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Maybe closure wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
“We were dating by the end of the night—exclusively. He was the one that asked, and I was blinded by hope, so I said yes. And then three weeks later, he ducked away to the bathroom while we were studying, and his phone was on the table. It had been going crazy before he left, so I picked it up, and just glanced at it. There was a girl—she sent him nudes, and said she was waiting for him. In the bathroom.”
There was a moment of tense silence.
I shook my head at the memories, my eyes closing. “Like the glutton for punishment I am, I waited a few more minutes and then went to the bathroom myself. Found them in a stall, fucking. He’d been having sex with her the whole time he was friends with me. I walked out without giving him a chance to explain—what was there to explain?”
Tucking my hair behind my ear to give my hands something to do, I added, “I blocked his number, and ignored his knocks on my door. Whatever hope I’d had was gone. It was still the beginning of my second semester, so I switched all of my classes to online, and hit the road. It was supposed to be this big, fun thing—I’d take time to find myself in all these different countries, while capturing videos and photos to sell on stock image sites, to make money. The business thing worked, but I already told you the traveling wasn’t like that.” I paused again, then cleared my throat. “Anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” Zed said. The words sounded honest to me.
“Don’t apologize. It’s in the past, and you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It’s not in the past if it still hurts you right now.”
Damn, I hated how right he was about that.
I shrugged awkwardly though, not knowing what else there was to say or do.
“Do you want to meet up with him? Would it give you closure?” Zed checked. “That’s why Del’s telling you to go, isn’t it?”
I made a face. “I definitely don’t want to meet up with him, but yes, that’s why she thinks I should.”
He nodded.
There was no insistence that I give him more information, or outrage that I hadn’t told him every single detail. He didn’t even tell me he didn’t want me to meet up with the bastard—which seemed logical to me, given his overprotective tendencies.
“What would you say, if I did want to go?” I asked, like the damn punishment-glutton I’d already admitted to being.
Part of me hoped he’d say he’d lock me in a damn closet. At least then I’d know he was the asshole I’d expected him to be when I was running from him.
Instead, he said, “I’d ask if I could go with you. My instincts would tell me I needed to, to make sure you didn’t end up making out with the bastard. But I know you well enough to know you’d never do that, so even if you asked me to let you go alone, I would. I’d probably pace a hole into the ground of wherever I waited for you, but I would never stop you.”
I nodded silently, still staring out the window.
Of course he had confirmed that he wasn’t a bad guy. All he had done so far was confirm that. Which I both loved, and hated.
Hated, because I couldn’t walk away while he was acting decent. And loved, because whatever tiny shard of hope I felt was only getting fed and fanned into a damned bonfire.
