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Feeling as if someone’s shining a spotlight on my back, I march away from the hotdog stand and the group of people dissecting my private life as they might a bug under a microscope.
The whole thing makes me feel…itchy, and I can’t get away from there fast enough.
I drive back to the addition and do my damndest to lose myself in my work. Regardless, for the rest of my day, I’m consumed by the knowledge that I’ve somehow become a gossip nugget to the residents of this town. I try not to let it consume, try not to even think about it, but I can’t. A fury like I’ve rarely felt cascades over me because there’s only a single individual who could be responsible for divulging this information about me.
And now, she and I need to have words.
Eight
Becca
When I arrive home that evening, I find Sean squatting against his door outside the landing our two front doors share. My stomach squirms. I’ve never witnessed him doing this, and the expression on his face as he glares straight forward might as well be a thundercloud.
I attempt to convince myself that I could be wrong, though. Maybe he just had a bad day. He’s not looking directly at me, not as I get out of my car. Not even as I cross the sidewalk and approach.
No, it’s only as I come to stand right beside him that Sean says in a scarily quiet voice, “I need to speak with you.”
“Sure,” I squeak, trying to sound upbeat even while my nerves have gotten the best of me.
He leads me into his side of the duplex, pivoting on his heel as I close the door behind me. His spine is stiff as a board, and his features are hard, unforgiving. And just like that, I can’t breathe.
“Is there some reason why several people down at the lake today—mostly people I’m not even acquainted with—were talking about my past relationship with Karena?”
“Karena?” I parrot back at him like an idiot, and he scowls in my direction.
“Not by name, but they seemed quite familiar with the situation. As if they had insider knowledge. With details I’ve only given to you.”
Maybe I can put the fire out early. “Listen, Sean, people like to talk about random things they hear. It’s not really a big deal.”
“Not a big deal?” he hisses, going even quieter, so quiet I have to concentrate to even understand him. And somehow that frightens me far more than if he were to yell. “I told you about thatin confidence, and now that information is being spread out like birdseed in everyone’s front yard.”
His nostrils are flared, and his eyelids narrowed into a squint, his mouth set into such a rigid line I’m surprised he can speak.
“Why? Why would you do this?” he demands to know.
Until now, everything about Sean, from his inflexible stance to what I’m just now noticing are clenched fists at his sides, radiate his fury and wrath. Yet as I watch him, his features shift to something more deflated than angry. His eyebrows turn up on the inside edges, his eyes shadowed with some unknown emotion as he releases the fierce balls of his fists.
Sadness, it dawns on me. Sadness and disappointment.
“I didn’t mean to,” I tell him, even though it sounds like the very worst of copouts. “It just kind of popped out.”
He huffs out a harsh breath, but it’s not a laugh. It’s anything but a laugh.
“So my privacy means nothing to you. That’s what you’re admitting to me.”
“It’s not that. Look, it was just an accident. A mistake. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” And the way he whispers it like a dismissal makes my chest hurt.
He leaves me standing there in the middle of his living room as he disappears into his bedroom, returning with a handful of items. A nightgown. A bottle of lotion. A lone sock. He hands them over then tells me without meeting my gaze, “You should go now.”
It’s not a suggestion. As soft as his words are, there’s something in his voice that I realize will brook no argument. I have absolutely no doubt that he means them with every fiber of his being. Still, though…
“But—” I need to apologize again, to fix this, but he cuts me off.
“Goodbye, Becca.” His voice is firm as he glowers at the floor by my feet. I want to debate this more, let him know my side of things, but I can tell that whatever I might say will only fall on deaf ears.
So I turn tail and depart. I’ve barely cleared his threshold and closed his door when the rough clack of his deadbolt sliding home sounds, the finality of it reinforcing his sentiments. I enter my own home and repeat the same motions, even though my irritation is surface level only. It occurs to me that whatever it is that we’ve had over these past few months is over.
