Looking at her face again, I was sure she was crying now. Her face was scrunched up, and her body shook in small waves.
Hurrying to my feet, I crossed the distance between us, not knowing what could have made her so upset that she would be crying out in the open on the campus sidewalk. Thankfully there weren’t a lot of people around, and nobody seemed to be staring.
“Isla?” I said gently, slowly placing my hand on her arm.
She jumped, taking a step back at my touch. “Slate?” she said in a quivering voice. She looked around and swiped her hands under her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I was over there studying.” I motioned toward the tree where I had been sitting. “I noticed you standing here. Are you okay? What happened?”
She had almost stopped crying, but my question started up the waterworks again. “Josh dumped me, and now I’m stuck here looking like a complete fool for being naïve enough to follow a guy to college.” Her words came out in a blubbery rush.
Josh dumped her?Whoa. I didn’t know anything about their relationship, but I didn’t need to know much to know that dumping your girlfriend after she moved here to be with you was a jerk move.
“How could I have been so stupid?” she asked through tears. “Why did I ever think moving to be closer to him would fix all our problems? I should never have come here.” She placed her head in her hands as another sob wracked through her body.
I stood there uncomfortably, not knowing what to do. I didn’t have a lot of experience consoling women. None, actually, come to think of it.
Her head popped up. “Oh, my gosh, Amy and Tyler’s wedding.” Leftover tears rolled down her cheeks, but the thought of this wedding must have gotten the crying to stop. “Josh and I are the best man and maid of honor. We were going to go together. Now everyone is going to know we broke up, and I’m the one who is going to look dumb.”
I reached out and rubbed her back in what I hoped was a soothing manner. “Let’s go sit over here, and we can talk it out.” I gently pushed her lower back in the direction of where my stuff still sat under the tree and then picked up her bag and followed her over to my spot.
She plopped down and stared out in front of her. “I can’t go to that wedding. I can’t go alone. How embarrassing would that be? I’ll be the laughingstock of the event.” Her eyes started to get watery again.
Sitting down next to her, I said, “I’m sure everyone will be paying attention to the bride and groom, not to your relationship status with the douchebag.”
She shook her head vehemently. “No, you don’t understand. The whole town will be there. All of our friends from high school. Josh and I were voted Most Likely to Get Married. All the women will be gossiping the entire night.”
I came from a small town myself, so I could understand how going to a big event like this could make her feel like she was under a microscope.
“And there’s no chance of you and Josh getting back together?” I asked.
“Ha!” she exclaimed. “No. There is no way I am getting back together with him.”
My question had gotten her tears to stop, but her lashes were still wet.
She seemed pretty set on not getting back together with Josh, which had me wondering if something had happened.
“Does this have anything to do with why he didn’t call you last night?”
She shifted her head from side to side. “Yes and no. He said he was studying with aclassmate,” she said, “and left his phone at their apartment but didn’t want to tell me that it was a girl and actually someone he’s been friends with for a while. He didn’t say anything happened between them, but just the fact that he didn’t want to tell me about her was suspicious. Then when I asked him about it, he flipped out and said he’d been thinking about breaking things off between us for a while.”
My brows rose. “He wanted you to move here even though he was thinking about breaking up with you?”
“Yep.”
He was an even bigger jerk than I thought. Who asked someone to change their whole life for them when they never had plans of keeping them in theirs? A jackass, that’s who.
She stared out past the road and houses across the street. “What have I done? Things were going really well for me back at my old school. Life was good. Now look at me. A total disaster and no clue what I’m doing.”
The tears started again, and I reached into my bag and pulled out an extra shirt I kept in there for after practice.
"You’re not a disaster." I handed her my shirt. “You thought you were doing what was best, and it’s not your fault Josh thinks it’s okay to treat you like garbage.”
She sniffed and hesitated to take my shirt. “I’m a mess. I don’t want to ruin your shirt.”
Her face was streaked with mascara, her nose runny, and her eyes red-rimmed, but she still looked beautiful. Lost, but beautiful. “You won’t ruin it. I’ll wash it later.” I gave her a small smile to show her I really was okay with her using it.
She took the shirt from my hand. “Thank you.” Wiping at her face, she did the best she could to clean herself up. “And thank you for being my friend. Sometimes you don’t know how much you need one until you don’t have any.”
