- Lucy -
couldn’t wait to tell Fiona about my meeting with Nathan. I felt a thousand times better about the Chuck situation after talking to him, and I was eager to ease her anxiety, too.
And since Aiden’s car wasn’t in the street when I got home, I figured I could fill her in while everything Nathan said was at the front of my mind, preferably before Aiden arrived.
After all, I didn’t really want to talk to him about it. I knew he would just freak out and get over protective, and I had enough to manage without having to manage his anger on top of everything.
Plus, I wanted the time I spent with him to be fun and light. Our relationship- at least the romantic side of it- was still new. I didn’t want it to be punctuated by my own personal job drama, especially when I knew Chelsea’s constant griping did his head in.
I opened the door and smiled when I saw the flowers on the counter. But when I went to grab a shandy, my face fell. There was a bottle of vodka on the counter, and it was half empty.
“Fiona?!” I called.
I grabbed the bottle and marched down the hallway towards the music. When she didn’t hear me knocking, I pushed the door open.
I didn’t see her so I stepped over her clothes until I got to the stereo and turned it off. “Fiona?!”
“What?” she said, walking out of the bathroom, patting her face with a hand towel.
“What the fuck is this?” I asked, holding the bottle in the air.
She shrugged. “I had a few drinks.”
“A few drinks?!” I could tell by her eyes that she’d had a lot more than a few. “You were supposed to look for a new job today.”
“I’ll start tomorrow.”
“You’ve been saying that all week,” I said. “Plus, tomorrow’s Saturday.”
She reached out her hand. “I’ll finish that now then.”
I held the bottle behind me. “Do you know where I was while you were day drinking all afternoon?”
“Work?”
“Yeah, and then after work, I went to talk to a lawyer to get some legal advice, which I was hoping I’d be able to discuss with you right now.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t want you to apologize! I want you to sober up and get a grip- or at least a job!”
She lowered her voice. “Please don’t yell at me in front of Aiden.”
I leaned towards her. “Aiden’s not here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“He was a second ago.”
“What?”
“I was talking to him in the kitchen, like, five minutes ago.”
“Aiden?!” I yelled.
She made a listening face. “Huh.”
“I’m not yelling at you, okay? You have every right to drink and sulk, but can you not do it during the day when I need your help to pay the bills?”
She nodded. “Sorry, Luce.”
I shook my head and set the bottle down. Then I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed Aiden’s number. He didn’t answer. I tried again. Nothing. “Are you sure he was here?”
“Yeah,” Fiona said, leaning against the inside of her bathroom door. “I’m drunk, not hallucinating.”
“Why would he leave?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long was he here?”
“Ten minutes maybe? I got him a drink and we joked about Tinder, and then I came in here to wash off my face mask because it was freaking him out.”
“What do you mean you joked about Tinder?”
“We just talked about what a bitch Chelsea was basically.”
I swallowed. “What exactly did you say?”
“Just that he must’ve been pissed when he found out she was on it while they were going out, and I said if Peter-”
I covered my face with my hands.
“What?”
“He doesn’t know she was on it,” I said.
“Sure he does.”
“I never told him.”
“But he knew she was-”
“Cheating. He knew she was cheating. That’s it.” I sighed. “As far as I know, he had no idea she was on Tinder.”
“But-”
I walked over and put my hands on her shoulders. “I need you to think very carefully.”
Her eyes went wide.
“I’m not upset, okay? I just need to know what you said.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I-”
“Did you say that we saw her on a date?”
She nodded.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath through my nose. “Did you say she came up on Alex’s phone?”
She swallowed.
“Did you?”
She nodded.
I let go of her shoulders and left the room.
“Lucy?!” she called after me.
I turned back and went in her room, grabbing the vodka off her dresser.
“I’m sorry!”
“You are so done.”
“I didn’t mean to-”
I turned to face her. “What? Fuck this up for me? Hurt my best friend?”
“It was an accident.”
“No surprise there.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just leave me alone.” I walked across the hall and swung my bedroom door shut behind me.
Then I slumped on my bed and tried to call him again. He didn’t pick up. I fell back on my bed and dug the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. Fuck.
Just as well he didn’t answer. What would I even say? I was going to tell you that night, but you’d broken up with her anyway?
He would never believe me. He would never understand how torn up I was over it. And now it didn’t matter anyway because it was too late.
Now I was just as bad as Chelsea, keeping secrets from him and being deceitful. Except this was worse. I was supposed to be the person he could trust the most. I pretended to be anyway, and what did I do when I had a chance to protect him?
I kept my mouth shut. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I wasn’t. Now it was so obvious. If I could just go back and do it all over again, I could’ve told him when I knew she wasn’t at the nursing home. At the very least, I could’ve called him when she popped up on Alex’s phone.
What was I thinking?
How could I do this to him? I tried to imagine the scale of his anger, or worse, his hurt. What if he’d done this to me? What if he’d let my boyfriend make a fool of me and not told me I was getting played?
It was impossible to imagine.
Because he never would’ve done that.
He would never hurt me that way. Not by omission, and not on purpose.
I rolled onto my stomach and stared at the phone, willing it to ring. I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped it would vibrate in my hand. I needed to hear his voice. I needed to know he wasn’t mad at me, that he knew I never meant to lie to him.
I was so sorry I could feel it in my bones.
And I wanted to be mad at Fiona for being a ditzy, drunk blabbermouth, but it wasn’t her fault. It was mine. I’m the one that didn’t tell him Chelsea was cheating on him, and I should’ve told him as soon as I found out.
She wasn’t his best friend. She didn’t owe him anything. She didn’t grow up with him. She didn’t even know what it was like to have a friend as loyal as he was.
And now I had gone and royally fucked up our friendship just because I couldn’t say what was difficult.
Except it wasn’t our friendship that I’d fucked up.
It was our budding romance.
And now what?
Now he was probably thinking I was just another girl who dicked him around and couldn’t be trusted, another girl that was as fake and selfish as the rest of them.
And I knew him well enough to know that forgiveness didn’t come easy to him. He would never forget that I’d done this, even if he could pretend to.
But it wasn’t over yet. Maybe we could fix this. We’d been through tough times in the past.
And it always worked out when it was us against the world.
Maybe he would understand.
Maybe he could forgive me even if he couldn’t forget.
This couldn’t be it.
If only he would answer his phone.