Page 92 of It Should Have Been Me

22. Scott

“So, what happened?”Peter asks as soon as I close the door of his car.

I hadn’t wanted the company, but I’m still semi-drunk and didn’t want to drive in this state. I don’t want to entertain his question, but I don’t have a choice in the matter. “She left.”

He stares at me with a mixture of disbelief and indignation. “Even after you asked her to stay.”

“I didn’t ask her to stay.”

“You didn’t?”

“Why would I do that, Pete? She’s already made up her mind.”

He slowly pulls away from the curb. “So...how are you feeling?”

Like my soul is collapsing into a black hole. “Fine.”

A cautious side glance is cast my way. “You want to go out later? Take your mind off it.”

Nothing is going to take my mind off it. “Nah, I didn’t sleep last night. I’m tired. I just want to get my puppy, go home, and?”

“Cry into your pillow?”

“Something like that. Besides, don’t you have to get back toClementine?”

“Lia,” he corrects with enough firmness to let me know he’s not playing around. “She told me what you said to her at the wedding yesterday.”

This surprises me. “Did she now?”

“Yeah, and I don’t appreciate you talking to her like that. She was very offended by what you said.”

“I’m sure she was.”

“Scott.”

Another warning, but I ignore it because this is going to be a disastrous mess if he doesn’t end this now. “Pete, something is not adding up with this chick, and?”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear it. If you harass her like that again, you and I are going to have words.”

“We’re having words now.”

“Morewords.”

I sigh, too tired to argue this even though I absolutely should because he’s falling for her trickery. “Fine. All I’m saying is that I called it with Dylan and Fran. I’m calling it with Lia. I will be waiting in the shadows with myI-told-you-sovoice note for you too.”

“You’re a dick.”

I don’t know where the time goes. I must be on autopilot because I don’t remember Pete dropping me off. I don’t remember picking up Rocky from one of my neighbors. But I snap out of it pretty quickly when I walk into my apartment. I take a second to just breathe through the pain in my chest. It feels like I’ve been impaled, the pressure so strong it may just suck me into the black hole my soul disappeared into. She fucking tainted everything. Memories of her are just scattered around my kitchen, my bedroom, my rooftop, my whole fucking life.

“You know what the definition of crazy is, Rock?”

He looks up at me, and he must sense my mood because he licks my nose.

“Crazy is when you do the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result. And didn’t she tell me not to have expectations...but I didn’t listen. Part of me thought she would stay this time. Crazy, right?”

I walk into my bedroom and set him down on the floor before I kick off my sneakers. Crossing the room to the chest of drawers, I take out a clean T-shirt and there she is, smiling at me from behind the glass. Memories trapped in a photograph, and we were meant to be so much more than memories.

Maybe it’s just the leftover emotion from the wedding, and now that the tension has deescalated, I starting to feel the true loss of the moments I was supposed to have, too. The kiss on the altar. The first dance. The start of our lives together. That’s what I wanted. It’s the reason I proposed. I wanted that since I was eighteen years old. And there she is, in my arms on the beach, smiling against my lips after saying yes. She promised me forever with that kiss, and it was all a fucking lie!

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