“My boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend.” The change in conversation throws me so much that I stop pushing the cart and pause in the middle of the aisle. “I think he’d had a crush on her long before we started dating, but she already had a boyfriend, so he settled for me.”
Now I really feel like a jerk—my going out with Cassie wasjust the same. I couldn’t have Harper, so I settled for Cassie.
She must hate me.
“I’m sorry,” I start, but she cuts me off, shaking her head. Her face shifts from sad to angry, and now back to something more broken and soft, like she’s tired of being the girl nobody wants.
“Just...” She pauses. “Tell her how you feel so the other people around you don’t have to get hurt in the process as well.”
“She doesn’t feel that way about me,” I say quickly.
Cassie laughs in a cold, sarcastic way. “Well, that’s not true.”
“How do you know?” I say, feeling a little defensive. It’s not like Cassie was there to witness me making a fool of myself today.
I start walking down the aisle again, ready to wrap up this shopping trip.
Cassie follows and turns to me, eyebrows raised. “Harper’s jealous. She hates me. She hated me when we went to the waterfalls. She hated me when she saw my van in the driveway, and she can’t even stand to go grocery shopping with me.”
I roll my eyes. “She hates you because you made us keep ditching her and leaving her alone in a foreign country.”
She gives me a smirk. “We needed to keep ditching her because your eyes were all over her.”
I rub my temple, ready to be done with this conversation. “Harper not liking you doesn’t mean it’s because she likes me.”
“You’re telling me you’ve never questioned the way Harper feels about you?”
I think back to the conversation about the text. Harper didn’tlook relieved to hear it was a joke. I’m not sure what had been going through her mind. I was just doing my best to diffuse the situation.
“She’s made it clear she only sees me as a friend.” I start to walk away, and Cassie trails behind.
“How?”
“She made me date you, for example. It was her idea.”
Cassie shrugs it off. “She was trying to hide her feelings. Next excuse.”
“Okay, last night she went out with some British guy and even dragged me along to meet his friends this morning.”
“And where is he now?” she presses.
“She ditched him because he was laughing at her for being afraid of something.” I don’t tell Cassie that it was over a fear of birds, because I know that isn’t information Harper wants out in the open.
“Sounds like he’s out of the picture now.”
I roll my eyes, knowing Cassie’s behind me and can’t see.
“She still went out with him,” I reiterate.
“The same wayyouwent out withme.”
“I didn’t think it would make her want to date someone else too!” I shout a little too loudly for a grocery store. A woman nearby glances over, her eyes lingering on us.
“So you admit you didn’t want her to go out with someone else.”
I feel like I’m being interrogated. No matter how much I deny it to Cassie, she’ll still press me for a confession.
The worst part is, she’s exactly right. I didn’t want Harper to be going out with that guy. Seeing her hand in hand with himwalking down the beach made me jealous beyond belief. Even worse, seeing him laugh at her when she was so clearly scared made me want to cuss the guy out. And when we were sitting on the beach together, her head on my shoulder, I wanted to shift just the smallest bit to kiss her temple.
