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At this point, I can’t even pretend that it was a mistake. Mistakes are a one-time thing. Something that you can chalk up to a momentary lapse in judgment. Mistakes are correctable. Forgivable.
What I did—andkeep doing—is clearly not a mistake. It’s just the actions of a shitty person.
That’s me. I am a shitty person.That’s all there is to it.
Except…I’m starting to realize that this isn’t all about sex. I have feelings for her. Feelings that are growing. Feelings I’m finding it harder and harder to ignore. I want to be near her—like, all the time. And her laughter is my favorite sound in the world. Her snarky banter gets me going. Her soothing voice calms me down. My head is always full of the thought of her. Every minute of every day.
God. This is confusing. And terrifying. For a million different reasons.
Thank my lucky stars that it’s the weekend, at least. That means that I don’t have to face my best friend right now in my guilty state. If I had to see him at work today, I’d probably blurt out the truth and beg for his forgiveness only to have Felix beat me to a bloody pulp with his heavy medical bag or something. And he’d wait until the beating was done before firing my ass, of course.
So good thing today is Saturday, and I’m getting the fuck out of here to visit my family in Honey Hill. A forty-five minute drive doesn’t even seem far enough away from my mistakes at the moment, but hopefully I’ll get my shit together and rebuild some morals while I’m back in my hometown.
With my escape plan all mapped out, I feel marginally better about myself. I crawl out of bed, shower, get dressed, and pack a bag for the weekend. When I’m ready to leave, I pause in my bedroom and scribble out a quick note to Karli, letting her know that I’ll be gone.
I head across the hall to her room. I don’t hear a peep from behind her wall so I guess she must be sleeping. Probably for the best.
I decide to slip the note under her door where she’ll see it eventually. Hopefully, we’ll both be thinking straight by the time we come face to face again.
But as I’m leaning down to feed the paper through the small crack, my duffel bag slips off my shoulder, bangs into her bedroom door, and pushes it open.
Smooth move, asshole.
That’s when I find Karli sitting on her bedroom floor, cross-legged and surrounded by all those med school rejection letters, crying softly into her hands.
Well at least until my intrusion startles her.
Her red, puffy face whips toward mine. “What the fuck, Mason? What are you doing? Don’t you ever knock?”
She keeps prattling on—she has every right to be mad at me—but I’m too busy staring at the letters scattered around her to address her belligerent questions. “Karli, why the fuck are you torturing yourself like this?”
She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Mason. You’re the guy who breezes through life. You had everything easy. You don’t know what it’s like to be me.”
I step into her room. “You’re right. I don’t. But I hate that you choose to focus on the ugly things in your life. The things that didn’t work out for you. I wish you’d focus on all the ways that you’re beautiful.”
Karli looks up at me through foggy eyes and then wipes at her snotty face again. “So, that’s all I’ll ever be?” Her voice cracks, hopelessness leaking through. “A pretty face?”
Her face is impossibly pretty, even now, when she’s been crying her eyes out. But that’s not what she needs to hear right now.
I lower to the floor, kneeling directly in front of her. “You listen to me, Karli. Your face isn’t the only thing that’s beautiful about you. What about the way you take care of your best friend? The way you smile at her baby? The health tips you give to all the patients at the clinic? The way you help people, asking nothing in return? You did a whole fucking research project on my headaches, for crying out loud. Do you understand how special that is?”I grab her face with both my palms, my thumbs swiping at the tears there. “You areperfect, Karli. In all the ways you need to be. In every way that makes you, you. You’re perfect.”
I pull her into my arms, surprised when she falls into my lap so willingly. I hold her tightly until the tears and hiccups and sniffling calm down. This awkward position is killing my back, and this floor is hard as fuck, but I keep on holding her.
I don’t know how long we stay like that. An hour? Two? Half the day? Doesn’t matter.
After a long time, Karli’s breathing evens out. I keep holding her a bit longer, until I know for sure that she’s fallen asleep in my arms.
Then I carefully peel us both off the unforgiving floor, cradling Karli in my arms and tucking her into her bed. I stand there staring down at her, pissed that she can’t see herself the way I see her, desperate to make her understand what she’s worth.
As I walk out of her room, I look back, dismayed to still see the frown marring her beautiful face, even as she sleeps. I bend down to grab my duffle bag and the note I wrote to her earlier, crumpling it in my fist.
Fuck it. I’m not going anywhere this weekend.
I have something more important to do.
32
KARLI
