"We broke up." Ally's voice floats through the air and fills the darkness of Austin's room with an unsettling warmth.
"I'm sorry," he says.
"Don't be. It was doomed from the start. I knew he was going to be trouble-"
"OHHHHHHHH!" Austin does the goat scream. He never misses a Taylor Swift reference. He glances at the door, hoping that his parents didn't wake up. As mattress mavens, they firmly believed in the benefits of a good night's sleep. He'd be grounded if they found him awake at 3 AM.
Ally's laugh crackles through the phone. He is glad he has made her laugh. He has always been good at doing that. "Yeah," she says. "I'm not sad. Well, I am sad, but it's more of the sadness that comes with the inevitability of the thing, you know? It couldn't last. It wasn't capable of lasting."
"Was he a jerk about it?" Austin asks. "I assume that you did the breaking up."
"He was nice." She sounds confused. "They're always nice."
The conversation lapses into silence.
"So..." Ally drawls. "How's it going with you-know-who? It's only been a week since..."
"Since she cheated on me?" Austin's voice is harsh, not because he is angry at her, but because of the reality of what happened. Sugar-coating is not his strong suit. "I'm fine. It's strange, but in every scenario, I was the one doing the cheating. Can't believe she beat me to it."
"Don't say that." Ally sounds uncomfortable. She hates the self-deprecating sarcasm. He uses it so rarely that she knows he believes it. "You're a good guy. You wouldn't have."
"Am I a good guy?" The cell phone beeps beneath his ear, warming it as the screen lights up. Austin ignores it. "So why did I date her when I didn't even like her? Who does that? Shallow celebrities, that's who."
"Austin..."
"You can't make me a hero all the time, Ally. I have faults. They have to show themselves sometimes."
"They're my faults too," she says. "Why did I date him when I couldn't even picture us together, not even in my thoughts?"
"Do you think..." Austin starts.
But the idea of saying the words that are forming in his mouth scares him much more than anything should scare Austin Moon. "Do I think what?" Ally prompts, sounding a bit wary herself. She couldn't guess. There were five miles and two walls between them.
"Do you think it's right to date a person we don't care about to stop ourselves from dating the person we love?"
And the phone goes dead.
Austin pulls the device away from his ear and finds that the screen won't light. At least she didn't hang up on me. But the words have been said now, and he won't know what she thought of them because he was too stupid to remember to charge his phone.