“Sadie?” He frowned. “That was the girlfriend you cheated on, correct?”
“Yes. She went home that summer to work so that she could pay her sorority dues, afford pretty dresses for formals, and that kind of thing. I made so much money from my NIL deal. I told her I wanted her to stay with me for the summer. I told her I would pay for all of that stuff she needed. But she wanted to make her own money and be independent.” I shrugged. “If she’d been there, I wouldn’t have cheated.”
“You’re blaming her for the fact you cheated?”
My hands were starting to sweat a little, and I wiped them on my pants. “Well, not exactly. But she had to know it was risky. I mean, girls were throwing themselves at me. There was no way I could stay faithful with all that was going on around me. And, like I said, I felt like I deserved to fuck around a little because of who I was, you know?”
“Since you were a good football player you thought it was okay to be a bad boyfriend?”
I was silent. When he put it like that, it made me seem very shallow, very egotistical. I cleared my throat. “You don’t think Sadie was to blame at all, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” He rubbed his chin. “A woman in a committed relationship should expect to be able to be away from her boyfriend without him cheating on her.”
I looked down at my feet. He was right. I’d been holding on to this feeling that Sadie was partly to blame because it made me feel better about myself. Deep down, I knew it was wrong. But hearing him say it out loud in such a straightforward tone really hit me. I was finally able to admit to myself that Sadie had done absolutely nothing wrong.
“Who else did you say was to blame?”
I looked back up at him, almost scared to talk about it anymore. But surely, he’d agree Aubrey was partly to blame.
“Well, there was Aubrey. She was doing everything she could for months to get me to have sex with her. She seduced me, youknow?” I looked at him, expecting to see him nodding his head. He wasn’t.
“When she seduced you, as you say, were you forced to remain in her company?”
“What do you mean?”
“You couldn’t leave when she was offering sex?”
“Oh. Um…” I rubbed the back of my neck. “No. I could’ve left. But she followed me everywhere.”
“And you told her to stay away from you? You reminded her you had a girlfriend you loved?”
Shit. I was really getting the sense he didn’t think it was Aubrey’s fault, either. “Not really. In fact,” I said slowly, “we were friends. I took a bunch of classes with her. We started hanging out all the time. We’d go to dinner and lunch together. I… started canceling plans with Sadie in order to stay with Aubrey longer.”
“I see. It sounds like you were sending this girl mixed messages. And did you understand what Aubrey wanted from you?”
“Yeah,” I said reluctantly. “Sadie actually warned me about her. Aubrey was known around campus for breaking people up just for the hell of it, actually.”
“And you knew that when you remained friends with her?”
I nodded.
“And yet you still made the choice to have sex with her.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Do you see the distinction we made there? She offered you sex, and it sounds like she didn’t want to hear the word no. But you had choices. Sadie left for the summer, and you thought it was unrealistic that she expected you to stay faithful for the weeks you were apart.”
I nodded.
“Let me ask you this: did you expect Sadie to be faithful to you during that same stretch of time?”
“Of course,” I said, horrified at the thought of her cheating.
He consulted his notes. “I see here that Sadie was a beautiful girl who was talented enough as a cheerleader to make the squad at a huge university when she was a freshman. It sounds like she was a pretty big deal, too. Yet you expected her to remain loyal to you while you ‘fucked around,’ right?”
I swallowed hard. “I see what you’re saying.” I hadn’t ‘deserved’ to cheat any more than Sadie had. Yet she’d remained totally loyal to me.
“Who do you think is really responsible for your cheating?”
