"What the fuck are you doing here? She asked you to give her time to get her things, and you couldn't even do that? Was cheating on her not enough? Huh? Did you not find your satisfaction in destroying her, so you had to come and do more damage? Which one is it, Keaton?"
Amelia’s fury in every word slams into me, leaving me hollow.
Shit. I didn’t just destroy things with Charlie, I wrecked my friendship with Amelia, too. The fallout from my betrayal is suffocating, and I can’t believe I never saw it coming.
That’s the real problem. I never thought.Not about myself, not about Charlie, not even about Amelia. Hell, I barely even thought about Rianna.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Through blurry eyes, I witness Charlie putting her hand on Amelia's shoulder.
"That's enough, Mel. Why don't you go inside and carry those other boxes to your car?"
Amelia turns to her. "What? No. I'll stay right here with you. Once you finish, we'll get the boxes together and get the hell out of here."
"Mel. Look at me. Really look. I'm okay. Nothing he does now can ever hurt me the way he's already done."
Her voice is as empty as I feel inside—drained of anything resembling life.
"If you need me, just yell."
Charlie nods, and Amelia strides past me, her eyes cutting right through me. Her shoulder slams into mine, nearly knocking me off balance.
Charlie snatches a photo from its frame, rips it out, and flings it into the fire. In sixteen years, I’ve never seen her eyes look at me with such raw disgust and hatred.
"All of that," she says, waving her hand in the air to trace my body. "It'll never measure up to the amount of pain I felt when you fucked that bitch." A shudder rolls over her, and with a glare, she spits at my feet. "I hope it hurts, though."
I nod, swallowing hard, lost in the venom of her words.
My body goes rigid as she tears the candid prom photo from its frame. It’s my favorite. Anyone could see how much we loved each other in that shot. We sat tucked in a shadowy corner, Charlie straddling my thighs in her shimmering black dress, gazing at me like I was her whole world. My hands cradled her face, our foreheads pressed together, lips almost touching. Amelia caught it from the side, every emotion laid bare for the camera.
It's also the only copy we have that I know of.
"Don't," I plead, moving closer.
Charlie stares down at it intensely as tears run unchecked down her cheeks, but then looks over at me when I come to a stop beside her. "Why shouldn't I? All of this was nothing but a lie. The boy who's in this picture with me would never do what you did. This boy would rather have hurt himself than ever think of causing me pain.This boy...this boy loved me. But considering that you are this boy, this," she lifts the picture for me to see, "isnothing more than a well-crafted fabrication of a fairytale that I was stupid enough to believe."
She hurls it into the fire without a flicker of regret, and that hurts more than anything. Like someone is hacking my heart out with a pickaxe.
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper, watching another memory vanish into the flames.
"Because I want to erase you from my life, Carr. I don't want any memory of you to remain. All they'll do is remind me of how I naively gave my heart to the one person in this world I'd never thought would crumble it to dust."
She grabs the last box and, instead of discarding the items one by one, dumps the entire box in it.
The last box—final proof we ever shared a life—goes up in smoke.
Sixteen years as friends, eight as a couple, and all that’s left is a camera roll on a phone I’ve managed to lose. No one to blame but me.
Charlie turns to leave, but I reach out, fingers brushing her arm. She whirls around, yanking free, and slams her palms into my chest, shoving me with everything she has left.
"Don't touch me! Don't put your filthy fucking hands on me," she screams.
The only small mercy tonight is that it’s party night at David’s, so the apartment complex is nearly empty.
"You make me sick, Keaton. So sick that I want to go inside and stand under a shower so hot it boils my skin. You fucked her without a condom." She shoves me again. "You gave her something that was only supposed to be mine. You. You were only supposed to be mine, just like I was only supposed to ever be yours." This time, her fists hit me. "You promised me." A sob rips from her chest. "You promised, and you lied."
When she shoves me back, I stare at my feet, certain my heart must have fallen there because I can’t feel it beating anymore.
