Page 61 of Revenge Cake

I’m sitting up on the couch in the living room and… I start to pant when I realize I don’t remember how I got here.

Oh, please. Please say I didn’t do anything terrible.

Yet, somehow I know that I did. Some deep, primitive part of my brain knows what happened tonight, even if it refuses to tell my consciousness.

It isn’t the first time I’ve blacked out since I started taking Ativan. You can’t drink, Lani. You know you can’t drink. This is why.

My heart beats faster. What happened? What happened tonight?

My brain strains to see through a fog of scattered memories, but I can’t piece them together to figure out how I got here. The last thing I remember was… Logan and Keira talking.

The memory sends a cold shiver through my body. He was riveted by whatever she was saying. I couldn’t hear, standing where I was, but he stared at her with that affectionate smile once reserved for me.

My chest starts to heave. I gasp, unable to take in enough air. My eyes dart around the room to look for…

I see him. His tall form hovers in the hallway entrance, like a dark figure of peril. “How are you feeling?” he asks, his voice almost shrill with malice.

The look on his face makes me want to dry heave. It lifts an instinctive memory, though the details continue to elude my hazy mind. Like a forgotten dream, they hover at the edge of consciousness, just out of reach, but I feel them in my gut.

I was terrible tonight. I did something really, really bad.

“Not good.”

His half-smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “I wouldn’t think so.”

Tears start to prickle behind my eyes, but I can’t cry. He won’t like that. He won’t feel any sympathy.

“I’m sorry,” I say weakly.

“Sorry for what?” he asks, and I flinch, knowing I can’t answer. He knows it too. “Sorry for embarrassing both of us in front of all our friends? Or did you not realize you were the only drunk person there? Everyone else did. I can tell you that. Cam’s girlfriend asked me if we were day drinking before. If only she knew you took pills every day.”

My lips start to twitch downward, and it takes everything within me to keep the sob stored within my chest.

“Sorry for pouring wine all over some guy’s shirt? And then asking him to fucking take you home?”

I can’t stop my face from contorting. A sob heaves forth, but I hold it back, making it sound more like a gag.

“Sorry for making me leave a party when I was actually enjoying myself for the first time in months?”

Logan walks over to the couch and kneels in front of me. His eyes are nearly level with mine, and they look frightening, a blazing green like the fire from the dragon’s mouth at the end of Sleeping Beauty. I’ve never seen him this angry before.

“Sorry that you passed out during the five minutes I left you alone? Sorry that I had to carry you out to the Uber in front of everyone? Sorry that you made our Uber driver pull over when you were pissed off at me? Sorry that I had to chase you down State Street and practically carry your wasted ass the last mile home, while you squirmed and kicked and screamed that you hated me?”

I stare at him in a daze, unable to believe all of that could have happened without sparking a single memory, like I wasn’t even there for it. Like an automaton of Lani acted in my place.

“Sorry that you told me you’re ‘thoroughly bored with me?’ That you’ve always thought I was boring and can’t believe I managed to hold your interest this long? That you’ve secretly always known you’ll end up with Dean someday because he quote-unquote ‘gets you’ and I don’t?”

For the first time, I hear something other than anger in his voice. I hear something that sounds like pain, and I want to curl into a ball and die.

He pauses, as if momentarily unable to speak. He stares at me with his chest rising and falling in rapid breaths. Seeming to collect himself, he continues in a slightly smoother voice. “Sorry that you told me in excruciating detail about a time you and Dean went to a Warriors game and he fingered you under your sundress in public, and how much you liked it? How it was the best orgasm you’ve ever had in your life?”

Oh, god. How could I have said all that? How could I have said something so patently untrue? And yet it’s so in line with my vindictive streak, I can’t deny it. I can’t deny this dark, childish impulse to lash out in revenge whenever I’m hurt or rejected. Even though I still can’t remember, it feels true in my gut. I would say that. I would make up a story with the sole intention of hurting him.

He hurt me first.

That day on the beach when he confirmed my deepest, most secret fear. When he abandoned me after he learned about my mental illness.

My chest heaves as I launch from the couch and run to the bathroom. I barely make it in time. Vomit scatters my vision. I wretch out the entire contents of my stomach, which isn’t much. Mostly red liquid.

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