Page 7 of Don't Date Your Nemesis

LIAM

If I had known that attending my best friend’s engagement party would result in me confronting every poor decision I made between the ages of eight and fourteen, I would have faked my own death by drowning.

But there I was, on a rooftop in Los Angeles, surrounded by twinkling string lights and people who actually knew how to be happy, nursing a champagne flute and trying not to look like I was planning my escape route.

“Liam!” Kiara grabbed my arm, practically vibrating with joy. She looked radiant because she was literally glowing as if she had swallowed the sun. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I lied smoothly. I already calculated that I could reasonably leave in forty minutes without seeming rude.

She held up her left hand, where a diamond the size of a small country caught the light. “Isn’t it perfect? Ethan designed it himself. Well, ‘designed’ is generous, but he drew a stick figure ring on a napkin and the jeweler translated.”

“It’s beautiful.” I laughed because it was so perfectly Ethan. “You’re beautiful. I’m happy for you guys.”

And I meant it because I genuinely was happy for them. The eight-year-old version of me would have been shocked.

“Oh!” she said, and her eyes lit up in that way that always preceded disaster. “My cousins Deepika and Diya are coming tonight! Deepika is running late from set, but she’ll be here. You remember her, right?”

How can I forget her?

My champagne tasted burned on my tongue. “Vaguely.”

“You two were so memorable together as kids,” she said, her smile pure innocence, but there was a glint in her eye that suggested she knew exactly what she was doing. “Maybe you’ll finally get along now that you’re both adults.”

Adults. Uh-huh.

Unless one of us pushes the other one through the balcony.

After the pool incident at eight, we met again two years later during Ethan’s tenth birthday party. She was invited since she was visiting Kiara.

The birthday party was a sprawling backyard affair with games and prizes, and Deepika and I had turned it into the Olympics of Petty.

We competed in everything. Sack race? I won. Three-legged race? She won. Musical chairs came down to the two of us, and when I sat down a fraction of a second before her, she accused me of cheating.

“You pushed me!” she shouted.

“You’re just a sore loser!” I fired back.

The argument had escalated until somehow (I still wasn’t clear on the physics) we crashed into the birthday cake. Chocolate frosting was everywhere. Ethan had turned red while Kiara threatened to kill us both with her slippers. And Deepika had gotten frosting in her hair and blamed me.

I was grounded for a week.

Then, at fourteen… ah. I would rather swim with sharks than remember that incident.

In everyone’s life, there’s one moment that they’d like to forget, and for me, that was it. Because it still haunted me and woke me up in the middle of the night sometimes, cringing so hard I wanted to leave my body.

It was a Valentine’s Day party I had thrown at my house when my parents were out for a weekend. I had been stupidly staring at Kiara like a lovesick puppy, and Deepika had noticed because of course she had.

She noticed everything.

We played Seven Minutes in Heaven with the bottle landing on us, and I wanted to die on the spot.

We were shoved into a closet, surrounded by winter coats, and Deepika had leaned against the wall with a knowing smirk.

“So,” she said, “Kiara, huh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, leaning on the opposite wall. I didn’t like how drastically our bodies had changed since we last saw each other, and I wasn’t used to the deep tone of my voice or the lankiness from my tall height.

“Please,” she said, rolling her eyes. There was glitter on her lids that made her dark eyes shine. “You look at her like a golden retriever looking at a tennis ball. It’s embarrassing.”