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I can't date him," I said. A tiny flutter of hope started up in my stomach, and I knew from past experience it was best to squash it as soon as possible.
    Her smile got bigger. "I absolutely promise you I won't be jealous or care if you two date. It won't hurt me to let him go."
    "How can you say that?" I couldn't fathom how such a thing was possible. It was actually beyond my comprehension. "You're acting like you don't even like him all that much."
    Ella shrugged, as if she agreed with what I said. "Don't get me wrong—he's a nice guy. But we never had much in common or anything to talk about. I mean, it was fun to be seen with him the few times we went out. And I guess he's cute and everything."
    Cute?
Cute?
I was insulted even though I was still mad at him. Jake Kingston was insanely hot. Like, God's gift to women hot. And fun to be seen with? There was so much more to him than that, but I realized in that moment that Ella didn't see him the way that I did.
    Then it occurred to me that Ella never really had a chance to get to know Jake very well. I didn't like to ever think about the two of them as a couple, but what Ella said made me think about everything in a new light. He had traveled the entire summer with his family at some chateau in France. Since he had returned, with her volunteering, schoolwork and job, and with his extracurriculars, they never spent much time together. Jake had started his pursuit of her last fall, and I thought Ella was just playing hard to get, but now it sounded like she had never been interested in him. He finally got her to agree to go out with him at the end of the year, where they were oh-so-predictably and nauseatingly crowned Queen and King at Malibu Prep's version of the prom. They were not the PDA type. You would never have even guessed they were dating if you didn't know better. Everyone at school always speculated and gossiped about it. I had been approached a few times for intel, but I honestly knew nothing. Ella and I never talked about Jake. She had tried once or twice, but I'd always shut her down. I couldn't bear it. Now I wondered what she would have told me had I ever let her talk. If she would have admitted to how things actually were between them.
    If she would have explained why their relationship had been even weirder since he got back. Since around the time of the Bathroom Incident.
    Even if it gave me some hope and made my long-standing guilt melt away, I couldn't do it. "I don't want you to break up with Jake for me."
    "It would have happened anyway. You just gave me the excuse I've been looking for. And I'm not breaking up with him for you. I'm doing it for me." Ella turned her head to study my manga wall. She suddenly sounded unhappy. "There's a boy I've been sort of interested in, and I've wanted to go for it and I realized I didn't know how so I just stayed in something that felt comfortable which was dumb." She turned back to face me, and took both of my hands in hers. "If I'd known it would hurt you, I never would have even dated him in the first place."
    I realized that I might have to reassess the Ella situation. I might even have to cross off some numbers on my List of Grievances. No wonder everyone loved Ella. She was pretty awesome, even if I had been blindly jealous over something that I apparently didn't need to even worry about.
    "Why did you date him?" I know I had my no-Jake rule with Ella, but I wanted to understand.
    She shrugged again. "I guess because everyone expected me to date the quarterback."
    "It's very high school cliché of you."
    "I know," she said.
    I guess since I was being such a miserable cliché by crying over a boy, Ella might as well be one too. "And if I'm being honest, it was in part because he wanted me to."
    Of course Jake Kingston got everything he wanted whenever he wanted it.
    "So what do we do now?" Ella asked.
    It royally irritated me that Jake always won. He wanted Ella as a girlfriend, and he apparently wore her down