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The shame sets in quickly.
Someone else showing up to confess their love to Hugh Morris had been miserable. (Even if was Jess. Maybe because it was Jess.) Slipping through the Ferris Wheel window, they'd stolen the words right out of Angie's mouth. A moment, just for her and Hugh Morris, ruined.
But Angie knew she and Hugh Morris had a bond. Something meaningful, something born of kindness and heartbreak. Even if he didn't return her feelings, he would still be kind. He'd tell Jess to leave, and respond to Angie's genuine confession in whatever way he could.
At worst, he'd let her down easy. Maybe with a silly joke, not at her expense. He'd picked up the pieces of her heart after Patrick, smushed her back into something that felt human. Made her heart into something stronger, sweeter, like a balloon animal.
And then, Doctor Winters pops out from under the seat. Wearing a sweater with Hugh Morris' face on it. Somehow, that is the moment Angie knows it's over.
She watches Hugh Morris turn to her professor, the person Angie introduced him too, and confess that he returns her feelings. That he loves her. That he loves her and not Angie, never Angie, how could she been so stupid and naive to think anybody could ever love her? Patrick hadn't. Why would Hugh Morris?
He'd been kind. He'd been funny and silly and effortlessly charming. Weird, in a way that Angie found sweet. Stupidly, she'd thought that it meant something. Anything.
But a jester's only job is to entertain the king. Not silly little serving girls who think a smile meant for the room is meant for them.
Not when the smile is aimed at Doctor Winters— mature in a way Angie can only wish she was— with not even a glance her way. That silly grin that had changed the trajectory of her love would never belong to her. Even seeing it makes her stomach turn, as she stumbles off the ride.
Jess claps her shoulder as they watch Doctor Winters and Hugh Morris (kind, sweet, no longer her Hugh Morris) run off together into the sunset. He doesn't look back, doesn't even remember that they'd talked about getting ice cream and watching the waves as they crashed upon Yoomian's shore afterwards. Forgotten in the face of something better.
Everything in her life, flipped upside down, because of Monster Trucks. Would that count as irony, or was Leader just playing cruel tricks on her this entire time?
Maybe Leader knew. Maybe they knew the whole time that Angie was destined for heartbreak and still supported her. It sounds just as cruel as it does kind. Is it better to know her feelings are doomed sooner or later?
(Later, maybe. If only so she can still believe Hugh Morris is the type of Mii she thought he was, at least for a little longer. Call her naive, but can't a girl dream?)
But just as Hugh Morris and Doctor Winters dissapear into the night, Angie wakes up.
She's in bed. She's in bed, sweaty hair plastered to her face and there's an arm stretched across her front. She goes to throw it off her, to find the nearest sink and throw up, but when she looks over—
Purple hair tinged with red splayed across the pillow, makeup still on and probably staining the pillow, and bright green eyes that flutter open at Angie's shifting.
Hugh Morris looks back at her.
He says her name (groggy with sleep but still oh-so-kind) and her heart twists, like a balloon being molded into shape. There's a question in there, in something so little as her name.
"It's nothing," Angie whispers back, worried that anything else might break the calm, might expose this for anything but real life, "Just a dumb nightmare."
With a smile (big and dumb and silly and hers, forever), Hugh Morris pulls her close. It feels a little bit more like him. It feels like an 'I love you', just like the one he'd said back in that Ferris Wheel outside of her nightmares.
Angie doesn't cry, and Hugh Morris doesn't point out that something made his makeup run in the morning. She's just glad there's a 'morning' at all.