Page 69 of Revenge Cake

His lips part. “Who are you?”

“Do you want me to answer that or do you want me to hear you out?”

He shakes his head, mouthing what looks like, “Oh my god.” Raising his eyes to mine, he takes a deep breath. “I fucked up. I kissed another girl… Made out with her, I mean,” he says in a lowered voice, his eyes dropping to the wood beneath his feat. Guilt makes him look away, I think cynically, but then when he raises his head, I see something that looks nothing like guilt. His eyes flare. “I made out with her for five whole minutes. I grabbed her tits too! Under her shirt.”

I raise incredulous brows. “What the fuck are you trying to do here?”

“I have nothing to hide anymore, but you’re not being fair. You may not have actually cheated, but…” He takes an unsteady breath. “All that shit you said devastated me. Like…” He looks at me intensely, his eyes pleading for me to understand. “Like literally killed me.” He flinches. “No. Not literally. Shit. What you said was fucking awful, and you said it first! I was crushed and I went over to Keira’s feeling enraged and wanting to hurt you back. The kiss never would have even happened if it wasn’t for what you said. And I know it’s childish to be like, ‘You did first,’ but I really think it needs to be said.”

He exhales a shaky breath as he concludes. When he lifts his eyes to meet mine, they’re wide, hesitant, puzzled even, as if he’s just now realizing how much better his little speech sounded in his head.

His vulnerability tugs at a place deep within me, but I can’t give in to it. I can’t let him off the hook. Not when he’s so colossally wrong. “You talk about our betrayals as if they’re of equal weight, when it couldn’t be further from the truth.”

His brow furrows. I feel his growing indignation. He opens his mouth but I halt him with my hand. “What I did was a onetime thing. I said some cruel…terrible things to you. I don’t remember saying them, but I know I had the intention of hurting you. I was jealous of Keira that night, so I lashed out at you in the only way I was capable in my drugged…pathetic state. I used Dean because I knew it would make you jealous. It was an awful thing to do, but it was one time. What you did was weeks, maybe even months in the making.”

When his brow furrows, I take a step closer. I widen my stance, opening my chest to broaden my shoulders, wishing I were taller to intimidate him with my size. “You replaced me. You built a relationship with her while ours was crumbling. You told her everything about my panic attacks and my drug problem. You talked about movies with her, just like we used to.” An angry smile rises to my lips when a memory surfaces. “You talked about Marvel movies. You had a multi-paragraph conversation about a fucking fish-man—” I break off, giggling at how crushed I felt over such inanity. “Oh god! She’s perfect for you, Logan.”

When I glance back to his lidless eyes I realize what a shock that must have been. It probably never occurred to him that I would read his texts during my listless, Ativan days. Of course he didn’t. He didn’t even bother to delete them. “Aquaman is DC,” he says, looking dazed. “You read my texts,” he finally says.

I nod once. “Every single one.”

His lips part before closing again. “When?”

“When you showered.” My mind drifts back to those hazy moments when I laid on his bed with his phone in front of my face, half-listening for the sound of the water shutting off in the background that would signal the end of my ritual. I was too afraid of losing him to confront him, so I passively watched their relationship develop behind my back, using texts to piece together their illicit love story like an archaeologist with pottery fragments. Feeling only a dull, distant ache at the pit of my chest as I read the worst of them, thanking the heavens for Ativan for making the whole process bearable, but also fearing how that ache would grow if I ever allowed the haze to clear.

“Your password is 1-1-1-1-1-1,” I say, choking on the last “1” with a laugh. “It was my very first guess when my snooping began.”

Indignation flares in his eyes. “I had nothing to hide! So we talked about movies. She’s a fucking friend! I never even thought about kissing her until—”

“Until you did!”

At the raising of my voice, he cowers a little, his shoulders hunching.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t even care about the kiss anymore. Not now that I’m over the initial trauma of hearing your heavy breathing and your moaning and your fucking saliva smacking!” Thankfully he flinches at that. “I care much more about everything that came before. How once you started to doubt your love for me, you immediately sought someone else. I care much more about your emotional infidelity!”

He frowns, ire growing behind his eyes. “What the fuck does that even mean? That sounds like a made-up term! Like you know you can’t be mad about my friendship with her so you had to find a way around it. Did I also commit emotional infidelity with Armaan? We talk about movies too. What about Lauren?”

My nostrils flare. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

“Nope.” The ghost of a smile touches his lips. “You just don’t have any ground to stand on, and you know it. Look, I admit the kiss was a terrible thing—”

“‘It’s crazy,’” I quote, “‘how much we have in common. I feel like I could talk to you forever without getting bored.’ That was one of my favorites of your texts to her. It sounds a lot like something you said to me many months ago. Do you remember, Logan? Or does your relationship amnesia make you say the same things over and over to every new girl?”

He looks guilty for the first time. Still, he holds his ground. “So I like talking to her. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s time to put it all behind me. You should too. I meant it when I said I want to make amends to you after all that I put you through with my addiction. Be with her, Logan. Don’t feel guilty about it. I’ll be fine.”

When I start to turn towards the door, he grabs my arm, his eyes almost wild. “No!” he shouts. “What about me? I won’t be fine! I don’t want to be with her. I want to be with you!”

“That’s not an option anymore.”

“No, don’t say that. Please don’t say that. I still love you more than anything. I want to work through this.”

“No.”

“Stop doing that! I deserve more than this! Don’t you even love me anymore?”

When I hesitate, an emotion rises behind his eyes. Something that looks like fear. “I don’t know.”

---