“You got that damn right,” she says, cutting me off once again.
“I messed up,” I tell her, trying to get her to listen.
She scoffs. “Doesn’t take a genius to realize that.”
“But I want to fix it,” I add.
“Fix it?” she asks, surprised I’d even utter those words. “How the hell do you plan on doing that? Don’t you think it’s too late?”
For my sake, I really hope it isn’t. “I’m trying to figure out how.”
“And you called me because?” Emely asks impatiently. I’m surprised she hasn’t already hung up on me.
I take a deep breath and let it all out at once. “Because… I need your help.”
“I would never help you.”
“That’s fair.”
“More than fair,” she responded and then hung up on me.
It’s a good thing she changed her mind.
22
AMARI
“So I hung up on him,” she tells me. She’s been meticulous with every detail and regardless of how many question I have, I don’t ask them. I want the full story first before I start picking it apart. Before I start asking her why she didn’t tell me any of this before. I don’t understand why she would hide this information from the person she calls her best friend.
I breathe in the betrayal with every word she utters, but I school my expression to appear as neutral as I possibly can. I need to know the full story before I let my emotions dictate my actions.
She looks at me as if waiting for me to respond, to say something. I look at her expectantly and she catches the fact that I’m telling her to proceed with my eyes instead of my words. When I told Emely about Christian, she said we could discuss it in person when she came up. By the sounds of it, she didn’t need me to explain what was going on. She was figuring it out all on her own. Well, not on her own, with Christian’s help.
“He called me back right back though.” Two calls in one day to my best friend and I knew nothing about them until this second and only because I practically forced her to tell me after she slipped. I grab the glass of scotch from the table and take another sip. At least Emely wasn’t wrong about the fact that I’d be needing a drink to accompany this conversation. It makes it an easier pill to swallow or at least lets me focus, for a moment, on the burning sensation of the scotch instead of the feeling of another broken relationship.
She watches the glass in my hand, tracking my movements. I can tell she desperately wants to know what I’m feeling and I’m proud of myself for my ability to become unreadable. I guess the last week has taught me something after all. “What happened then?” I ask, feeling like if I don’t usher this conversation along, she’ll never get there.
“He called me to tell me that he had a daughter.” I’m shocked that he would reveal that to her so easily, yet I had to figure it out for myself. “Told me she went to your school and that you knew.”
“He felt awfully comfortable telling you a lot of things,” I quip, unable to stop myself.
Her head drops in shame and I feel bad for saying what I said. Then she starts speaking again and my regret disappears. “I wanted to hang up on him. I wanted to yell at him.”
“So why didn’t you?” It would’ve been easy to do.
“Because he seemed sincere in what he wanted to do.”
“What did he want to do?” I ask.
“He wanted to apologize to you.” Apologize? My best friend hid all this from me because Christian wanted to apologize.
“And that made it all okay?”
“No, it didn’t. But he told me that you thought he’d cheated on you. He explained to me why he left.” I’m stuck on the fact that my best friend got an explanation about the reasons he left me before I did.
“And what? That made you his best friend? You think him breaking my heart like that made sense?!” I yell, rising from the couch in a fit of anger.
“No, not at all,” she says, getting up and walking toward me.
“Did he tell you he got someone pregnant right before he started dating me?”
She nods.
“Did he tell you he left me because he thought that was what was best for me?” I ask again, my voice growing louder.
Again, Emely nods.
“And he told you all of this on Tuesday?” I know she already said this, but I can’t help asking again.
“Yes, he did. Well, he also told me he finally talked to you on Wednesday. That’s when I learned about your car breaking down.”
A humorless laugh escapes me as I start pacing around the small distance of my living rom. I didn’t know hearts were so strong until now because mine just continues to break and yet it hasn’t stopped beating. My best friend and the only guy I’ve ever loved both betrayed me. “So you knew before I knew and you didn’t bother telling me?”
“He told me not to.”
“And that was enough to get you to keep that from me?!” I scream, staring back at her with anger in my eyes. “Him saying don’t tell your best friend, the girl you saw shattered into a million pieces the moment he broke her heart, the girl who is still trying to pick up the pieces and you’ve helped try to figure out where they belong along the way, that was enough to get you to keep that from me? Him asking you?” I ask in disbelief. Tears are streaming down my face and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m hurt or because I’m angry. I bet it’s a mixture of both.
Emely tries to get closer to me, but I move away from her quickly. It’s almost like I don’t recognize the girl standing in front of me. Her phone buzzes and we both turn toward the coffee table.
Christian
That is the name displayed across the screen and seeing it brings my anger to new heights.
“You need to get that?” I ask her, pointing at her phone so she knows I’ve noticed.
She shakes her head. “He wanted to be the one to explain it to you. He felt he owed you at least that. I wanted to tell you, but he said he would be telling you the next day. I told him if he didn’t, that I would,” she tries to explain her reasoning.
I don’t know if her reasons make it better. “You should’ve told me, anyway.” The second she knew she should’ve called, texted, emailed, sent a damn courier pigeon. Anything.
“Would you have told me?” she asks, crossing her arms in front of herself in challenge.
“The fact that you’d even ask that question says enough about our friendship.” Hell yeah I would’ve told her. I wouldn’t have even given it a second thought. If I had seen Emely fall apart because of a guy and knew she was hurting even more because she thought he had cheated on her, because he had a daughter, because she didn’t know what to believe, I would’ve told her.
She steps closer to me again and I don’t move back this time. “He wanted to talk to you. I thought he deserved that.”
“I’m glad you thought he deserved a chance to explain himself more than I deserved the truth.”