Page 77 of Keeper
“So this situation isn’t new at all,” I said. “She’s always had this habit of claiming guys?”
“Yep.”
My fist balled. “How can you be friends with someone like that?”
“It wasn’t easy,” she said. “We had a lot of fights. Well, I guess I can’t call them fights, because I never really fought back. It was easier to let her get her way than to deal with the fall-out. I’d seen first-hand how she went scorched-earth with the friends who’d ‘wronged’ her … it was always so messy.”
By sophomore year, the nonstop drama of cheerleading and popular-girl life had grown old. Ainsley had discovered a love of art: drawing, painting, and especially photography. The world of art offered her an opportunity to express herself—which she had an unknown but deep need for, because her parents’ marriage was beginning to deteriorate at home.
That same year, Ainsley decided to quit the cheerleading team. She made a new group of friends. Marta remained dedicated to the world of cheer and boys and their paths naturally branched part.
Her life changed a lot in junior year, when a stand-out baseball player transferred to their school.
“My first love,” she said with a bittersweet sigh.
Ainsley met Brendan in drawing class. All the girls in school were competing for the new guy’s heart, but Brendan wasn’t interested in them—he pursued Ainsley. After he won her over, they began dating.
But dating a popular athlete thrust Ainsley back into her old social circles and brought a lot of familiar faces back into her life, including Marta.
“I was skeptical, and I kept my distance from her at first,” she said. “But in time, I realized she’d changed—she’d mellowed out. She wasn’t trying to create drama or start fights like she used to. Plus, with my parents constantly fighting with each other, I hated being at home. And Marta’s house was always open to me, and shealwayswanted to hang out, so we were basically always together …”
Their friendship enjoyed a second wind during those junior and senior years.
“As fucked up as everything else in my life was during those two years,” Ainsley said, “hanging out with Marta was like, the one constant, the one thing in my life thatdidn’tsuck.”
When Ainsley needed to escape things at home, Marta was the friend who threw aside her responsibilities and hopped in Ainsley’s car for an impulsive road trip to nowhere. When Brendan cheated on Ainsley, it was Marta who offered a shoulder to cry on.
I frowned. “Wait, he cheated on you?”
She chuckled. “More than once, too.”
“Why didn’t you dump his ass?”
“Believe me, I wish I would’ve. I hated him for cheating, but I was still so in love with him. I couldn’t stand the thought of being without him. Like I said, he was my first love—and that made me blind.”
“That first love is real hard,” I said. “It rarely ends well.”
She laughed and agreed. Their relationship ended just weeks before graduation, and Ainsley emphasized that it most certainly didnotend well.
“One of our friend’s parents went out of town, and so he had everyone over for a house party. There was a pool, lots of beer, crazy antics—typical high school house party, you know? Anyway, we partied, and the night got later and later. I begged Brendan to take me home, but he kept saying he wanted to stay a little longer. I could’ve gone home by myself, but I was too paranoid to leave without him—because after he’d cheated on me, I was practically afraid to let him out of my sight. Eventually, I fell asleep on the couch. The next morning, my friends were acting so quiet and weird, but no one would say why. Another one of my friends finally pulled me aside and explained to me that, while I was asleep and after almost everyone else had left, she caught Marta on top of Brendan in a lounge chair by the pool.”
My jaw dropped. “Wait,what?Marta fucked your boyfriend?”
“I think so.” Ainsley nodded. “But my friend said she wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure if they were actually fucking. But she said they were definitely making out, and Marta was lying on top of him, and they were moving together, and he had his hands all over her. You do the math.”
“Howare you still friends with this girl?!” I asked, outraged.
“I’mnot,really. That whole incident was the end of our friendship. I confronted her about it but she denied the whole story.”
“How can she deny it when someone caught them together?”
“Marta says the girl made the whole story up. To be fair, they don’t like each other at all, but this other girl really wasn’t the type to stir up drama. And all the little details she told me added up. I didn’t have a reason to doubt her.”
“And what did Brendan say?”
“He wouldn’t admit to it, either. But then he never admitted it when I caught him cheating the other times, so that’s nothing new.”
“Fuck that guy, too,” I snarled. “Please tell me you didn’t take that clown back after that.”
