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“I was fifteen,” she says with a half-hearted shrug. “And it didn’t work anyway. The guys knew it was a lie, but it somehow made things worse, and Dar told them all to leave you alone. Never mind when I made out with Jimmy St. Vincent freshman year and he told everyone he fingered me, Dar didn’t say a damn thing. But when I spread an obviously ridiculous rumor about you, my own brother stepped in to save your reputation.”
I blink, unsure what to say. I never knew Darwin knew anything about me, much less thought about me beyond being his girlfriend’s older sister. But it only makes me feel warmer toward my new brother-in-law.
“And then there was that time I walked into my cabin at summer camp to find you fucking my boyfriendin my own bed.”
She shrugs again. “He liked me. And I liked him first.”
“Seriously?” I say, but there’s no vitriol.
I don’t really care about what she did with him anymore. At the time it felt like the end of the world, but now that I’ve actually felt real betrayal, it’s a flash in the pan.
“We had sex,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I know. I was there.” I lean back against the headboard. I’m just tired now.
“No, I mean, before that.” She finally looks up at me, and there’s something broken in her expression. Something I don’t want to explore too deeply because I’m not going to let her manipulate me. “The first week of camp, before you two got together. We had sex. He was my first.”
Oh.
“Oh,” I say out loud this time.
“Then, after I let him do…” She hesitates, and a little shiver rolls over her shoulders. “I let him do things I shouldn’t have. And he left me. For you.” Her gaze sharpens. “The nice virgin.”
“I wasn’t a virgin,” I say with a shrug. But that’s not the point. “And I didn’t know.”
“You should have. I wasn’t quiet about it.”
She stares at me for a long moment, and then I shake my head. I don’t remember her talking about him at all. But then, would I have listened? I’d already started blocking her out whenever she talked.
“I’m sorry he did that to you,” I say. And I am. I don’t know what exactly happened between the two of them, and I don’t need to. It’s clear he wasn’t the guy I thought he was when I was nineteen, and he screwed her over when she was just barely eighteen.
“But this thing, this vendetta or whatever it is,” I say, pointing between us. “You crossed a line. I have never done anything to make your life a living hell.”
“Yeah, but you made it just a little bit worse.”
“How?” I sweep my hands out. “How did I knowingly make your life worse by going to Stanford? By moving away? By working my ass off and getting into medical school?”
“They always compare me to you and your sister.”
“Who?”
“My parents, you idiot,” she says. “My parents are always pointing out the things that you and Edie do. And Edie and Dar, they’re always talking about you too, all your friends in Portland and the guys you date. I’m not going to med school. I’m not even great at my job, to be honest.”
I frown, realizing I don’t actually know what her job is.
“But Liza,” I say, slowing down to make my next words as clear as possible. “That’s not my fault.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Then why did you…” I hesitate, swallowing around the lump in my throat. I can’t finish my sentence. I can’t cry in front of this horrible woman who is showing me a side of herself I’ve never seen before.
“Because I wanted to be better. I wanted them to see it. I….” She trails off and hugs her torso. “I’m sorry about Zeke,” she says. “I didn’t realize how serious that was. Honestly, I thought it was fake when Edie first mentioned it. I mean, he’s on social media, and the pictures you’re in always looked platonic.”
“Yeah,” I say, unable to say much else.
“Nothing happened,” she says quietly. “I wanted it to. But he said—”
“I don’t care what he said,” I say. Which isn’t entirely true. I want to know what he said. I want to know exactly what happened. But I’m not ready for it. It hurts too much.
