Page 31 of Wild Pitch
Kelly
ARE YOU OKAY????
This is the second person tonight who asks me this. The true answer still remains the same in both of my languages: no.
My thumb hovers over the screen. Kelly has tried reaching out for months and I’ve been ignoring her, except to congratulate her on the birth of her baby in December. But this text is a fresh reminder of every one of her attempts to check in with me.
I let my emotions sweep me all the way and I’m a go big or go home girlie, so instead of texting her back I straight up call her. The second she picks up the phone, I blurt out, “No.”
“No shit.” Next, she curses even worse than that, and takes a deep breath to say, “This isn’t about me, though. How doyoufeel?”
I run my hand through my hair and grouch, “Is this conversation going to get to the ears of a certain newly engaged couple? Because I can’t possibly take any more drama than this.”
“No, I promise you. Not even to Mitch’s ears or the baby’s if you don’t want to.”
I shut my eyes tight. My hurt has clouded me so much that it’s not just that I no longer know who to trust, but that I no longer trust myself too. I can’t help wondering how I could’ve been so wrong in my judgment of Dawson and of Amy, that I wonder if I’ve been wrong about Kelly all along too. Maybe even about Rose and Audrey and Cade Starr and anyone not last-named Garcia.
And yet, Kelly has only ever been a ray of sunshine. She’s spent months trying to make sure I’m okay. That was Starr’s second question after I cold-called him a few minutes ago, if everything was okay. I’m sure my roomies would drop kick me if they found out I’ve been thinking this way. There’s a different level of trust with people you do laundry loads with.
“I… I’m feeling a lot of things,” I start in a hesitant whisper.
“Anger? Fury? Ire?”
A corner of my lips lifts. “I think those are all the same.”
“Well, I’m not sure any of them really fit what I feel right now.” There’s some shuffling on her end and the distinctive click of a door closing. “I want you to know I told Amy this was a bad idea since the moment she first told me she and Dawson went on a date.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
Kelly sighs. “We didn’t want to hurt you—or I didn’t. I think Amy’s motive simply was that she didn’t want to be stopped.”
“I see,” my voice shaking slightly. “When was that?”
She hesitates for a brief moment and finally responds, “I think their first date was um, two Decembers ago.”
“What the…” I do a double take in the dark of my car. “That’s only a few months after we broke up!”
“I know. This is why I couldn’t say anything. It just wasn’t right.”
Something inside of me feels like glass crashing on the ground, and one of the shards pierces the last thread of my sanity. I burst out in guffaws that hurt even my own ears. Half gasping, half laughing, I ask, “So basically you’re telling me that Dawson broke up with me so he could date Amy? Is that it?”
“I’m so sorry, Hope.” She grunts in frustration. “I tried to stop them but?—”
“Yeah, there was no stopping that. I sure couldn’t. And you wanna know what the shittiest part of all of this is?”
“What?”
“That asshole had the cojones to gaslight me into not being able to show my hurt, to not tell everybody how I bent myself over backwards to keep our relationship afloat when he didn’t even care—all on the excuse of not affecting the friendship group. And I agreed! I went along with this flimsy-ass reasoning because I’m apparently more spineless than a squid. And you’re telling me that all this time it was so he had an open field to pull moves on one of my friends?” I bark another harsh laugh and shake my head at myself.
“Wow, I have no words,” Kelly whispers and to her credit, her voice vibrates with anger. And that’s still nowhere to the levels of virulent rage I feel right now.
“I’m gonna go now.”
“Talk later?” she asks.
“Later,” I say, at least having the presence of mind to accept that it’s not Kelly I’m upset at, even if in a smaller way she also hurt me.
The enemy is Dawson. He clearly didn’t give a flying turd about me, or he wouldn’t have done something like this. And Amy’s a fool if she thinks she’s safe from his scheming. What I need to do is show them I’ve moved on and don’t give a turd about them in return, and this is why I need Cade Starr. I turn on my car and drive off.
