All alone in your bed, dreaming of me.
Turns out, I didn’t need you to be happy.
I exhaled hardlike I’d been punched.
He was rubbing it in my face.
The refrain he came back to again and again in the song was, “You deserve it.”
The sonofabitch wrote a whole song just to gloat that I’d humiliated myself. No one else would know he was talking about me, but there was no doubt in my mind. He managed to get too many references in there only I’d be able to put together.
Made yourself smaller for him
Crawled on your knees
And not like you did for me
You’ll never do that again
Called the fuck out. How could he know I made myself smaller for Nate? Surely I was imagining this was about me.
I did make myself smaller. It was something I’d been thinking through a lot since we broke up. I’d given up escorting because he never would’ve accepted it. I swore I’d never do that for a man.
By the end of the song there was no doubt in my mind.
What a callous fucking asshole. I guess he’s been nourishing that grudge all these years, keeping it alive and healthy. Move the fuck on, dickhead, and write about someone else!
I hugged myself tighter, adrenaline flooding my system. He’d obviously seen the video. Could he possibly have pieced together that he was thesomeone elseI drunkenly referenced?
If he had…thiswas his response?
You deserve it.It was the refrain of my nightmares, the knowledge that every piece of heartache in my life I’d brought upon myself. My brother was gone because of me. Hurting Zane was my fault. Chugging a bunch of alcohol then handling Nate’s proposal so poorly that millions of people had been fascinated by it…brought that upon myself too.
Did I deserve to have it all rubbed in my face?
I stood up, ready to flee, then sat back down remembering I had color processing in my hair. I wanted to go home, couldn’t help the panic that consumed me, irrationally waiting for everyone else in the salon to put the pieces together.
No one will know it’s about you. No one will know.
Maybe it would’ve been nice for him to be at Alex’s house after all so I could yell at him. As though I’d confront him in front of his family, one of whom was my client.
I felt sick, which sent a new wave of panic flooding through my system.
You are not going to puke in public again. You’d chugged too much champagne without eating enough and then he hit you with the surprise proposal.
This is not actually a thing you do regularly.
You’re fine.
…and you didn’t need that motherfucker to be happy either.
2
ZANE
Now
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