Page 128 of You're so Bad

It’s what Leonard told me, but I didn’t believe him. I have trouble believing it now.

“Ofwhat?” I ask. “Of me living with my grandparents and having to work a second job to support myself?”

“Of Colter.”

“And you got him,” I say. “He and I weren’t right for each other anyway. If you’d talked to me about it, if you’d been honest, then maybe things could have worked out differently.”

Her mouth is a quivering line. “The Waiting Place is going to be amazing,” she says softly. “Everyone wants a piece of it.”

“Bianca, your pompoms were inO Magazine, for fuck’s sake. What do you want with my granule of success?”

“You’re more talented than I am. Shelly likes you better.” She gives a sniff. “You’re all she ever talks about.”

“So I’ll stay away from the wedding, and from Shelly. If you can remember how to not be a selfish dick, I’m sure you two will get along great.”

“I need you to come to the wedding.”

“Why?” I ask, incredulous. “I just got done saying we’re not friends anymore. It feels good to admit it out loud, to be honest.”

“Because you’re the only family I have.”

“So why the fuck have you been torturing me?” I ask, pissed now. Leonard’s in jail, and I’m sitting here listening to her bullshit. I feel like I’ve been listening to it for six years.

She’s still crying as she says, “I wanted you to confront me. I wanted you to do this. To tell me that I’ve been an asshole, a selfish jerk. I thought maybe it would make me feel better about everything, but you wouldn’t…You never said anything, and you showed up with that sexy doctor, and—”

“He’s not a doctor.”

“I knew it,” she says, and there’s a glimmer of the Bianca I’ve come to know behind this crying woman.

“My grandmother made that part up, and we played along because we thought it was funny.”

“But you’re really in love with him,” she says, which makes me look over at her sharply.

“Why do you say that?”

“The way you look at each other. Colt used to look at me like that.”

I snort. “What, while he was my boyfriend?”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Thank you,” I tell her, because I don’t want to say it’s all right. It’s not. None of this is. Right now, it feels like nothing will ever be all right.

“I really am sorry,” she says again. “I went too far, and I didn’t know how to turn it around, and now…Can you ever forgive me?”

A weary sigh escapes me, and I sound like I feel—the tiredest woman alive. I’m guessing that’s not even a word, but that’s how I feel. Like a thing that’s not even a word.

“I don’t know, Bee,” I tell her. “Our friendship is over. I don’t trust you.”

“Please tell me you’ll come, though,” she says. “I want you there. I need to know you’re there. I…I love you, Shauna.”

“Do you know how toxic this is?” I ask, pissed all over again. “You’ve been acting just like your mother.”

She nods through her tears.

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“And you can bring the hot not-a-doctor, of course.” She pauses. “Is his name really Leonard?”

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