Page 43 of My Fault
“Nick will almost certainly invite the guys, which means Lion will be here, and if you add in the alcohol and music…” Her fingers drummed her cheek. “Then I’m in!” She smiled.
That put me in a good mood. With Jenna next to me, the days would pass quicker, and that was what I needed just then: for the days to fly by without having to think about where they were taking me.
Just as Jenna had said, a few hours later the house was pure madness. It wasn’t even 9:00 p.m. when the doorbell started ringing. A bunch of guys and girls with beer kegs soon rolled in. When he heard the racket, Nicholas peeked out over the top of the stairs to invite everyone in, telling them to put on the music.
Drinks flowed like water, and the music boomed from speakers I couldn’t even see. I felt out of place in my athletic shortswith my hair pulled back. Jenna had gone home to change and still wasn’t back, so I went to my room to try to freshen up a little, looking through my closet to see if there was something that would be comfortable and still nice to wear.
I found a pair of black shorts that fit me like a second skin and an orange top that looked great with the tan I was starting to get. Satisfied, I let my hair down, threw on some flats—to hell with wearing heels in my own home—and ran off when I heard another doorbell ring over the music.
Before I got there, Jenna had already come in along with her boyfriend, Lion. The two of them were a spectacle. She hadn’t skimped on the high heels, but she was a little shorter than her boyfriend in his jeans and baggy black T-shirt.
Jenna hurried over with a smile.
“Girl, you are fine,” she said. “You already got your eye on someone? It’d be a shame to let that body go to waste!” she shouted, making me blush and giggle at the same time.
“Let’s get a drink. I’m parched,” Lion said. He’d already waved to several guys who came over to bump fists with him.
In the kitchen, Jenna went straight for the beer keg, and when she handed me a foamy cup, I took it happily. It was good, crisp, refreshing, and I was happy for a distraction to help me forget my ex.
As I drank, my mind washed away the bad feelings and the image of Dan, so blond, so handsome, how his hands used to caress me when we were alone or how he’d kiss me on the nose in the wintertime and laugh, saying I looked like a reindeer. It was stupid to keep dwelling on those things, but that had been nine months of my life. Not so many, maybe, but they’d been intense. I’d loved him. He’d been my first real boyfriend, and him cheating on me with someone who mattered so much to me…the mere fact that he’d cheated on me…
Now I was pissed. I went back for another beer. Just then, an email popped up on my phone. I assumed it would be Dan, but when I looked, I saw it was the same person who had sent me the photo of Dan and Beth kissing. Whoever that was, they obviously wanted to torment me because the subject line read:
MORE EVIDENCE OF DECEPTION FOR YOU.
I clicked on the file, my heart racing, but before I could see anything, my phone died. Shit. No battery. I should have figured; all day I’d been getting messages and calls from Dan that I’d tried to ignore. With my nerves frayed, prey to some masochistic instinct—because if it wasn’t that, why in the hell would I want to see more pictures of my boyfriend cheating on me?—I saw Nick’s iPhone on the table in the living room. There were tons of people around, so no one noticed when I grabbed it and walked off to a corner close to Will’s office. My hands were shaking so much I could hardly hit the keys, and I had to rewrite my email address like five times. When I finally entered it and my password correctly, I opened the file, and there, along with the photo I’d already seen, were tons of snapshots of Dan and Beth hooking up at the same party. I’d assumed that was where he’d cheated on me for the first time…but no. There were more of them in other places, even selfies, with their arms stretched out, their lips swollen, their eyes gleaming. I got so mad looking at them that the fury and pain almost made me drop the phone on the floor.
That was when someone came up behind me.
“What the hell are you doing with my phone?”
I jumped, and before I could close out the screen, Nicholas grabbed the phone out of my hands and started looking at the pictures with a scowl.
“Give it!” I said, feeling myself starting to drown in my misfortunes.
He smiled mischievously.
“Did you forget it’s mine?” he replied, engrossed in the screen.
I turned around to walk off. I knew I was close to losing it; I could feel it in the tremor in my hands and the sting in my eyes that I felt every time I wanted to cry.
A hand grabbed my arm.
I turned around to see Nick’s eyes boring into me.
“Why are you looking at this shit? Are you a masochist or what?” he asked, disgusted, putting his phone in his back pocket and grabbing my arm. I guess I wasn’t the only one asking that question.
“Maybe. But either way, you’re the last person I want to see right now,” I said, thinking he was the perfect person to take my bad mood out on.
He gave me a strange look, almost as if he actually wanted to understand what was going on in my head.
“What’s up with that, Freckles?”
I rolled my eyes at that damned nickname he’d given me.
“Let’s see,” I said sarcastically. “Since I got here, all you’ve done is talk bad about me, threaten me, leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere, act like a horndog, and…oh, I forgot! Let someone drug me!” I counted these episodes off on my fingers.
“So now it’s my fault that your asshole boyfriend cheated on you,” he said, letting me go and observing me as if he found the whole thing funny.
