Page 8 of A Lot to Unpack
I take Ben’s unlocked phone from his hand before he can so much as blink and then my mum and dad stand on either side of him, wedging him in. He’s trapped.
‘I need to move back a little, a little more, just to get all three of you in,’ I say as I edge away from them. I can see Ben’s face on the screen and he looks terrified. It kind of gives me the ick, seeing him look so pathetic, clearly feeling so sorry for himself, because he’s been caught out. Wah, wah, wah, etc.
‘There we go,’ I announce and then, without pausing for a second: ‘Oh my, I need the loo real bad, back in a sec…’
I dart away with Ben’s unlocked phone still in my hand, heading towards the toilet.
‘Wait, Liberty, you have my phone,’ he calls after me.
I pretend not to hear him and pick up the pace. There’s a single baby changing room, much closer than the ladies’, so I go in there and lock the door behind me.
‘Liberty,’ he calls out, banging on the door. ‘Liberty, please, I need my phone.’
I don’t reply. Instead I open up his camera roll and… oh my God. There are so, so many dick pics in here. I don’t know what’s funnier – that they all pretty much look the same, so why even bother taking a new photo, or the fact that he has more pictures of his knob than he does of me, his girlfriend.
So, who is the lucky lady, huh? The recipient of alllll these photos – presumably she’s the one who forwarded the photo to me, I’d imagine to tip me off.
‘Liberty, Liberty, please,’ Ben continues.
‘You can use my phone,’ I hear my mum tell him.
‘I need mine,’ he insists as he carries on banging on the door – it sounds like he’s hitting it even harder now.
I close his camera roll and I’m just about to check his messages when I notice something where the frequently used apps pop up. It’s Matcher – a dating app.
Oh, that bastard. I know it wouldn’t make a difference if he’d met someone and started swapping pics with them, but to download and use a dating app is so cold and calculated. It’s cheating with intent. There’s no other reason for having it.
I open it up and head straight to his inbox. Wow, he must have swiped right on every girl within a fifty-mile radius. So many chats, so many dick pics being pinged out into the network.
I fling open the door and press his phone into his chest.
‘You’re disgusting,’ I tell him.
‘What?’ he replies defensively.
‘What?’ I reply, mocking his voice.
‘Liberty, Ben, please, can we not do this at my engagement party?’ Hannah says through gritted teeth – and with the scariest fake smile I’ve ever seen. She looks like a shark.
‘Sorry, it’s his fault,’ I say.
‘Liberty, nothing he has done can be more important than my day,’ she says confidently.
Is she serious? Nothing at all?
‘What about sending photos of his dick to everyone on Matcher?’ I ask her, just loud enough for everyone around us to hear, because I want Ben to feel as mortified as I do.
‘He’s being doing what?’ my mum squeaks.
I notice the tension building in my dad’s jaw.
Okay, fair enough, I shouldn’t have done this here.
I grab Ben by the arm and drag him away from our audience.
‘Okay, let’s talk.’ He finally gives in. ‘I can explain – I promise I can, but you have to hear me out. Let me finish, okay?’
I have to say, if I could pretend for a moment that the decisions I made now wouldn’t shape the rest of my life, I wouldbe fascinated to hear what sort of explanation he thinks he can give me that I will accept. But this is real, and it’s happening to me, and only I know whether or not I can forgive him.
