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Me: I never wanted to hurt you. I just wanted to see what was between us before telling you.
Kelsey: I get that, but it still doesn’t make the fact that you hid it from me hurt any less.
I sit on Kacey’s bed and read her text over and over again, knowing this is the end of the friendship I knew. From this point forward it will be forever changed.
Me: I’m sorry.
I watch the text go from unread to read, hoping by some miracle that she takes my apology the way it’s meant to come across and forgive me.
The longer I stare at my phone screen, realizing she’s left me on read, I know I need to get up and grab my things before she gets back to our room.
* * *
The second I step foot in the room, the air stale and the scent of Kelsey’s perfume lingering in the air, I take a breath. At the beginning of the week, I thought this was going to be a week of reconnecting. A week of finding guys to hook up with and sharing crazy stories at night like we did back in high school. But in reality, I know we’re over all that and this has become even more complicated than I ever imagined.
My feet take me further into the room and I stop dead in my tracks because lying on the bedside table next to our bed is a leather bracelet, the one I gave her our senior year of high school, the one she never took off. Now it’s lying abandoned on her nightstand, reminding me just how much I fucked up.
I don’t know how long I stand there, staring at the bracelet, but when the tears form and begin to fall from my eyes, down my cheeks, and past my jaw I know I need to leave. I need to get out of this room and figure out what the hell I’m going to do because that bracelet represented our friendship and the fact she took it off for the first time in years tells me all I need to know.
I quickly pack my things, trying to wipe the tears as they fall. I pray they’ll stop but they never do and as I head out the door I double back, grabbing the bracelet and shoving it in my pocket, hoping one day I can give it back to her. It doesn’t take me long to get back to Kacey’s room and when I open the door and smell his shampoo the tears form once more, knowing he’s back from work.
“Hey, babe, where did you go?” he asks, still in the bathroom. When I don’t answer right away he opens the door, and the second he sees my face, his demeanor changes. He grabs my suitcase, throws it into the corner, and hauls me into his chest. “Ash, what happened?” he whispers against my temple, his touch soothing some of the ache as he pulls me further into the room.
“Kelsey texted and told me to come get my things from our room, and when I got there I found this.” I hold out the bracelet and he takes it, inspecting it.
“What’s this?” he asks, oblivious to the meaning behind her leaving it behind.
“I gave that bracelet to her senior year when I knew I was moving away.” His eyes narrow and confusion laces his features.
“Okay, but why did this make you cry?” I take a deep breath, my chest shuddering as I struggle to get the words out.
“She never took it off. In all the years we’ve been apart she’s never taken it off and…” Kacey stops me, carefully wiping the tears from my cheeks with the pads of his thumbs.
“Baby, it could have just fallen off at the beach or something. It doesn’t mean what you think it means.” I shake my head, wishing so much for that to be true, but I know it’s not. It’s her sign to me that I fucked up and right now I have no clue how to make this right.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
KACEY
I am pissed at my sister. So fucking mad at her that I have to physically stop myself from going down to her room and screaming at her that she’s being a selfish little bitch. I know she’s mad, and I understand why, but what she’s doing to Ashley is beyond my comprehension.
I spent the night comforting my girl, holding her while she cried, soothing her, and telling her that everything will be okay when I have no idea if I’m lying to her or not. At this point, I don’t even know if their friendship can survive this. Do I understand it? Hell no. And when Ashley finally fell asleep around three in the morning I knew I was going to have to take matters into my own hands.
The sun has finally come up and Ashley is sleeping soundly beside me, something I have longed for many times over the years, and now that it’s happening? I can’t even enjoy it because she’s miserable and I’m at a loss on how to fix it.
I carefully untangle myself from the hold Ashley has on me and lean down, kissing her forehead lightly as she moans, turning over and hugging my pillow. Fuck. She’s a sight.
I grab my phone off the table and text my sister, hoping she’s up.
Me: You up?
It doesn’t take her long to respond and when she does I make my feelings known.
Me: Meet me at The Grounds Club in twenty minutes. We have to talk.
Kelsey: I have nothing to say to you.
Me: Good, then you can just listen for once in your life. See you in twenty.
