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“Stop,” I said. My voice sounded icy even to my own ears. “I’m not letting you do that anymore. Not this time. You’re not going to tell me how I should feel about this. Nobody is perfect, but it’s not setting the bar too high for your fiancé if you expect him to keep his dick in his pants. And it’s not setting the bar too high for your friend to expect her not to fuck your fiancé. You both suck.”
“It didn’t mean anything,” he said, somehow managing to still sound exasperated like he was dealing with someone hysterical. “It was a few times, alright? And it was just sex.”
“A few times? You told me that time was the only time.” Everything in my body felt tight. There was still more inside me. More rage and indignation and frustration. It all wanted to come out at once but I had to keep releasing it in little bursts instead of letting it all go at once.
“What difference does it even make, Lola? Jesus,” Brian said. “The point is I apologized. Are you going to be the bigger person and forgive me, or are you going to keep being petty and making this all about you? I mean, think of your parents. Your dad is fucking torn up over this. I know he is. He was really looking forward to being part of our family, and your selfishness is taking that–”
I threw what was left of my water on Brian, soaking his stupid polo shirt and khaki’s. He sputtered, spitting out water and looking down in disbelief. I still didn’t feel like I’d fully sent the message, so I even chucked the plastic cup at him. It hit his head with a satisfying little plink and bounced to the ground.
He reached up and rubbed the spot on his forehead, staring at me with complete indignation. I noticed even Chastity was smiling.
I pointed at her as I got up. “You suck too.” There was more I could’ve said to her. I could’ve talked about how much it hurt to know the girl I’d survived middle school with had betrayed me. We used to spend hours in my room drawing bad pictures of horses and giving them names we thought were cool in elementary school. I even remembered her talking a mile a minute to me in her bedroom the night after her first kiss. I could’ve talked about all of that, but somehow it felt more like the truth to simply dismiss her.
Kate followed me down the street as we ignored Brian’s protests. All the anger I’d had boiling in me for so long was cooling off.
Kate waited several minutes before giving me a little nudge. “How are you feeling?”
“Honestly?” I said. “I feel… nothing. But in a good way. It was like this little fire was burning inside me for the last few months. It had been there so long I stopped really noticing it, but it was always there, always pressing on the back of my brain. I think I forgive them,” I said, shrugging.
“Woah, wait.” Kate put her hand on my arm, stopping me on the busy street and pulling me beside a building. “The point wasn’t to make you forgive them. You were just supposed to get everything off your chest so you could move on.”
“I did. And I think the only way to really move on is to actually forgive them. Otherwise I’m going to be carrying that grudge around for the rest of my life, you know? It doesn’t mean I’m going to ever want to talk to them again. It just means I’m done being angry. They made shitty decisions and I forgive them for it, but I also learned about who they really were, and now I choose not to be involved with them. And fuck it. I forgive myself, too. I was a coward and I ran, but I’m not going to waste any more time being pissed at myself for that, either.”
“Oh,” Kate said. She seemed to take a few minutes to sort that out in her head as we began walking again. “Well, good, I think,” she finally said.
“Yeah, it is,” I agreed. “When we get back I’m going to call my parents and explain everything that happened, too.”
For the first time in months, I felt light. A weight had slid off my shoulders and I felt almost incredible. Almost perfect. If only Christian had still been waiting for me back at the apartment. If only I could go to him and gush about how proud of myself I was for actually going through with that. Instead, there was a hole inside me where all those feelings wanted to go. If I thought about him too long, that hole threatened to suck everything in and leave me empty.
