The joke hangs there and everyone looks between Sabrina and Griffin like we’re all waiting for some kind of massive blowout.
Griffin doesn’t speak as he stands up. There’s a stiffness to his movements that tells me he was not planning on her being here and that loosens the knot in my chest. “What are you doing here?”
Sabrina doesn’t flinch or act like his angry tone affects her at all. Instead she tilts her head to the side and smirks at him in a way that feels kind of flirtatious.
Griffin’s gaze is steady but strained. He keeps clenching and unclenching his fists and I feel so fucking out of place. Honestly I feel like all of us are watching something that we have no right to be a part of.
Before I can even take a breath, she pushes past the threshold, eyes blazing with that familiar combination of entitlement and fury that makes my stomach knot. She clearly is unhappy with the welcome she is getting in this room.
Griffin is a step in front of me before I even register what’s happening, voice already low and controlled, “What do you want?”
Sabrina doesn’t hesitate. She steps forward with her jaw tight and her nostrils flared, and she spits it out, “I want to talk.”
Griffin’s eyes narrow. “We have nothing left to talk about.”
Her voice drops, sharp and bitter like he just insulted her intelligence, “You cheated on me. You owe me a conversation.”
And for a beat, I just sit there with beer in my hand, watching it happen, feeling this surreal mix of disbelief and anger that’s already warming behind my ribs, ready to make itself known.
I let out a humorless abrupt laugh because the hypocrisy is so fucking thick you could build a damn fortress with it. IwishI could take it back the second it leaves my mouth, but I can’t.
Her gaze snaps to me and the realization dawns so fucking fast as she hisses, “You.”
I freeze, because ofcourseit’s my fault. In her mind, at least. Griffin turns toward me, confusion written across his face.
“You fucking told him,” she continues. “You turned him against me.”
I open my mouth and close it multiple times because I can formulate a response, “What? No… I-”
Before I can finish, Griffin’s expression shifts from confusion straight into accusation and anger.
“You hooked up with Jacob?” he nearly yells, that angry tone has become raised and I feel the hair on my arms raise.
I defend myself right at the same moment that Sabrina speaks up over me
“Of course not!” I blurt and she immediately cuts in with that wounded, dramatic flair, “Nothim!”
The room hits this surreal freeze, like someone just dropped the temperature by twenty degrees all at once. Griffin turns toward her, jaw tightening slowly.
“Not him? So… you slept with someone?” he says, voice low and brittle like every word is sandpaper.
She huffs, face flushing a shade that’s a mix of embarrassment and defiance, and says, “It was one time.”
Just one time.
Like that’s supposed to make it any less of a goddamn shitty.
There’s silence then this thick, uneasy kind of quiet where everyone is processing differently.
Griffin standing there with this sharp, hurt edge in his shoulders, Sabrina bristling and flushed, Terry and Mack staring, and me… just trying to steady my breath because holy shit. How the fuck did this happen?
“Who?” Griffin hisses, voice low and shaking in that way that tells me he’s right on the edge of losing his shit completely. “Who did you cheat on me with?”
Sabrina’s face is bright red now, anger and humiliation bleeding together as she squares her shoulders. She throws her hands up, palms out, like this is all being blown wildly out of proportion.
“It’s not a big deal,” she snaps. “It was one time. We both messed up!”
That’s when Griffin explodes.
