58
Ryan
He opens the door with a mixture of surprise and victory etched across his face. He knows that if I’ve come to his house then I must be really desperate.
I stride past him, into his apartment.
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“But you will.”
“No,” he says, a smile playing at his lips. “You’re here to talk, not to listen to my bullshit.”
“I’m here because I want to know.”
He looks at me, his brow furrowed.
“I want to hear your side.”
“Now? Why?”
“Because I need to hear it.”
“What’s happened, Ryan?”
I drop down onto the sofa.
“Exactly what everyone expected. I…crumbled. And I hurt someone. I really hurt her.”
Nick sighs and sits down next to me.
“I saw that guy…her ex. He was hugging her, consoling her and…I don’t know. They looked intimate, they looked…too much. And everything came rushing back. I couldn’t stop thinking of that morning, when I saw you and Lauren hugging on her driveway.”
“I get it.”
“And I lost my mind. I hurt her. I hurt her because she was there, within my reach, and because…”
“Because you care about her.”
“It makes no sense. You shouldn’t hurt the people you care about.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. We always hurt the people we love the most because they expect the most from us. And usually, we let them down, because we’re not the people they thought we were.”
He’s starting to make sense.
“That’s what’s happened to you.”
And he might actually be right. Maybe that’s how it went – maybe what Nick did destroyed me, not just for the act itself, but because I never expected it from him. I trusted him, he was my hero. He was the one person I wanted to be – but he betrayed me.
“Why, Nick? Why did you have to sleep with Lauren?” I ask him all in one breath. I ask him plainly, almost painlessly. Because, by now, all my pain is headed somewhere else, and I need to hear the truth from him.
“If I told you that I didn’t even remember sleeping with her, would you believe me?”
“You can try.”
“I went over to see her because I wanted to clear things up – or, at least, I wanted to understand why Lauren had broken up with you literally that day. She was at her local pub – I knew I’d find her there – and I heard her saying to her friends that she wanted to be single. She was at the bar with a drink in her hand, and an expression on her face as if she’d made a huge mistake and didn’t know how to fix it. I went over to her intending to make her talk, to hear her reasons, maybe make her take it all back, but she didn’t want to tell me the truth. She didn’t want me around. So I started drinking, too, to keep her company. Shot after shot, Ryan. She started to open up, to speak about everything, and I listened. I swear I just wanted to help, for fuck’s sake!” He jumps to his feet, his head in his hands. “She told me that…”
