stand and go be with the girls, my situation with them was kind of… sticky. Doubly so if Milo was going to be with them. I wanted to really stand my ground – if I do say so, I was getting kind of good at it – but I elected to back down.“Whatever, guys,” I replied, throwing my hands up. “I was just saying.”“Nah, but it’s a good idea,” Nathan said emphatically. “You should go and, uh, check up on your girl or something.”“I’m good, I’m good,” I replied, backing down. “I get it. I’ll shut up now, okay? I just wanted to say my piece. I’ll go back to my bag.”One of the guys eyed where I came from. “Your bag, huh?” With speed far greater than my own, he sprinted over to my bag, made it into a ball shape, and tossed it in the general direction of the girls’ area. Of course, it didn’t go that far, but it was enough to make a point.The guy looked at me with a crooked, toothy grin. “Oops,” he said smugly. “You’d better go get that.”I looked at the guys once more and sighed. I guess my message came through loud and clear, I guess. With the girls, it may have been awkward, but I had to put that behind me. I walked over to my discarded bag, checked to make sure my poor 3DS was okay, then made the journey to the girls’ section. Given this was supposed to be a party for everyone, it was actually a decently long walk.Once I was there, I sought out Morgan immediately, getting her attention by waving at her. She gave me a confused expression, but waved back. “Hey, what’s wrong? Did you need something from the car?”“I wish,” I grumbled. “No, Milo got ousted from the boys’ group-”“Yeah, he’s over there,” Morgan interrupted quietly, gesturing to a nearby towel. Milo was on it, curled up in an upright ball, with some girl I didn’t recognize supportively rubbing his back.“Well, I didn’t like what the boys said, and they kinda kicked me out too,” I finished.“Quinn, they can be jerks, you just have to stand your ground sometimes with them,” she replied softly.“I did, and they threw my bag,” I complained. “I’ll be good, I promise, but could I please just stay here a bit? We can just pretend I’m checking up on you or something.”Morgan moved her mouth to the side of her face in thought. “Yeah, okay,” she concluded. “I’m sorry the guys are like that. Good news is, we’re away from them now.”“I don’t know why you wanted me to be around them anyway,” I told her. “The only people from there are guys I know from parties, Joel, and I guess I just met Nathan.”“Nathan’s not terrible,” Morgan thought out loud. “Like, he’s kinda pushy, but he… Nathan at least tries.”“Yeah, I think I got that impression. He still was a dick to Milo for no reason, though,” I replied. Morgan went back to her spot without another word, and I joined her.Immediately, the girls were way friendlier than the boys. It was clear none of them knew why I was hanging around, but unlike the guys, they didn’t make a stink about it, and a few used it as an excuse to actually talk to me, which was sweet, if invasive.“So, what’s Morgan actually like?”“Is she your first girlfriend? What’s your, like, body count?”“Oh my God, I love Korea, I’ve always wanted to visit.”After a few minutes, I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around to see Milo. His eyes were a little red but aside from that, he had basically fully recovered. “Hey, can we, uh, talk? Nothing bad, I just wanted to talk to you in private,” he told me.“Uh, yeah, sure,” illegal bahis I managed. I followed him down some path into an area by the parking lot, a little nervous but also believing him that this wasn’t just him stirring the pot again. Once we figured we were out of earshot, Milo found a nearby bench and gestured for me to sit next to him.“So, uh, I can get a little protective of the group sometimes,” he began. “And I have my principles. Like, when I feel something is wrong, I really feel it’s wrong, and I won’t deny I’ve gotten crazy red flags from you for the past few months. But, uh, I, uh…” His voice got murkier. “I heard what you did.”“Anyone would have done that,” I asserted.“No, Quinn, anyone wouldn’t have, because all that would happen is that the guys would hate them,” Milo assertively replied. “The girls, even Morgan, they talk a big game, but they know that if they ever stand up for me or even acknowledge I’m a boy around them, their reputation is in the toilet.” He got up and paced for a bit. “I’m not popular. No one in my situation could be. I just hang with a popular crowd and I get to look popular because no one dares to get into the group to rip me out of it. I was really lucky my friends accepted me for who I am, but… they never really stood up for me like that.”We were silent for a bit. “So I guess I’m saying, I don’t get what your game is.”I had a theory. “I’m not popular, so I guess popularity doesn’t mean anything to me. As far as I can tell, I don’t know those guys, so if I stand up for you, I don’t lose anything like they would, I guess.”“Yeah, but people don’t think like that,” Milo protested. “They don’t go around doing good things as soon as the bad shit is dropped. They need reasons to do the good shit in the first place. What was your reason?”Another beat of silence passed between us. Eventually, I shrugged. “They were harassing you just because of who you were,” I replied. “That’s not nice. You deserve to feel good about who you are.”Milo began to tear up again, although his expression looked closer to anger than joy. Eventually, I turned away. “I don’t get it,” he murmured, looking away from me.“Do you need to?” I asked. “I’m not trying to get with you. I just saw you hurting and wanted to help.” I let my words sink in. “I’m not just mindlessly trying to get with the others either. It’s just how shit has happened. Consider, maybe, that I’m doing this because making others feel good makes me feel good, and that’s why Taylor and Lexi wanted to use that and help themselves.”“You’re trying to tell me that this whole thing that has happened has been because of others being selfish and you happen to be the only one not being selfish,” Milo quietly retorted.I hung my head. “A part of it is enjoying what’s happening, yeah,” I admitted. “Is that so bad? I would have helped Taylor, or Morgan, or Lexi, or you, without expecting anything in return. Are you angry because I got something in return?”“I’m angry because you did stuff with a girl in a relationship, caused trouble for us, then fucked two other girls in my friend group. If I already see you as a skeezy perv, why the fuck wouldn’t that make me angry?!” he demanded. “So what? I’m supposed to just go away? I’m Morgan’s boyfriend now. I care about her. You can’t expect me to just walk away from that,” I replied, standing up.“So what the fuck is the deal with Lexi?!” he asked, voice building.“I’d kind of like to know the answer to that too!” I replied, my voice matching his. “She and I get closer, as friends, then out of nowhere Morgan tells me I have her blessing, then it all just falls into place.”Milo’s eyes narrowed. “Is that the whole story?” he asked.I paused, then sighed. “Maybe not,” I admitted. “Lexi had one of those ‘if you weren’t with Morgan’ conversations with me like a week earlier.”“A week?”“I don’t remember exactly when, does it matter?”“It all matters, Quinn,” he huffed. “…Something about all this doesn’t add up.”“Milo, I feel the exact, same, way,” I replied, putting emphasis on each word. “And fuck, don’t believe me if you want, but I can’t help but feel like I want the most for me to be monogamous with her.”He gave me a weird look. “What does that mean? Just say no to Lexi. Have you done anything with Taylor since I did… you know… that thing?”“What, you mean telling Joel and causing the exact rift in the group you’re pretending was my fault?” I asked with heat. He didn’t answer, so I huffed. “No, of course, I haven’t. Is that good enough for you?”We didn’t say anything for a bit. A shifting sound caught Milo’s attention, and he whirled his head around to something nearby. I followed his gaze to see that a certain somebody was spying on us.“Lexi, what the fuck are you doing here?” Milo asked.Lexi emerged from behind a rock. “What?” she asked as if what she was doing was completely normal. “I mean, you’re talking about me anyways. Don’t I deserve to be here for this? Or are you trying to do something here?”I didn’t know what the implications were. ‘Do something’ as in stop me from being in the group? Maybe something sexual? I didn’t know. I just looked at Milo and he looked back and forth between us for a bit, then something in his face changed.