“Sorry, bad timing,” she winced, and Heather wiped her mouth, and then her watering eyes. “Swallow your water, then I’ll try again.”
“It’s a bit late for that,” Heather laughed. “You just told me you’re sleeping with Marcus’s best man, and I’ve already got Pellegrino coming out of my nose.”
Carly flushed. “Sorry,” she said again.
“Don’t apologize, I think it’s great,” Heather shrugged. “And actually, it’s really very late, since you’ve been doing it for at least a week.”
Carly stared across the picnic table. “You knew?”
“Yeah, Carly, I knew.”
“How?” Carly frowned.
“You stopped fake smiling at him and started real smiling,” Heather shrugged. “You know, that grimace you used to give Mr. K when he’d compliment someone on losing weight? I saw you give Nick that face. But then you stopped. You’re a lot of things, honey, but subtle isn’t one of them. And then Nick told Marcus he and his girlfriend actually broke up months ago. Between that and how much time you’re voluntarily spending with him now, it didn’t take Olivia Benson to solve this one.”
“Right. Of course,” Carly mumbled. So much for her big revelation.
“I kind of wish you’d told me yourself, but I figured it was just another Carly fling, and you didn’t need me to know,” Heather said, screwing the cap onto her water.
Irritation prodded Carly in the ribs.Just another Carly fling.She took a deep breath and reminded herself that Heather hadn’t meant to hurt her. Then another deep breath, because the first one didn’t work. Neither did the second one.
“Another Carly fling?” she repeated.
“It’s not a criticism, I think this is perfect for you,” Heather said emphatically. “A short-term thing, which is what you like anyway.”
Carly raised her eyebrows, exercising all her self-control to stay silent as Heather kept talking.
“It’s just that, you know, you don’t keep guys around very long. I figured that even if you weren’t leaving next week, this would be what you wanted. Short and sweet, fun and then done.”
The prod had become a full-on shove, and Carly could feel her face flushing again, this time with anger. Heather had no idea what she was talking about. Heather thought shechoseto live this way? Dating a man for a few weeks or months and then calling it quits when she realized that he was just like the one before, and the one before that? Or did Heather just think that she couldn’thold on to a man? Who the hell was Heather, with her perfect beach home and perfect principal dancer job andperfect fucking life, to judge her?
She opened her mouth to say all this, rage rising in her chest like a hot wave, but then she stopped. Heather wasn’t judging her—Heatherwouldn’t judge her. She just really didn’t know what she was talking about. She really believed all Carly’s relationships were short because Carly had let her think that was what shewanted. Heather didn’t know the truth. And she didn’t know the truth because Carly had kept it from her. Nick had had the courage to come clean to his best friend, and it was about damn time Carly did the same.
Carly took one more deep breath through her nose, and let it out slowly. Then she told her best friend the truth.
“There’s a reason I don’t keep guys around very long. I have something wrong with my pelvic floor. I’ve had it since I was a teenager. It makes intercourse really, really painful. I’m seeing a PT about it and that seems to be helping. But it’s made dating challenging for a while. Forever, actually.”
Heather reached across the table and squeezed her forearm. “Carly, I … I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t know. I’ve never told anyone. Well, that’s not true. I told the last guy I was dating, Carter? I told him I couldn’t do it for a while, because the PT said so, and he just stopped calling.”
“What an asshole,” Heather muttered.
Carly shrugged. “He’s not the only one. The rest of them never even noticed I was in pain. They just kept plowing away, like they didn’t give a shit if I was miserable. Once you realize a man can happily come inside you even if you’re about to cry from pain, it’s hard to keep him around.”
Her eyes burned, and she swallowed hard and blinked away tears.
Heather shook her head, her face crumpled with sympathy. “I’m so sorry, hon. And you never told them?”
“No,” Carly said bitterly. “Look what happened the one time I told someone. Ghosted. I wasn’t ever going to be enough for him, not unless he could fuck me the way he wanted.”
“Did you tell Nick?”
Carly laughed despite herself, and it came out as a gurgle. “Not on purpose, but yeah, Nick knows.”
“Not on purpose? What does that mean?”
Carly sighed. “I kind of … yelled it at him. In public.”
