I hate myself for being so weak, for being so willing to forgive and forget because he did one nice thing for me after crushing any self-confidence I’d managed to grow around him.
What kind of person does that make me?
I’m so fucking pathetic that I’m willing to just throw myself at the first man who gives me any kind of attention. I’m better than that. I have to be better than that. I can’t keep letting myself get walked on because of the person I used to be.
Beckett
Will you come downstairs?
Me
Why?
Beckett
To eat dinner.
Me
I’m not hungry.
Beckett
Please?
That’s not fair. He can’t sayplease, not after the way he acted. Regardless of what my brain tells me to do, my heart wins. I get up and go downstairs.
“Thank you for the desk,” I mumble, taking a sip from the tea he’d made.
“What desk?” He asks, playing dumb. I roll my eyes.
“The one that wasn’t in my room when I left this morning, but is now,” I sass, watching him carefully. He gives nothing away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So what? The furniture fairy just stopped by, looked around, and figured that I would need a desk.”
“I was tired of your shit being everywhere. It’s not a big deal, it’s just a desk,” he says, his words holding a little bite, but there’s no heat in his eyes when they find mine.
Does he think that I’m messy? Have I not been doing a good job at cleaning up after myself?My brain starts to overwhelm itself with a million questions, the voice in my head being louder than whatever it is that he’s saying to me.
I somehow keep my cool and answer softly, turning back to what’s left of my food. “Thank you, anyway.”
“Don’t mention it.”
We fall into a tense silence where neither of us knows what to say.
Fuck. Stop fucking crying, Sloane.I scold myself as I feel the tears try to build. I’m fucking tired of feeling like a fucking victim. I was so confident before I came back here. Now I’m home for a few weeks, and this stupid man has turned me back into the blubbering idiot I was before I left.
“I need to apologize for the other night, for everything that has happened this month. The way I’ve been treating you isn’t ok.”
“Water under the bridge,” I mumble as I scroll on my phone.
“No, it’s not. I’ve been a dick, and you deserve better than that,” he says, and I shrug.
I’m trying to stay nonchalant, but it isn’t working as much as I want it to, because I’m not a nonchalant girl; I’m an overthinking, overdramatic girl, who has never been nonchalant about anything in her twenty-one years of living.
“Sloane.”
