Page 10 of Pieces of Us

Masking my mounting frustration, I school my features. ‘I’m back!’ I squeal, hurrying to where she stands on my front steps. She-half smiles at me, which isn’t exactly the reaction I was expecting, but maybe she’s just zapped after burying her head in books all day. I appreciate the effort she’s made in coming to see me.

I feel my body sag as I melt into her familiar frame. Automatically, her posture stiffens before squeezing me tighter, as if she is shielding me from something.

‘What’s up, crazy?’

‘It’s Linc.’ Lily takes a lungful of air before eviscerating my soul to shreds. ‘Have you checked social media?’ I shake my head, waiting for the other shoe to drop. ‘Linc’s having a rager tonight at his.’ That makes sense. Dad told me that Uncle Mark took Jasmine to see Wicked in Brisbane for a few days. ‘He had his hands wrapped around Billie’s waist. It was on her story.’ The words fly so fast out of her mouth, it takes a moment for my mind to catch up.

‘What?’ I stammer out. ‘Are you sure?’ It doesn’t even register to me that Dad is furrowing his brows from the open doorway. He heard the tailend of the conversation, and now concern is etched all over his face. ‘Dad. A little privacy, please?’ I hiss, urging him to go away.

‘Yeah, Amity, I’m sure,’ Lily says quietly. ‘Her head is in the crook of his neck, and it looks like he’s biting her shoulder.’ She pauses. ‘Do you want to see?’

I close my eyes, balling my hands into fists.

‘Maybe it’s not what it seems?’ I croak.

‘It looks intimate.’ In seconds, her hands fly across her screen, opening the Instagram app. Shock splashes across her face. ‘It’s gone,’ she gasps. ‘She took it down.’ I can tell she’s in disbelief and not questioning her sanity. I don’t need a picture to tell me a thousand words, or in this case, one thing: that we’re completely and irrevocably over. But I do need living proof myself, if this is the end of Linc and me.

‘Let’s go.’

‘What?’ she splutters.

‘I want to see for myself.’ It isn’t that I don’t believe her. It’s that I need to hear his denial or explanation—or, more plausibly, to catch him red-handed. ‘Dad, I’ll be back a little later,’ I call, not waiting for his response.

Putting one foot in front of the other, I trudge to Lily’s car. Before I can reach the door, she stops me. ‘Whatever you see tonight, I’ve got you, babes. I’ll be here through it all.’ It pains me to hear the heartbreak in her voice.

It’s a fifteen-minute crawl to his home, and another ten to find a parking space down the road. Cars with P-plates litter the street, while DJ Khaled reverberates in the air the closer we get to his front door. There are what looks like hundreds of students from every school here tonight, but there’s only one I’m honing in on. Everyone is drunk enough to not know or recognise who I am, or not care. Either way, I’m grateful no one has tipped Linc off that I’m here. The chill of winter splinters my bones, but the more I wander through the familiar hallways, the more I see the arctic weather has escaped the majority of the female cohort. ‘Scantily dressed’ isn’t an apt enough description of what some of them are sporting. It leads me to believe that the heated spa and pool are being used.

People cram the spacious deck and pool area as I rigidly push my way through colliding bodies. I see Joel first, who has a bikini-clad Zara clinging to his body as if she’s an octopus. He jolts when he spots me, his face turning ashen. I can’t hear over the music, but I’m close enough to the spa to make out Joel’s words. He calls Linc’s name. I suddenly fully understand why Linc has gone practically radio silent the last month. Pretty hard to text or talk when his hands have been too busy fingering Billie while his mouth has been vacuum-sealed over hers. Obviously Joel hasn’t shouted his name loud enough, giving me a few more seconds to witness our relationship and friendship crash and burn beyond repair.

Billie is flush against him, her body gyrating to his moving fingers, hidden underneath the water. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out where his hands are roaming. Her itty bitty body makes me seethe, hammering the notion in my head that this is clearly the type of look he is after in a girlfriend. A newer model. A better upgrade. One that came with all the tight little features.

‘Lincoln!’

Joel’s bellow finally pulls his attention away, where he turns to meet my dragon-eyed stare head on.

‘Fuck!’ he splutters, frantically trying to wade his way through the water. Billie looks like a drowned rat after being shoved off his lap, her tits on full display.

‘Hart!’ He clumsily climbs out.

‘Don’t. Don’t you dare fucking call me that.’ I don’t mean to shout, but who the hell cares anyway when fifty or so people are already gathering around to witness my meltdown?

‘Amity, wait!’ he shouts desperately. The audacity.

Ignoring him, I weave my way through pitying stares from those who have finally cottoned on to who I am.

Fuck him. Fuck that lying, heartless asshole.

Lily is right beside me, but not even her unfathomable strength and loyalty can keep me upright. I falter, leaning on her for support. A few more steps and I’m almost at the front door.

‘Amity, baby, wait.’ Lincoln grasps my arm in a tug of war with Lily. The fingers now curled around my flesh are the same ones that were inside Billie moments ago. I feel sick and violated at the smell of her juices on his fingers, which are smearing my skin. If I could burn my skin off, I would.

Snatching my arm from his grip, I spin around and slap his face. The sting of the weight behind it tingles my palm.

He looks good. Fuck him. His light blue boardshorts cling to his thighs and his dark hair looks black, gelled back from his forehead, no doubt manipulated by that whore.

‘You never ever get to call me “baby” or “Hart” or anything ever again,’ I hiss in anger. The music is low, allowing everyone to hear the fallout. ‘Especially not after the way you’ve been cowardly ignoring me and, oh, yeah, leading me to believe it was still us against the world.’

Regret and guilt plaster his face. He hangs his head in shame, giving me a prime opportunity to see the physical changes his body has adopted while I’ve been gone. Defined muscles fill out his form, but not in a bulky way. He’s slender and ripped where it counts. I fleetingly wonder if it’s so he can match his new ‘little miss perfect’. His form embodies everything I’m not. If this isn’t the nail in the coffin that we’re the complete antithesis of one another, then I don’t know what is.

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