Page 14 of The Fallacy of True Love
Realization hit me. “Are you pregnant?”
Her eyes widened. “What? No, of course not.” She closed the door. “Why would you think that?”
“You’re acting weird, and it was the first thing that came to mind.”
“I’m not pregnant. Thank God.” She paced in front of her door.
“Yeah.” I wouldn’t mind being a parent, although I knew my life would look completely different if we had an unplanned pregnancy.
Coming to an abrupt stop, Dani blurted out, “Isleptwithsomeone.”
I stared at her. My ears heard the words, but my brain refused to process them. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. When I tried again, my voice was barely a whisper. “What did you say?”
She swallowed, her eyes darting away from me.
For a minute, I let myself believe I’d imagined those words. They were just a random glitch of my brain. A prank, maybe. Nothing to worry?—
“I slept with someone.”
The confession seemed to come at me from the far end of a tunnel, distant then bellowing in my ears.
Dani put her hands over her mouth and hung her head.
The truth barreled into me with the force of a freight truck.
“You…slept with someone.” My stomach roiled as images of a guy’s hands on her inundated my mind. Various scenarios flashed, each worse than the last, and I shook my head reflexively, willing it not to be true. “Like a slumber party in a king-size bed with pajamas and face masks?”
I implored her to laugh and say yes, to look me in the eyes and admit she was kidding. But she continued to stare at the floor like she was searching for the meaning of life in the carpet. “No.”
“Then spell it out for me, Dani.”
Finally, she looked up. “I had sex with another guy.”
I grasped for words, but my throat was dry and my brain could not reconcile the idea that my girlfriend—the girl I loved, who I continually strived to be worthy of and had been building a future with…
That she would fuck someone else?—
“Who was it?”
She looked away, and that was enough to tell me it was someone I knew. She didn’t go to clubs, and most of her close friends were girls. Miggy was the exception, though he was more my friend than hers, and I couldn’t believe that he would betray me like that.
Which left one person.
“Was it Aaron?” I asked between gritted teeth.
She grew so still it was as if she wasn’t breathing. After a long moment, she turned her head and met my eyes. She nodded once, tears swimming in her eyes.
The confirmation knocked me back a step.
And another.
Shutting my eyes, I shook my head. Of all the men she could choose, it just had to be him. The guy I always felt was the perfect match for her—the one her parents definitely wished she’d gone for instead of me.
I opened my eyes, needing to see her reaction to my question. “Why?”
Her mouth opened and closed without releasing a sound.
“Why, Dani?“ I forced myself to get the words out. “Do you have feelings for him?”
