Page 1 of Fall From Grace
Chapter One – Wren
Some people hate summer. The heat, the humidity, the way you can’t spend more than two seconds outside without getting coated in sweat. Me? I like it. I may be ready to start my second year at Midena State University, but I can’t get enough of summer.
The ice cream. The weeks of working at the local used bookstore, saving up money. Spending all my extra free time with my boyfriend of four years. Maybe my opinion of summer will change when I get older, but right now, it’s still a time of relaxation and, in a more general sense, being carefree.
Take today, for instance. Today is a beautiful sunny day—it puts me in a great mood, and I decide to do something I never do: on my lunch break, I hop in my old, beat-up car and go to visit Mike, my boyfriend. I don’t message him that I’m on my way. I know he’s at his house, probably packing for our return to MSU in a week and a half. Unlike me, he doesn’t have a summer job. His parents let him do whatever he wants.
Lucky, I know.
The Norths live ten minutes away from where I work, which means I won’t have much time with him, but even after four years, I’d take any extra time with him I can get. Maybe I still have those rose-colored glasses on.
Four years. I still can’t believe it. Four years that I’ve been genuinely happy, excited for the future.
Funny how everything can change in the blink of an eye.
The moment I turn onto his street, I spot a familiar car in his driveway, parked in front of the garage. I’m still hopeful, but confused… however, as I slow the car and pull into the driveway, parking behind the familiar car, that hope inside me begins to wither away.
I know that car. I know that car because I spend a lot of time in that car.
It’s strange how quickly you can flip a switch, how you can go from bright and happy to anxious and suspicious. It’s the first time it’s ever happened to me, and I can honestly say as I get out of the car and head to the front door, I don’t like the uneasiness that threatens to swallow me whole.
Everything that happens next happens in a blur.
The front door is unlocked, so I go inside, and I head right upstairs to his bedroom… where I find my boyfriend of four years on top of another girl—and the legs that are currently wrapped around him belong to my best friend.
I freeze in the hall when I see them. The sad thing is, they don’t realize I’m there right away. I must’ve been quieter than I thought; they keep going at it like rabbits. Short, quick bursts of speed from him and soft, breathy moans from her as she clings to his lower back like some kind of spider monkey.
And then my boyfriend shifts above her, and my best friend must see me, because she gasps, which then causes him to stop and glance over his shoulder. The very second those eyes of his widen—eyes I used to get lost in every single time we hung out, beautiful, multi-colored hazel eyes—he stops thrusting and says my name: “Wren.”
I don’t say his. I don’t say Mike, and I definitely don’t say my best friend’s name, either. I don’t say a single word as I turn around and retrace my steps through the house. Down the stairs I go, out the front door, to my car. I make it to the driver’s side before I hesitate, before all of the weight of what just happened, of what I just saw, really lands on my shoulders.
My boyfriend was cheating on me with my best friend. My boyfriend of four years was fucking my best friend since second grade. I guess that means he’s not my boyfriend anymore, and Meghan is definitely not my best friend.
Sad as it is, they’re the only ones I have.
I must lose myself in my thoughts for too long, because I hear Mike shout, “Wren, wait!” And I glance over to the front door, which I left open, and I see him running out, with nothing but jeans on.
I wait, but I don’t wait for him. I wait because I’m frozen, because the shock has rendered me still.
He makes it to me, and he says the most cliched line, a line I never thought I’d hear: “It’s not what you think.”
It’s not what I think. What else could it be? What else could I have seen? I want to yell at him, but the bigger part of me is not full of rage, but of sadness. What I really want to do is go home and cry, but I’m not the kind of person that enjoys crying in front of other people, so it’s all I can do to stand there and gaze up into his pretty hazel eyes.
No bitchy retort from me, but I do manage to whisper, “How long?”
The look he gives me says it all: long enough. Long enough, and just like that, whatever we had these last four years twirls down the drain, nothing but dust and dirt. He must sense he’s already lost me, that this isn’t something I can ever forgive or overlook, because he finally whispers back, “Junior prom.”
Since junior prom. Just over two years.
My boyfriend and my best friend have been screwing for over two years behind my back, and I was blissfully unaware, totally ignorant. God, what an idiot I was.
“Can we—”
“No,” I say. “I have to go.” Finally I’m able to move again, and I duck into my car, back out of his driveway, and return to work, where I ignore his calls and his messages. Meghan, on the other hand, doesn’t even try to contact me.
My boss, a middle-aged woman who dresses like she just came home from some hippie convention, knows something’swrong, but she doesn’t press me on it, and later that day, when I go home, all I tell my parents is that Mike and I broke up, and then I shut myself in my room.
I don’t eat. I’m not hungry.
