Page 29 of Forever Flirting

“Youwish things were different?” Mallory snapped. “Oh, that’s rich!”

“Why haven’t you ever said anything?”

“How am I supposed to tell my best friend that I mistakenly slept with the guy she’s got a crush on? That I was so stupid, so lonely, so stubborn in thinking ‘Oh it will never happen to me’… that it did – and it changed my life.”

“It changed all of our lives! I want to know everything…”

“Well tough, because I really don’t want to relive that moment.”

“Why?” Everly asked bluntly and hesitated, suddenly horrified as a nightmarish situation suddenly occurred to her. “Oh my gosh… noooo?! Did herapeyou? Tell me he didn’t, because I never saw him like that – ever! Oh Mallory, if he did, then you need…”

“No! He didn’trapeme, Everly,” Mallory said bitterly. “I didn’t think guys on booze could keep things going down there, but barely anything happened. I was completely willing and should have seen the red flags when he didn’t want to know my name. And do you want to knowwhyhe didn’t want to know my name or anything about me?Hmmm?”

The brittle edge to Mallory’s sharp bark of laughter didn’t sit well with her at all, now that she was finding out the bitter truth.

“He called me ‘Everly’the moment he ruined me! He didn’t want to knowmyname and didn’t care who it was, so long as he was fantasizing aboutyou.”

Alex’s words came crashing back to her.

I wanted it to be you…

Alex never intended for her to have his child, but hehadwanted to sleep with her, touch her, be with her, because of that intense attraction that had flared to life between them. He’d followed her out into the street, chased her down… and heaven help her?

That was the reason she ran… because she wanted him, too.

She was almost in Mallory’s situation, and it was a precariously thin line to walk because of what had happened – versus whatcouldhave happened. If one thing had been different?

Everything would have changed.

“We barely had sex… literally,” Mallory uttered, her voice despondent as she hung her head. “It was so pathetically underwhelming, and I had no idea who he was to you - until about a week later when we met for lunch. You were telling me about how great this Alex-guy was, how scared you were about how intensely you felt for him, talking about his eyes, his smile, and how sweet he was to you… and it was him.”

Everly swallowed back bile hearing it.

“It was your Alex – and I couldn’t say a word,” Mallory whispered. “We shouldn’t have been there at the club. We should have left. I should have given my virginity to your brother or any other gorgeous guy… but not some drunk that was fantasizing about my best friend in the back of my car in a parking lot. Do you know how ashamed I was –and still am?”

She just sat there listening to Mallory, putting all the pieces together.

“No man is ever going to want me! If they ever found out what happened, what I ended up doing, or how it all occurred – no man will ever understand or look any further at a relationship. I was so angry, so mad, so upset that I put Alex’s name on the birth certificate to force him to pay financially if I couldn’t hurt him emotionally like he hurt me - and then turned him in for failure to pay child support. I wanted to hurt him, to make him pay for this somehow. It’s not right, but I can’t change any of it.”

Mallory let out a tearful laugh, wiping her face.

“And he’s such a big idiot and trying so hard,” Mallory confessed, looking at her hands and avoiding looking at Everly. “He emails and asks about Caleb all the time – and half the time I don’t reply, because I am still hurting on the inside that he wrecked everything for me.”

Everly almost opened her mouth – and then remained quiet.

“Alex sends the wrong size diapers, the wrong clothes, toys that Caleb isn’t old enough to play with yet… and every time I look at Caleb, I see his stupid face. He’s wanting to play Daddy with my son – and I can’t hardly stand it.”

“He’s wanting to know his son,” Everly replied quietly.

“Caleb ismyson,mychild,” Mallory retorted angrily. “I pushed him out ofmybody and Alex was barely there to create him! And I had to keep it all a secret from the one person who’s always had my back – or I could lose you.”

“It took two of you to do the deed. We are both doctors and know how babies are made… and while having a child with the guy I had a crush on isn’t great by any means? The fact that youknewit andkeptit from me, allowing me to go on fantasizing and daydreaming, while listening to me prattle on?” Everly said in a still voice. “Mallory, that is what hurts.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not just the fact that you have a child with Alex – but you had so many chances to tell me, but chosenotto… and now I look at Caleb, realizing how stupid and naïve I must have been not to notice it, because he’s the spitting image of the man.”

“I know,” Mallory uttered.

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