I clear my throat, and he looks back up. “I only agreed to talk to you because I have some questions that need answering.”
“Okay, ask anything you want.” His eyes are alert, but the exhaustion behind them is evident. I cannot feel bad for him. I won’t allow myself to.
Straightening my shoulders, I put on my most confident voice. “Was Tiffany stalking me?”
Andrew answers without hesitation. “From what I know, she followed you a couple of times. She wanted to look at you and Levi, to see how serious you guys were.”
My brow furrows. “Why? She already had you.”
He lets out a deep breath. “We might’ve gotten into multiple fights over me still being in love with you.” I don’t react on the outside, keeping my face impassive. On the inside, I’m not overly surprised, but after the night at the bar, I thought he would’ve let me go. I doubt Andrew knows what being in love feels like anyway.
“Well, that was stupid,” I reply.
He flinches once again. “I deserve that…and more. Anyway, after our fourth fight, which pushed both of us over the edge—I’m talking an extreme screaming match about us and you and our situation—she changed.” He pauses. “That’s when it started.”
I push off the wall. “The stalking?”
He nods. “Yeah. One of my buddies saw her standing outside of the auditorium right before you got out of rehearsal.” Andrew quickly explains how he knew it was a rehearsal of mine. “My friend stayed after Tiffany ran away when she saw him. A minute later, he saw you exiting the building and got suspicious.” He rubs his neck. “As you already know, Tiffany only ever wears jean skirts or shorts and tight shirts when it begins to get warm.” Rolling my eyes, I nod. I can’t believe how blind I was to him constantly glimpsing at her ass in those outfits. “Well, that day she was wearing a hoodie with the hood up and sweatpants. She also had a pair of sunglasses on when it was already dark outside.”
I remember seeing someone wearing a hoodie at the bar, but I couldn’t make out her face, and her hair wasn’t Tiffany’s bleach blonde hair.
“Did she ever wear wigs?” I ask.
Andrew thinks for a moment. “She wore one for Halloween last year. It was long and black.”
Talk about a walking cliché.
I don’t stop Andrew from speaking again because I want to know as much as possible. “After that, I tried being nicer to her and paid more attention to where she was going. I know that the bar fight was terrible and stupid, but I didn’t know about Tiffany’s past back then.”
My right eyebrow pops up. “And what would that be?”
“As you know, Tiffany and I met in our first year in Driscoll. During our friendship, she barely talked about high school, and kinda gave me a summary about her life at home. That was until one of her friends from high school surprised her this semester, and we went out to drink. After Tiffany passed out, her friend was still drunk and very chatty. She kept going on and on about how great high school was after Tiffany got better.”
“Better?” I tilt my head.
He nods. “Turns out she spent the summer before her sophomore year in a psychiatric center because she was picking fights with her teachers, students, and family. She physically fought some kids, too.” He waves a hand around. “I don’t know all the details because her friend was drunk and kind of dumb. All I was able to find out is that she was diagnosed with a personality disorder and had to go to therapy and take some pills every day.”
Biting my lip, I urge him to continue. Everything’s clicking into place now.
“Then I started looking at every single thing she did very carefully, and I realized she never once went to a therapy session, and I only ever saw her take pills before we started to…you know.”
Grabbing a piece of gum from my pocket, I nod once more. “After you guys started fucking.”
Andrew flinches again, but I find no satisfaction in making him feel uncomfortable; I only stated the truth.
“It seems like a couple of months after we started doing…that, she stopped her meds, and when you found out about us and I was trying to repair things, she started lashing out and having mood swings. Moments where she was completely reckless and angry, then calm and apologetic.”
“Why didn’t you break things off?” I ask, because who wouldn’t?
He hangs his head. “I did, two days before the Kappa party.” My mouth drops open, and the timeline starts clicking into place. “This time, she didn’t fight me. She was eerily calm. I waited for her to explode, and when I learned from her friend that she acted the same way before an incident in high school, I knew the one person she’d want to hurt was?—”
“Me,” I finish.
He crosses his arms. “Stevie, I thought she was only going to try to fight you or something like that, and your friends could protect you. I didn’t think she’d pull something so extreme. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“You brought her into my life,” I say softly. I’m not angry at him—how can I be when he also suffered her wrath? Sure, Andrew sucks, and he wasn’t good to me, but hell, maybe he can get some help that’ll work.
His eyes well with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could take it back. I’m so, so sorry, Stevie.”
