“Aw, let’s just get them now and head over. I’m, like, really, really hungry.” Zach bounces in front of us while we start back to the tables.
“Dude, what the hell? We’ll eat pizza in a little bit. The lady is still currently an iceberg. Calm down.” Sabin frowns at him.
Then Zach stops walking. He’s less bouncy now. “Sabe …” He tips his head back just the slightest bit. “It’s just that …” Zach looks at me.
“Oh fuck,” Sabin says under his breath.
I follow Sabin’s gaze. Immediately, I know that this is the moment I will remember as the first time I felt very real and very painful heartbreak.
Everyone is still sitting in their seats at the table, but there is now someone else there, too. She is standing behind Chris, her hands rubbing his shoulders. For a second, I try to tell myself that I’m seeing something other than what I am. But when she tilts his head back and kisses him on the mouth briefly, there is no point. He does do a quick scan for me, but he doesn’t spot me through the crowd. I can tell he’s uncomfortable, but I don’t give a shit.
“Blythe.” Zach touches my arm.
“Who is she?” I ask softly.
Neither of them says anything. I turn my back on the view. I cannot look at this.
Sabin turns and throws the cups from his hands into the trash can. He takes the two I am holding and does the same. “Zach, get her coat. Let’s go.”
I look at Sabin. “Who is she, Sabin? Who is she?”
“Don’t cry,” he says. “Please don’t cry.”
“I’m not going to cry, I just want to know who the fuck she is.”
Sabin starts walking me to the door, and his hand on my back is the only reason I am able to find the exit. “Just hold on, baby girl.”
He tries to get me to wait in the entryway, under the blasting heaters, but I push into the snowstorm. Better to freeze out here than share the air in there with her. “Jesus, Blythe! Stop!”
I am running through the snow with Sabin falling farther behind with each step. I want my room, my bed. I want away. Zach appears and forces my hat on my head and my coat over my shoulders while Sabin swears up and down. When we get to my dorm, I shake off my coat, locate my key in the pocket, and fumble hopelessly with the lock. Sabin tries to take it from me, but I shove his arm away. “I can open the fucking door by myself!”
It takes a minute, but I do. They follow me silently to my room, and I can practically hear them flinch when I hurl the keys across the room and they hit the wall. I sit on the bed and take off my sopping wet shoes. Then I throw them one at a time at the same wall.
“You could have at least aimed for Neon Jesus,” Sabin whispers.
“Shut up. You’re lucky my hands are empty now.” I take a deep breath. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Throw whatever you want,” he says.
Zach sits down next to me, and Sabin squats in front of me. I can’t look at either of them.
“Will you two just go, please?”
“No,” Zach says. “We’re not leaving.”
“Please go. I’m embarrassed enough.” I look at Sabin. “Please, Sabin.” The more I talk, the more difficult it is to control my voice. I do not want to fall apart.
Neither of them say anything for a minute, and I’m hoping they’ll give up.
“Blythe, I’m so sorry.” Sabin takes my hand.
I look up at him and feel my eyes sting. Fuck. “How long?”
The pause before he answers me is excruciating. “Since a few weeks … after.”
“A few weeks after we got back to school?” I wipe my face with my sweatshirt. “Have you known the whole time?”
“B., we didn’t know how to tell you …”
“No, no, it’s okay.” I shake my head. “And it’s fine. I’m fine. Really.” I stand up and step around Sabin. I locate my sneakers and calmly go and set them on the heater, keeping my back to the boys as I look out the window and start babbling. “These are going to take forever to dry out. I might have to use my backup pair if I want to run tomorrow morning. I’ll have to get up early because I still don’t have that statistics stuff down, and I also have about a million chapters left to read for lit class. Actually, I should get to sleep if I’m going to get up early.”
“It’s six o’clock,” Zach points out.
We’re all quiet again, until I finally turn around and crumble.
“Sabe …”
My friend lets me fall into his arms, and he strokes my hair and tells me over and over that it’s going to be all right. “She’s just some stupid girl, Blythe. She’s not you.”
“He doesn’t want me.” I keep my face pressed into him, hiding my eyes under the flap of his leather jacket. “But I can’t be upset because we agreed we weren’t going to be anything else. I just thought that later … we would. I’m just so messed up still.”
“Chris is the one who is messed up.” Sabin holds me tighter. He is my rock right now.
“He said … he said he didn’t want a girlfriend. Sabin, that’s what he said.” I lift my head, and Sabin rubs his thumbs under my eyes. “She’s not just some girl. She’s his girlfriend, isn’t she?”
He doesn’t need to answer me.
I step away and go to the sink to wash my face. “What’s her name?”
“Jennifer.”
“I assume she’s nice?”
They don’t say anything.
I throw water over my eyes and pat my face dry with a towel. My bed is screaming my name, so I crawl past Zach and lie down. “You can say she’s nice. It’s okay.”
Zach lies down next to me. “She’s fine. There’s nothing particularly wrong with her.”
“There is too something wrong with her.” Sabin lies down on my other side. “She’s boring as shit.”
Zach laughs. “Well, there is that.”
“Good.” I sniff and stare at the ceiling. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t Chris tell me? Don’t answer that. I know why. Because you all think that I’m so fucking fragile, and I’ll come completely unglued again.”
“No. Because we were hoping she wouldn’t be around for very long,” Sabin says.
“But she’s still around.” I fight back tears. “Is he sleeping with her? Forget it. I don’t want to know. It’s none of my business anyway.”
“He’s not, if that’s any comfort,” Sabin says quickly. “It’s not going to last, B. It’s not. She’s not enough for him.”
“Neither was I.”
“No, no, sweet girl. Don’t you get it? You were too much for him.” I realize that Sabin has said exactly what Chris said that night in my room when he left so suddenly.
“I was fine. I swear to God I was. I wasn’t ready for anything either, but I didn’t think that …” I don’t even know how to finish this sentence.
Sabin does. “That he’d run out and do something so stupid and thoughtless.” He scratches his unshaven face and smiles at me. “I’m telling you, I promise you, this won’t last. It’s not like he’s going to get married or anything.”
There is a knock at the door and my stomach knots. “No,” I whisper adamantly. “No.” I do not want to see Chris now.
Sabin nods. “I got it.” He’s off the bed in a flash. The last thing I hear him say as he storms out into the hallway and slams the door behind him is “Are you fucking kidding me, Chris? C’mon, man, you gotta get the hell out of here. Give her a goddamn minute, okay?”
I hear their footsteps retreat down the hall. The room feels emptier without Sabin in it.
I don’t cry again, which is good. “Zach …”
“I know. This was not supposed to happen.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
I’m so stupid. I guess that it was really just sex between us. The friendship part, I know that was real, but the other stuff? I must have been the only one who felt it. There is no deeper connection between us, no larger reason for our scars, no epic romance that has yet to unfold.
Except I don’t believe that. I should, based on what Chris is doing, but I don’t. My heart is screaming something else. Maybe that’s wishful thinking.