“I think his family owns a donut shop?” she says.
“If you don’t want to date him, I will,” Cinna teases and they laugh.
Their voices sound so far away.
Cinna glances up from her phone and her eyes widen. “June? You okay?”
I can’t speak. I hold the phone out to her.
She crosses the room to take it, giving me a weird look. Her eyes move across the screen, and I watch her face shift from confusion to fury in the span of two seconds. She sucks in air and looks ready to scream.
“Aubrey!” Cinna’s voice cuts through the air. “Get in here. Now.”
Aubrey steps out of the bathroom holding a cosmetics bag. She glances between us with her brows furrowed. “What?”
Cinna gets in her face. “What the fuck is this?” She holds the phone toward Aubrey, screen out.
Aubrey squints at it. “Uh, a phone?”
“Don’t try to be cute. It was in your bag.” Cinna’s voice is climbing and I’m glad she’s able to speak because my brain has completely shut down. All I can do is stand here and watch. “It’s got every text that was sent to June,” Cinna says. “Everysingleone. They all came from this phone and it was inyoursuitcase.”
Aubrey stiffens and her mouth drops open. “Uh, okay. I’ve never seen that phone in my life. It makes no sense that it was in my bag.”
“Bullshit!” Cinna is yelling now, which I’ve never seen her do. “How could you do this? It’s so sick to send these texts. I-I can’t even?—”
“I didn’t do anything! What are you talking about?”
They’re screaming at each other, but all their words are a blur in my head because my heart is pounding so loud. Aubrey’s voice breaks on the word “never” and Cinna’s hands are shaking, but I feel so far away. I’m not even in my body, watching this happen to someone who looks like me.
I walk out of the room, and don’t say a word to either of them.
When I get to my room, I close the door and sit on the bed. Through the wall, Cinna and Aubrey’s fight continues, muffled but fierce. I hear Cinna say “you’re sick” and Aubrey say “I’m telling you it’s not mine” and then louder, both of them at once.
I stare at my hands in my lap. They’re still numb. My brain keeps looping. How? How could Aubrey do this? Why? We’ve been such good friends. Comforted each other. If Cinna wasn’t already my bestie, I could see Aubrey being that. If I ever got married, she’d be a bridesmaid.
I trusted her.
Why? Why would she do this to me?
I hear footsteps stomping through the hallway. Aubrey’s voice is brittle and cracking as she yells, “I don’t need this shit!”
Her boots hit the stairs. The front door opens and crashes shut hard enough that I feel the vibration through the bed frame.
Carter’s voice calls out from somewhere. “What the hell was that about?”
There’s silence for a long moment. Then my door opens and Cinna is there, face flushed, eyes wet.
She doesn’t say anything. She crosses the room and sits beside me on the bed and puts her arm around me. I lean into her and the tears finally come like a downpour. My bestie holds me tighter, her chin on top of my head, and I cry into her shoulder because someone I trusted was the person hurting me and I can’t make that make sense no matter how many times I try.
Cinna’s hand moves in slow circles on my back. “I’ve got you,” she says softly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
JUNE
Rain splatters against the car window, turning everything the same shade of gray. The rain has been falling steadily all day, turning the streets into mirrors. Everything outside is monochrome but also with this distant, blocky style. I think of the painter Giorgio de Chirico and his surrealist art. Buildings that pass by are monoliths, casting long, geometric shadows that slice across asphalt. And the perspective of the world is off. Distant buildings are too large, like a massive wall trapping me here.
God, it’s depressing. Just like my life.
