“Hate’s too strong a word—though I guess I did at one time,” she said bluntly. “Now it’s just more that I don’t want to be reminded of how much you hurt me—which happens whenever you’re around.”
“Wow.” His mouth tightened and he set down his wine glass with a very deliberate movement. “You weren’t the only one who got hurt, VL.”
“Why? Did Lissa dump you—”
“Stop with the Lissa crap, all right? This is about what happened with you and me, and—”
“Oh no, don’t even try that, Jake. Lissa was abigpart of what happened with you and me, and you know it.”
“She wasn’t. She wasn’t part of it at all.”
Vivien gaped at him, fury and shock battling to see which could overcome the other. “She waseverypart of it, Jake! You jumped into bed with her merehoursafter we…after we…after things went south,” she said, faltering a little.
Then she collected herself and went on, letting it all spill out in a way she’d not been able to do eleven years ago. “And it probably would have been sooner than mere hours if you could have actually located her—which surprised me, because she was always hanging around justwaitingfor an opportunity to flirt with you.”
She couldn’t remain seated; she rose, wine glass still in hand, and went on, gesturing sharply. “At least you waited until you had an excuse, I’ll give you that. But just barely. It wasn’t outrightcheating, but it was only just barely, you know,legal. Literally from your apartment to her bed, wasn’t it, with maybe a detour to the bar first?” In her fury, she felt tears of anger sting her eyes.No way. I’m not crying in front of him. That’d be the worst thing I could do.“You’d been waiting for an excuse to screw her. And I gave it to you.”
Jake sat there, listening to her rant with an impassive look on his face. Only when she finally stopped—afraid that her voice would break and she wouldn’t be able to control the tears—did he speak. “You’re wrong about so much of it. Most of it. All right?”
She was suddenly exhausted and sank back into her chair. “Really? All right, so let’s take it bit by bit. You and I were dating—exclusively. We were supposedly in love.” She managed to keep her voice steady and hard, though ithurt. “Right so far?”
“I wasn’tsupposedlyin love, Iwasin love,” he said flatly.
“Right. Whatever. Anyway, you and I were together. Lissa Kirkland wanted you— Don’t deny it, Jake, we both know she did. It was so obvious.”
“Fine. She flirted. She made it clear she was interested.”
“And you managed to resist—at least as far as Iknow. Maybe you didn’t resist—”
“Vivien. Inever cheatedon you.”
“Whatever. You nevertechnicallycheated on me. That line of acceptability—you were barely on the right side of it, Jake. Just barely.” She jutted her chin forward in an effort to keep her emotions in check. She hadn’t imagined it would be this difficult to have it out.
“When I told you I was going to do my residency in Raleigh, I didn’t expect it to be the end of us,” he said. “I never thought you’d dump me—”
“Dumpyou? I didn’t dump you, Jake— We— You— I—”
“You ended it, Vivien. You told me you weren’t going to ‘fricking North Carolina’—those were your exact words; believe me, I remember them. I knew you weren’t going to be thrilled, but I didn’t expect you to be that final about it.”
“You’d always led me to believe you were going to stay at NYU,” she shot back. “It was a shock when you just dropped that brand-new, earth-shattering information in my lap. You knew I’d just signed a new lease on my apartment—and it was like a slap in the face. I was even going to ask you to move in with me,” she said, looking at him through watery eyes.
“You never told me that.”
“No, I never told you that. Your mind had been made up and I wasn’t going to stand in your way. And don’t think I didn’t know Lissa Kirkland was from Raleigh,” she snarled. “That just sealed it all for me. You decided to go to UNC so you could be with her.”
“That’s so completely and utterly wrong that I don’t know what to say. I had no idea Lissa was from Raleigh—”
“Don’t lie to me—”
“I never lie, Vivien.” Now there was real anger in his face—the temper she knew he had was rising to the surface. The corners of his mouth were white. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you not know that if I did?” she said, a little more calmly.
“I have no idea, except that maybe because I didn’t care enough about Lissa Kirkland to know or remember if she ever said where she was from.”
Vivien bit back theyou obviously cared enough to jump into bed with hercomment that rose to her lips. Instead she said, “Regardless. You told me you were going to North Carolina, and you knew I was staying in New York, and that gave me all the information I needed.”
“Yeah,” he said bitterly. “You had all the informationyouneeded, and thenyoumade the decision that we were over—at least, Ithoughtwe were over when youtoldme it was over and stormed out of my apartment—but apparently we were only sort of broken up, so that the next day you could hold that over my head after I made the biggest mistake of my life.”
