It felt like a long distance hug from my best friend, and I still didn’t feel any better.
Something was breaking in me, very fast, and I didn’t know how to stop it. That man was way the hell deeper under my skin than I thought. Than I ever believed I’d let him get.
Who had I been fooling here, really? Myself?
“He thinks he’s better than me,” I said in a small voice that didn’t even sound like mine.
It kinda sounded like a younger, stupider Devi, though. The one I’d been acting like a hell of a lot lately.
“What?” Katie said. “What do you mean?”
I sighed. “Okay. Listen. This is about high school again. Don’t judge!” I added quickly, when I realized I might be sounding like a broken record here. I groaned and forced it out. “Argh. So, here’s the thing. You know Dane and his friends used to hang out on the bleachers at the back of the field where the girls’ soccer team practiced, smoking pot and being too cool for the world. And they had their gross ranking system for us; scale of one to ten, wouldn’t-do-her-with-a-bag-over-her-head to drop-dead-fucking-gorgeous.”
“Yeah,” Katie kinda groaned. “I know.”
“I loved that you sometimes came out to my practices,” I told her. “I loved that my best friend, this cute, cool girl from another school, came to see me play. But even you couldn’t make me any cooler at my school.”
“Devi…”
“I was glad you overheard the guys talking about me. You told me they gave me a six, Katie, and that was only after they compromised, because one of them gave me a two. And you told me that one of them called mefugly. And sometimes I wish you hadn’t. But… I’m glad you did, so I don’t ever forget who he really is. That word still rings through my ears every time I look in the mirror and see what’s left of my scar.”
“Devi. I’m so sorry,” Katie said, as if she had anything to apologize for.
“The way Dane used to barely look at me, like I was so many miles beneath him… Katie, I know it was him.”
“Okay, first of all,” she said, “you don’t know that it was him. I overheard it, and I don’t even know who said it. Second of all, it was high school! You told me he just gave you the best sex of your life. If he thought you were fucking ugly, that would not be the case. And third, if it was a private conversation among guys that I wasn’t meant to hear, but I just happened to overhear, maybe there was more going on there than we know—”
“Oh, don’t justify it.”
“Hey, come on. He was a kid. Weren’t we all stupid in high school?”
“Not that stupid,” I said stubbornly.
Katie sighed. “Okay, for real, Devi. You were always the smart one. Way too smart for your own good. You’re dissecting his every intention, looking for the evil lurking inside like old mold. But the fact is he asked you to marry him.You.”
“To look good for his family.”
“Devi…” I could hear Katie soften. “Maybe he just likes you. Maybe you’re looking for reasons to demonize him because you like him too, and that bothers you.”
“Why would I be bothered by that? I mean, if I did legit like him?”
“Because maybe you think you’re better than him.”
Well fucking ouch.
She was right, though.
Hadn’t I always told myself I was better than him, deep down? So that he wouldn’t have the power to hurt me?
And when he asked me to marry him to impress his family—because his family was impressed with me—underneath it all… it hurt.
He never once saidhewas impressed with me.
I’d told myself, like I’d always told myself, that he was beneath me so it didn’t matter. If he didn’t notice me, if he didn’t want me, if he didn’t like me… even if he didn’t want to marry me despite the fact that he would, to please his family…
None of it mattered.
But if that was true… why did it feel so damn good when we were together?
