Page 70 of Our Forever Starts Tonight

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Aria

Ihad no qualms about lying to Lucky to get him to come and meet me. I wanted his guard down so that when I confronted him I could catch him off guard and make sure that I got the full truth. Hannah and Tristan had enough to prove that Lucky had been the one who sent the photo into the hate page, but the rest of the details were only what they surmised. I wanted the full story, not just about how the picture ended up on the page, but about our entire relationship and how things went so wrong.

So I told him that I wanted to talk to him in the wake of Tristan posting the picture and asked him to meet me at a cafe nearby. He was all too eager to come, probably feeling like he could be the knight in shining armor while I was upset about Tristan.

Boy was he in for a surprise.

The cafe was nice and busy for a Saturday morning, and because neither Lucky nor I had work for the day after the dance, we had plenty of time to talk. He owed me an explanation for everything that had happened and I wasn’t leaving the cafe until I found out the truth.

“Aria!”

I looked over and Lucky was walking into the cafe, as I expected, full of light and hope. He held out his arms for a hug, and though it was ill-advised, I gave him one. He was my best friend after all, or he used to be, and I figured I could muster up that much. He gave me a tight squeeze, almost refusing to let go when I started to pull back, but he eventually released me, and I settled down into one side of the booth, Lucky into the other.

“So,” I said. “I assume you’ve seen the post?”

“Yeah,” he frowned, and it seemed so genuine that if I didn’t know for a fact it was him, I could have almost been swayed that it wasn’t. “I’m so sorry that he did that to you.”

“It’s crazy. He’d just told me that he was in love with me before that. I believed him, too. I nearly said it back,” I said.

Lucky’s expression went ghostly. “You’re in love with him?”

“I think I might be,” I said. “Although I might be in a bad situation. What do you think?”

“What do I think? Isn’t it obvious? You need to stay away from him. Look what he did to you.”

“Yeah, I mean, anyone who would send a picture like that of me to a page like that, must actually hate me, don’t you think?”

Lucky stopped for a minute and then soldiered on. “Obviously.”

“Because it’s vile. I mean, not only is it a total invasion of my privacy, but to shame me and my body in that way. There would be absolutely no reason why I should forgive someone who has done that to me. There’s no excuse for it.”

“N-none,” Lucky said. “None at all.”

“So what should I do to the person who shared that picture of me?”

“You should never speak to them again, obviously,” he said. “Cut them off for good.”

I nodded. “Oh, good, thanks for that advice,” I responded. “So before I walk away from you and never talk to you again… You need to tell me what I’ve done to you that is so horrible that you could send a picture of me to a page like that.”

Lucky froze. “What?”

“I know that you’re the one who sent the picture. Tristan’s brother is a lawyer. They confirmed your handle, on the social media page that you told me that you don’t have. You told Hannah that same thing, right? So neither of us would see the obsessive behavior on your page.”

I could see the panic rising in Lucky’s face, which was exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want to give him a heads up that I was onto him, because I didn’t want him to have a chance to weasel out of it or explain anything away. In the moment, he was freaking out, and couldn’t find answers to my questions fast enough.

Even though it was clear in his gaze that he was trying.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t look for an answer. Don’t try and come up with an excuse. Be honest with me. If you ever want to breathe the same air as me ever again for the rest of your life, you need to tell me everything. The truth. From the beginning.”

Lucky took a deep breath and then nodded. “Okay.”

“Has our friendship ever been just a friendship, or has it been this crazy, obsessive, entitlement from the beginning?” I asked. “Be fucking real about it. Don’t lie to me anymore.”

“No,” Lucky said. “I mean, not in the sense that you’re saying. I’ve always had feelings for you since we first met. You’re beautiful and strong and smart. You stood up for me when I couldn’t stand up for myself, and in the years that we were friends, I always wanted more with you. I really did just think it would happen naturally. I was afraid of rejection, so I just kind of hoped we’d just wake up one day in a different place and head in that direction. You kind of became my whole world, so when you transferred schools, I panicked. I had a feeling you’d meet someone, but then you mentioned Tristan, and all that history that you guys had. It wasn’t just that I was jealous, but I saw the way you lit up when you talked about him. I realized that you had never looked at me like that. I think it let me know definitively that we would never be that.”

“So then you just threw away our friendship after that? All I meant to you was a possible girlfriend in the future and when it couldn’t be that anymore, you figured that was it?” I said.

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