What the hell is Brian doing here?
David made it pretty clear he wasn’t welcome at his frat house. But he sees me, and he fixes his accusatory gaze on me as he approaches.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” he asks coldly.
Huh? “What?”
“You and March. Don’t lie to me.”
“What are you talking about, Brian?”
“Well, I guess his plan finally worked out after all these years,” he says cryptically.
I blink at him.
“Oh, didn’t he tell you?” Brian says snidely. “He was the one who convinced me to break up with you before graduation.” He throws it out there like it’s the most nonchalant thing in the world.
“Who is?” I ask, because he’s still not making sense.
“March. He kept going on and on about all the fun and girls I’d miss out on if I stayed with my little high school girlfriend, and he got in my head. And it looks like it all worked out for him, huh? I fucked up, and he’s got you wrapped around his dick.”
I slap him. Fast and hard, my own palm stinging with the contact that surprises me as much as him.
Brian’s hand comes up to his reddened cheek, and we both stare in shock at what I just did.
At what he just confessed.
My eyes prick with moisture, but I refuse to let Brian-fucking-Falco see even one more of my tears.
Instead, I decide to reveal a truth of my own, grateful that no one else is in earshot. “You don’t get to say anything about anything I do or don’t do, or who I do it with, Brian.”
He opens his mouth, but I cut him off.
“No. Enough. You are the guy who fucked me, and abandoned me.”
“I loved you—”
“You abandoned me!”
Brian blinks at me.
“You left me alone, to deal with everything by myself.”
“You think our breakup wasn’t hard on me, too?”
I want to laugh, but I hold it in. “Not as hard as wondering what I did wrong—thinking there must be something wrong with me. Some reason why sex with me was the thing that sent you running.”
Brian shuts up.
“Not as hard as finding out I was pregnant a month later.”
His eyes go wide.
“As hard as calling and texting nonstop, terrified, not knowing what to do, only to be treated like I didn’t even exist. Or as hard as picking up the phone to schedule a fucking abortion at fifteen years old, only to miscarry the day before the procedure, and blaming myself even for that. And definitely not as fucking hard as deciding to swallow a bottle of pills just to make it all go away. To make myself go away.”
Brian stares, silent, not managing a single word.
What a fucking pussy. Why did I ever think this boy was worth my time?
