My boyfriend give me his mistress's leftovers

The scoreboard still flashed 31–28 when I slipped past the security guard with a tin of cookies pressed against my chest.

Chocolate chip with sea salt. Mike's favorite. I'd burned the first two batches at 2 a.m. and cried a little over the third, because my mom used to make these, and I'd never gotten them right until last night.

I smoothed the front of my white dress. Mike gave it to me two weeks ago. *You'd look like an angel in this, Flo.*

Nobody had called me an angel since my parents died.

"Hey! Players only past this point."

A trainer with a clipboard stepped in front of me. I lifted the tin like a badge.

"I'm Mike's girlfriend. I just want to surprise him."

He squinted at me, then shrugged. "Captain's in the lounge. Make it quick."

*Girlfriend.* The word still felt borrowed. For three years in high school, I'd watched Mike from the bleachers, from the back of the cafeteria, from two rows behind him in chemistry. Then, one month ago, at the freshman welcome party, he'd climbed onto a table, killed the music, and said my name into a microphone.

"Flora, I've liked you forever. Be mine?"

Two hundred people had cheered. I'd said yes before he finished the question.

Now I stood outside the players' lounge, grinning like an idiot, and pushed the door open.

"Surprise! Congrats on the—"

The tin slipped.

Cookies hit the floor and skidded under the couch. Under the couch where Mike had Amy pinned beneath him, his mouth on her neck, her fingers knotted in his hair.

His jersey lay by my feet. Her pink bra hung off the armrest.

Amy. My best friend. The girl who'd held my hand at my parents' funeral.

Mike's head snapped up. He didn't jump. He didn't apologize. He sighed, like I'd interrupted a phone call, and grabbed his varsity jacket off the floor.

"Jesus, Flora. You don't knock?"

My whole body shook. "Knock?"

"This room is for the team." He shoved one arm into his sleeve. "Who even let you back here?"

"You're—she's—" My voice cracked in half. "Amy, what is this?"

Amy sat up slowly. She didn't bother covering herself. She just tucked her blond hair behind one ear and leaned into Mike's shoulder like she belonged there.

"Don't look so shocked, babe." She smiled at me. Sweet. Familiar. "Honestly, I thought you'd figure it out ages ago."

"Figure *what* out?"

"Mike and I hooked up junior year. Senior year too. Prom night, actually." She tilted her head. "Remember when you said you saw his car outside my house? You believed me when I told you he was helping my dad with the lawn mower."

She laughed. Actually laughed.

I stared at Mike. He was checking his phone.

"Look at me," I said.

He didn't.

"*Look at me!*"

Finally, his eyes lifted. Bored. Annoyed. Nothing else.

"Then why?" My throat burned. "Why did you stand on that table in front of everyone? Why did you ask me out?"

He shrugged into the rest of his jacket. "Because Amy rejected me. I thought dating you would make her jealous."

The room went silent.

Not quiet. Silent. Like someone had sucked the air out through a straw.

"It worked, too," Amy said, tracing a finger down his chest. "Took me a whole month to cave."

My hand drifted to my collarbone. To the silver heart necklace Mike had given me on my eighteenth birthday. I'd slept with it on every night since.

Amy's eyes followed my fingers. Her smile sharpened.

"Oh, sweetie. You still wear that?"

"He gave it to me."

"He gave you what I didn't want." She counted on her fingers. "That necklace? I said it looked cheap. The vanilla perfume? Gave me a headache. That ugly stuffed bear you keep on your pillow? I tossed it in his backseat and told him to get rid of it."

Mike didn't deny a single word. He just rubbed the back of his neck.

"You were always so grateful for my leftovers," Amy said softly.

Something inside me went very still.

Three years. Three years of birthday cards I'd rewritten six times. Three years of turning down other guys because maybe, someday, Mike would notice me. Three years of thinking that somebody finally chose me.

And it was a joke. Their joke.

I laughed.

I didn't mean to. It just came out, hollow and ugly, and both of them blinked at me like I'd lost my mind.

"Flora?" Mike frowned. "You okay?"

"You know what's funny?" I wrapped my fingers around the necklace. "I baked those cookies at two in the morning. I used my mom's recipe. I've never used it for anyone before."

I yanked. The chain bit into my neck, then snapped.

The little silver heart bounced across the tile and landed beside his cleats.

"We're done, Mike."

He actually smirked. "Okay."

"I mean it."

"Sure you do." He stood, stepped over the cookies, and crushed one under his heel without even glancing down. "You've been in love with me since you were fifteen, Flo. Everybody knows. You'll cry for a week, then you'll be blowing up my phone."

"Don't hold your breath."

"Don't need to."

Then he turned, cupped Amy's face, and kissed her. Right in front of me. Slow and long, his hand sliding down her bare back, his eyes open and fixed on mine the whole time.

Like he wanted me to remember it.

I walked out.

I didn't run. I wouldn't give them that. I made it past the trainer, past the trophy case, past the crowd still screaming Mike's name in the hallway. Somebody tried to high-five me. I kept going.

The cold hit me when I shoved through the stadium doors. My dress was too thin for October. His dress. I wanted to rip it off right there on the steps.

My phone buzzed.

**Amy:** 📷

My thumb hovered. I knew I shouldn't open it.

I opened it.

Amy lay sprawled across Mike's navy sheets, in his dorm, in his bed. She was wearing a red silk dress with a low back and thin gold straps.

My dress.

The one I'd spent two months of diner tips on. The one I'd been saving for next Friday, the anniversary of our first date. The one I'd asked Amy to keep in her closet so Mike wouldn't see it early.

*"He's going to lose his mind when he sees you in this,"* she'd told me.

The caption appeared beneath the photo.

**Amy:** Thanks for keeping him warm until I wanted him back. 💋

I stared at the screen until the letters blurred.

Then a second message came through, this time from a number I didn't recognize.

**Unknown:** Check the timestamp on her picture, Flora. Then ask yourself who else knew.