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He followed me. “Where are you going?”
“I’m looking for my phone so I can call my father for a ride.” I was just as gullible and naïve with Christian as I had been with Bradley.
“Why?”
His voice was so calm it was infuriating. “Because I’m breaking up with you,” I hurled at Christian, frustrated and hurt. I was annoyed with myself for taking Christian at face value. For spinning a fantasy. And it stupidly hurt that he wouldn’t acknowledge I had a right to be upset.
He scoffed and ran his fingers through his hair, glancing back into the house clearly to check on Camp. “You can’t break up with me.”
“I just did.” I stared down at the fire pit, my stomach clenching.
“You can’t break up with me because we’re not together, Bella. We’re not a couple. We’re two people fucking each other.”
Furious, because he was right, I hurled my hamburger into the fire pit. It was so juvenile and I knew that, but I couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t fair that I liked him. It wasn’t fair that Bradley had cheated on me and that my wedding had been ruined. “I meant breaking it off. I don’t want to see you anymore. Or ever again.”
“Why?” he asked me, still in the damn doorway.
I annoyed myself because I had stormed off and he couldn’t follow me because he couldn’t leave Camp alone in the cabin. So now we were having this conversation ten feet apart. If I walked back up to him I would look even more ridiculous.
“Because everything we’re doing is just a bad idea. Can you please call my phone? I’m going to look for it.”
Part of me wanted him to argue with me. To attempt to talk me into staying with him another night.
“Let me get Camp and then let’s talk about this, okay? You seem upset.”
Duh. “Of course I’m upset! My fiancé was cheating on me with at least two women and you just basically told me that you are almost no better than him.”
“What Bradley did is not the same as what I did with Ali. But you know what? I don’t need to justify my behavior to you. We’re not dating. You asked me for sex. I gave it to you.”
Ouch. I was stunned. It was the truth, but wow, that was just so matter-of-fact.
That was it. I was out of there. I wasn’t even going to wait for him to call my phone. I needed to walk before I picked my burger out of the ashes of the fire pit and hurled it in his face. He made me sound like I had been begging him for dick.
I mean, I had been. I just didn’t need that pointed out with such brutal honesty. Especially considering he had just admitted he was all into secrets. So he could keep other secrets, but with me he was just balls-out truthful, hey, you are a pathetic loser who begged me for sex?
What. Ever.
Blindly tromping through the brush, I tried to remember what direction I had thrown it the night before. I thought about how Christian had come out and comforted me and I’d thought he was such a nice guy. Tears burned in my eyes. God. I was basically the definition of gullible.
Wandering around I couldn’t see anything that resembled my phone.
Christian came into the yard with Camp, his phone to his ear, obviously calling my phone. Or maybe the psych ward. I was well aware I sounded a little nuts, but I couldn’t help it. Nothing about anything was going according to my life plan.
I stopped at the edge of the woods, having an epiphany.
Other people dictated almost every decision I had ever made.
My parents, in particular my father.
My college boyfriend.
Bradley.
Even now I was letting Christian dictate where I was and what I was doing. I was playing house with him at his cabin, and begging him to stay with me. Because I didn’t want to be alone.
The only thing I had ever done in my life that was truly independent was to decide to get my degree in psychology and social work, against my parents’ advice. Otherwise I let social mores and the strong personality of other people sway me. If I did exactly what I wanted I would have never hesitated to dump Bradley the second I found out he was cheating.
I also would not have agreed to those floral arrangements for the tables my mother had insisted on, but that was neither here nor there.
