Chapter 17: Secrets and Confessions

Chuck couldn't decide which hurt more: his face or his pride. It was hard to judge. Both hurt pretty bad. On the one hand, his face throbbed with a dull fire—his eyes, his nose, his cheeks. On the other hand, he'd gotten sucker-punched, lost his glasses, and carried to safety by his baby sister and his childhood nemesis. Not to mention that he was currently sitting in a cold hospital room wearing nothing but a thin paper gown. At this point, his only remaining hope was that his nose wasn't broken.

The door cracked open, and Chuck's head shot up. But instead of a nurse or an x-ray technician, it was Angelica, holding two cups of coffee. She bumped the door closed with her hip and, after handing Chuck a coffee, hopped up on the examination table beside him.

Chuck smiled as he took a sip. It tasted fantastic.

Meanwhile, Angelica gave him an appraising look. "It was hell sneaking past the nurses' station, lemme tell ya. So you better drink every last drop."

"I will. Thanks," he said, wincing a little at the pain talking produced in his upper jaw.

It didn't go unnoticed. As he looked up from his coffee, he saw Angelica staring at him. "When will you ever learn to shut up," she sighed. "Just sit back, and I'll do all the talking." Chuck raised an eyebrow and wondered how this was any different from usual, but a glaring Angelica pressed onward, "I'll tell you a story. A story about my cousin Thomas."

"Is this a story that he'd be okay with me hearing?"

"Definitely. Trust me on this." Angelica chuckled and flipped her hair over her shoulder. "I was sixteen and, while young and fabulous, also somewhat foolish. That's sixteen for you. One of the most foolish things I did was to keep a diary."

"Wait, wait, wait. Is this about the secret that Tom talked about at your sorority house?"

An eyebrow shot up. As she took a slow sip from her coffee, she asked in a dark tone, "Do you want to hear the story or don't you, Finster?"

He hadn't actually expressed any desire to hear the story to begin with, but he felt it wise not to point this out. He nodded for her to continue.

"All right. Thank you. Now, this diary was my best friend since my Cynthia doll, and I told it everything. So very inadvisable. My mother always said to never put incriminating things in writing, and I should have listened to her." She sighed, reminiscing. "Anyways, among other things, I confessed to my dear diary that I had very inconvenient feelings for a boy I never should have liked."

Chuck snorted, then winced again at the resulting pain. "He wasn't rich enough for you?"

Angelica shot him another withering glare. "Well, no. He wasn't. But he was also very much not a part of my scene. And you know how important those things were to me then."

"Were? Try 'still are.'"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not." Angelica's voice turned serious, contemplative. "It wasn't even mostly that he wasn't as rich or wasn't as popular. It was … the thing was, Chuck, he was better than me. Kind. Loyal. Resilient. And nobody seemed to really appreciate these things, nobody saw but me."

Sipping his coffee, he pondered. "Was it Harold? Because you know Harold came out as gay last year, right?"

Angelica sighed deeply. "No, it wasn't Harold. Focus here, Chuck!"

"Sorry."

"Oh, you will be." She seemed skeptical of Chuck's contrition but continued anyways, "Now the scene turns to my dear, beloved cousins. Darling cousin number one, the weirdo, dared darling cousin number two, the idiot, to steal aforementioned diary. Which he did and found out lots of things that he should not have."

Chuck couldn't completely hide the grin that was threatening to break out. That was fantastic. He found himself feeling a renewed respect for Tom and Dil. Then something occurred to him, and he frowned. "So, if there were lots of juicy details, what's the big deal about this one secret?"

"Excellent question, Finster." As something between a smirk and a smile caused her lips to curve upwards, Angelica leaned forward. She stared into his eyes in that odd way she had that made it seem that she could see down to his very core. "Tom focused on this particular secret because he had a personal stake. He was worried I'd hurt the poor guy." She paused. Something in her expression changed, and Chuck found that he couldn't decipher it at all. "Y'know, Tom was probably right," she added, almost as an afterthought.

Leaning back and feeling a little unsettled, Chuck let out a nervous laugh. "But that doesn't make sense, Angelica. Why would Tom care about your mystery crush?"

Angelica looked away. "Because," she said, still faintly smiling, "it was you."

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Author's Notes: Ooh, cliffhanger. Sorry for the wait, hope it was worth it (though never fear, there's more to come)—I've been having a devil of a time getting Fanfiction to upload lately. This chapter's for my loyal reviewers, Digital Damita and Acosta Perez Jose Ramiro. Thanks for sticking around so long!