‘Why not? You’ve done it before, time and time again.’ My words grow louder and stronger. I’m not the girl at the house party any more. I won’t be the one that feels bad.
‘Seriously? Maddison. I told you last night that I would never do that to you again.’
‘And then look what happened this morning,’ I say.
‘I wasn’t involved!’
‘They’re your friends, Aiden. That doesn’t just come out of nowhere.’
‘I barely talk to them!’
‘Then how did they know?’ My voice cracks.
‘I just. . . I don’t know.’ He gestures, grasping for words. ‘I just needed to tell someone about you. Someone who knew—’
‘What a joke I was to you?’
‘What you meant to me. Still mean to me. I thought they would get it. I don’t know, I thought they’d understand.’
I feel his hands slam into the mattress long before I hear the thud as the bed rocks ever so slightly with the strength. It’s not enough to derail me. I shut my eyes tight and focus all my energy on my senses. What I can touch, what I can hear, what I can smell, taste, can’t see. I rub the sheets between my fingers, grip on to them tight and record the sound. He can’t hurt me now. Not here. Noteveragain.
‘Look, Aiden, this weekend was fun, but we both know that it was only for the weekend, right?’
I wait for him to exhale or smile with utter relief that poor Moany Maddy hasn’t accidentally fallen in love with the guy who just wanted a quick fuck. But he doesn’t.
‘Maddison,’ he says, a pleading in his tone.
‘We’ve spent a lot of time together, and we’re only human and we needed to get it out of our systems. And we did. All weekend. So now we can forget about it and go back to being us.’
‘Out of our systems?’ His voice is low.
‘Well, this obviously isn’t athing, right? I mean, I’m me and you’reyou. We both know how that works, and even if we didn’t the whole outside world sure does.’
I swivel towards him to stress my point with a gesture to his phone, but I make the mistake of looking at him in the process. He’s frozen, dejected and confused.
‘You don’t mean this,’ he finally manages to say.
His eyes are clouded with a disappointment I almost believe. But I saw those messages. I know the real him and I’m sure he is disappointed in a different way. Disappointed that I caught on before he could make me the butt of his big joke. He got me all through school and even uni, so it’s not working this time.
‘Of course I mean it.’ I raise my chest proudly and try to relax into a cool, nonchalant state. ‘I mean, you and your friends wereright. I’m sure if I told mygirlswhat I’d been up to, they’d say even worse.’
‘They would?’
They wouldn’t. But the pained croak in his voice, while biting, almost makes the lie feel worth it.
‘We are who we are– two people who have never got along. The event’s just over a month away. There’s no point in pretending any different now.’
‘Uh, yeah. Sure,’ he says, slowly blinking back to life. ‘You’re right, I guess.’
He rises and gathers his things. I feel the last of my heart rip in two, but it’s needed.
‘Exactly,’ I say, nodding back. ‘We get ready, we go home and then we smash out this party. One of us gets their dream job, the other walks away, just like we planned.’
After everything, it’s that sentence that finally stops him dead in his tracks, head swivelling to take me in in sheer disbelief.
‘You still want the job?’ he asks.
‘Of course. Do you not?’
