AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sam hadn’t just been her boyfriend; he’d been her best friend. So when he left, he took a hell of a lot more than just his clothes, his old-school record collection, and stupid Star Wars Legos models. He’d taken her heart and her sounding board.
“You haven’t seen Sam since he moved out, have you?” Keeley asked, though Gianna’s friends all knew that. Somehow, Sam had found a way to erase himself completely from her world, ghosting her by not texting, not calling, and avoiding all their usual stomping grounds.
“No. I haven’t,” she confirmed.
No-nonsense Liza sliced one hand through the air. “Well, good then. It’s done. The Band-Aid is ripped off, so you don’t have to dread the first meeting anymore. How did it go?”
Gianna swallowed deeply. “Fine. I mean…” She shook her head. “Not fine. He was with a woman.”
Keeley’s shoulders fell. “Aw, babe. It’s been three months. You had to know he would move on.”
Her friends had been encouraging her to do the same. Trying to convince her that Sam’s leaving was a good thing because they’d been fighting too much and neither of them had been truly happy the last several months of their relationship. All of that was true.
But her being alone didn’t feel like a better thing. Not at all.
“I get that,” she said. “I really do. It’s just…”
This.
This was the part that was going to be hard to say. The part that had taken the anger she’d felt the past few months and morphed it into hardcore devastation. She could almost hear the shattered pieces of her broken heart crashing against each other inside her.
Which was weird. Because even she could admit that tonight should have only fueled her ire more.
“I was playing it cool,” Gianna said. “Proud of how strong I sounded. I asked him how he’d been, he said fine and introduced me to Emma. Then stupidly, for some reason, I asked if they were on a first date. I don’t know why I asked that, but I guess I was just looking for something to say.”
“What did he say?” Liza asked.
Gianna sighed sadly. “He didn’t answer because Emma beat him to the punch. She said no. Said they’d been dating since July.”
Liza frowned. “July?”
“But you two didn’t break up until…” Penny stopped talking.
“September,” Gianna finished for her. “Apparently Emma didn’t know about me, either.”
“He was cheating on you!” Liza said hotly. “The deceitful, no-good, piece-of-shit motherfucker. Did you call him out on it? Please tell me you fucking lit into him.”
Gianna shook her head. “I was too…God…stunned. I think I was waiting for Sam to correct her, but when I looked at his face, I saw it was true. Emma seemed to realize she’d said something wrong, but I could tell she didn’t know what. After that, Sam was anxious to get away, so the two of them said goodbye and that was it.”
While the anger Gianna had been carrying around since Sam dumped her had vanished, Liza appeared to have found plenty of it. “I can’t believe he did that to you. What the fuck is wrong with him?”
Gianna had no reply to that. She’d loved Sam with her whole heart. But more than that, up until this afternoon, she would have called him the most trustworthy guy on the planet. Even after the breakup. In eleven years, he’d never lied to her. Not once.
Or maybe the truth was, she’d never caught him in a lie.
He’d made a fool of her, and she hated him for that. But perhaps what hurt more was that she hated herself more for being so gullible, so stupid, so blind. If she told her friends how she felt, they’d tell her she was wrong, and maybe they’d be right.
It didn’t matter though.
It was still the way she felt. Right or wrong.
Emotion was rarely intelligent.
“You’re better off without him,” Keeley said. “I never liked him.”
Gianna couldn’t help it. She laughed. The first real one of the night. “You loved Sam. You spent years telling me how lucky I was to have such a great guy.” Keeley and Liza had spent most of their early twenties sludging through the online dating swamp, while Gianna had been shacked up in what she’d genuinely believed was premarital bliss with the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with.
So much for her Great Life Plan.
