AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Evie
We're goingto get this over with, then never speak of her again.
Her name tastes vile coming off my lips. I have to resist the urge to spit after I've said it. But we need to have this conversation. Get it over with. So we can move on. Move forward.
While things went better than expected when Max found out—I really thought he was going to attack Leo a second time—we still have a lot to discuss. Starting withher.
"Evie, I—"
"I don't want to talk about her either." Taking a seat on the edge of my bed, Leo moves to kneel on the floor in front of me, making us eye level. "We have to. She's a part of your past. A part of what makes you who you are. And if I'm being honest, I think there's a lot you're not telling me about what happened."
"Do the details really matter?"
"To me they do. Because I need to know the entire truth. I need to have all the facts. Otherwise, it'll always be something between us. This lie of omission. And I won't be able to fully trust you."
"You can trust me." Taking my hands in his, Leo gives them a tight squeeze. "I've told you all the important details."
"The details you deem important. What haven't you told me?"
I get this is hard for him. I've put myself in his shoes. But he needs to realize it's hard for me too after what I witnessed last night.
"Start from the beginning. Tell me everything you remember."
Letting out a sigh, Leo averts his eyes to where our hands are laced together in my lap. "We met freshman year. I remember thinking how beautiful she was. I wanted to talk to her, get to know her. It was like I was drawn to her, my feet taking me to her without realizing it, my best friend Jeff hot on my heels. If I'd paid more attention then, I would have seen it coming. Those first few months we dated; Jeff would always tell me how lucky I was. How pretty and perfect Tandy was for me. And I agreed with him. The first year we were together was magical. We were the couple everyone wanted to be.
"We had nothing in common, but that didn't stop us from having fun together. And when Jeff started dating one of her friends, we became a foursome. His relationships never lasted long. A few weeks to a few months. By the start of our junior year, Jeff and I started to drift apart. I had issues with the way he treated girls—sleeping with them and dumping them—and he was always pissed I was with Tandy. We still hung out, but it was less and less until the Christmas dance. Jeff wanted to double date, and I reluctantly agreed because he'd started seeing a girl Tandy was close with."
Leo pauses, swallowing hard. His eyes are still focused on our hands, and his grip has tightened.
"Jeff insisted we get a room that night at the hotel the dance was at. My parents didn't have a problem with it. They already assumed Tandy and I were intimate. She'd become like a daughter to them. She celebrated holidays with us and went on family vacations. We'd share a room, a bed, anytime we traveled. But we weren't. Not until that night. Even though I didn't think we were ready, it happened."
"If you weren't ready, why did you sleep with her?"
"I was ready, but she wasn't. She hesitated, but Jeff and her friend pressured her. Told her that she needed to lose her virginity and get it over with."
"That’s ... shitty." I was looking for a more studious word, but my mind went blank.
"After that, it seemed like that was all she wanted to do. Every chance we got. Which, for a guy with raging hormones, was great. We were always careful, but after a while it stopped being intimate. It felt like a chore. So I pulled back and started making excuses. Instead of having sex three or four times a week, it was once or twice."
Hearing about Leo being intimate with her hurts my heart. Not the way I thought it would. Not because he screwed her—I knew that already—but because she didn't cherish the moment with him. She treated it as a job. It sounds like she only cared about getting off.
"This went on for about a year. We were still making plans to go to college together. To live together after our first year. To get engaged our senior year so we could get married before starting our careers. She wanted to have kids before we were too old to chase after them. It was the same plan we'd had since we’d started dating."
"What did you want?" He doesn't answer, so I push. "Leo. You keep telling me what she wanted. You've never once mentioned what you wanted."
"Because it wasn't about me. I didn't see it at the time, but none of the decisions I made had anything to do with what I wanted. It was always about what made her happy. She chose the school we were going to go to. She chose when I would propose. She decided how many kids we were going to have. I was just along for the ride."
"It never would have lasted."
"What?" His head slowly lifts, his eyes finding mine.
"You weren't an equal player in the game. There was no way it ever would have lasted. She would have won, and you would have been miserable. Eventually you would have woken up one day and decided you'd had enough. But how much of your life would you have wasted?"
He slowly nods, maintaining eye contact. "Spring break is when everything shifted. I felt the shift, but I couldn't do anything to stop it. She was supposed to come up north with my family to visit our cabin. She backed out at the last minute. Ten days later when I got home, she was avoiding me. She didn't come to school until Thursday. She looked like hell. A shell of her former self. Of course, I was worried about her and too blind to see what was really going on. A few weeks later, the day before senior prom, she showed up at my house and told me the truth about everything." Brushing his hair back, Leo stands and starts pacing the room. "She spent spring break with Jeff, my best friend."
What the fuck!
"It wasn't the first time they'd been together. She'd been seeing him for months. Sleeping with both of us. Only, they weren't as cautious as we had been. Which is why she ended up pregnant. And the week after spring break, she had an abortion. Jeff urged her to. He wasn't ready to be a father and must have known it was his. Only, she lied to her mom and told her it was mine."
