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I’d ruined everything.
Tears poured down my face as I looked at their relationship and saw my vast sense of inadequacy reflected back at me. I didn’t deserve a life like that, with someone like that. Who was I kidding?
Then I saw something that made me want to throw up:
In her three most recent pictures, I couldn’t see her left hand. It was either out of frame, semi-awkwardly behind her back, or in her pocket.
It was a detail so subtle, I’m sure no one else in the world would have noticed it. But since I’d gone full stalker mode, I could see through the keen lens of suspicion that blended with true knowing:
They were engaged.
My phone tipped out of my hand and disappeared into the duvet with athud.
Most of the time I numbed myself to the pain with layers of carefully planned order around my heart. It was the most I could do to get through every day; to keep myself safe within my walls of precisely architected masonry. Pretending to have my life together was more than an art; it was a survival tactic.
But now, staring at the proof that I’d lost him for good, I was forced to acknowledge the simple fact that I wasn’t good enough for him.
I was kidding myself if I ever thought I was.
My resolve crumbled and I sobbed, bleeding my emotions all over the mattress like watercolors.
A soft knock sounded on my bedroom door.
I couldn’t stop crying to say anything. I couldn’t even look at anything other than the square inch of wall I’d chosen to fixate on.
But I knew it was Effie. She came into the room, her footsteps creaking on the ancient wooden floor, and crawled into bed beside me.
“It’s alright, Grace. Cry it out,” she said soothingly, holding me tight.
“I—I’m sorry, I don’t mean to—”
“It’s okay to feel things,” she said gently. “Cry it out.”
So I did. I got to sit there in my misery soup next to my baby sister, feeling guilty for needing her. I felt weak; I felt like I’d failed her. When we were teenagers, it was always me that did the comforting when she’d have her dramatic breakups, not the other way around.
I’d always had Grayson.
But for the past few months, she’d been the one picking up my pieces. I was so incredibly grateful to her for that, but I longed to be able to clean them up myself. There was something humiliating about being broken open like this, even next to the person I trusted most in the world.
“Let me guess,” she said after a few minutes. “You went on Insta.”
I nodded and hiccuped, unable to bring myself to look her in the eye. “He has a n-new girlfriend. I mean… f—”
I couldn’t make myself say it.
“Well, let’s see her then. Come on, give me your phone.”
I did as she asked, and she pulled up this woman’s sickeningly perfect life. I winced as I saw her with her arms around Grayson—myGrayson.
No. Not mine. Not anymore.
Effie scrolled through the grid hypnotically.
“She’s perfect,” I mumbled miserably.
“Are you kidding me?” Effie asked, tilting her head toward me on the pillow. “Um, no. She looks like an off-brand version of you.”
My eyes flicked to the smiling, movie-star-looking woman on the screen. I couldn’t see any resemblance.
