Her eyes quickly shoot up to meet his. “Babe, it’s not what you think.”
“What’s going on?” Ezra asks her. His hands release his grip on me.
“Babe, you know I love you, right?” she says.
He stands up straight, looking between me and her.
“What the fuck did you do, Rya?” he snaps.
“I slept with Zayn,” she whispers.
His face drains of color, his jaw clenches, and his hands ball into fists at his sides as he stands frozen.
“You stupid bitch. How about you tell us how many times?” I yell in her face. Gripping her hair tighter, I bring her up to standing.
She groans in pain, trying to get free of my hold. I release her hair. She steps closer to Ezra, arms out as if she’s going in for a hug.
He backs away from her. “How many times?” he asks, glaring at her. The softness that he carries in his eyes is gone. A softness I never thought could disappear from a man like him.
“Ezra, please,” she says, reaching out to him again.
He swipes her hands away from him, making her stumble into the person sitting next to her. That man scoots his chair quickly away from her, arms shooting up as if he’s going to get an STD from her.
“How many times?” he snaps.
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head, tears streaming down her face.
“A lot?” he questions.
She hangs her head.
“Okay, you guys need to leave,” the bartender yells.
Wow, it took that long for them to interfere.
“Now!” he yells, pointing to the door.
I shake my head at her in disbelief as she stares back at me with a regretful look on her face. I stare back at her, waiting for any kind of excuse.
Something.
Anything.
But she stands silent, staring back at me with tears pooling from her eyes. Not even an apology comes out of her.
My so-called best friend. The one person I shared so much with, pretty much my entire life, is the one that betrayed me. And to think I went to her for support with everything that was happening. I cried to her. And all along it was her. An ache spreads through me as my mind goes back to all the times I kept questioning my own sanity. All the times she made me feel like I was going crazy, too. All the times she consoled me, she said, “Zay would never cheat on you.” I want to scream at her. I want to demand answers. But what for? I already know the truth. I know more than she probably thinks. She can’t stand here acting like she regrets it. She only regrets that she got caught. If she truly regretted what she did, she would have told me the first time it happened. To know the first time it happened was on our Vegas trip. A trip she wanted to go on for our thirtieths. Was this her plan? Was this both of their plans? It was those two who wanted to go to Vegas so badly.
She made this choice. They both did. And now everything is about to change.
I rush out the door, shoulder-swiping Ezra as I make my way out. I hear Rya call out. “Ezra, where are you going?”
I look over my shoulder at Ezra following behind me, and so is Rya.
I jog faster to my car because whatever is about to go down between those two, I don’t want to hear it.
“Ezra,” Rya yells.
A car slams on its brakes an inch away from me as I cross into the parking lot. I look back again and Ezra’s right at my side. “What are you doing?”
