Page 71 of Dirty Chorus

“He was here the other night. What were you two doing?” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. With each breath I inhale, it gets tighter by the second.

“Are you watching me?” It’s as though my lungs were packed into a small cardboard box. “Everywhere I go you're there. You even followed us to the movie.” My palms grew slick around my purse. My throat tightens. The words feel like shards of glass. He doesn’t answer the question and it makes it worse. “You cheated on me, we have been broken up for almost two months.”

“Your little boyfriend texted me on your phone this morning. He gave me a little present of you.” Brody’s gaze almost feels like a slap across the face, and the words are like an invisible rash against my skin. “Pretty bold of him to go through your phone. When I did, you slapped me. Remember? Me almost crashing my fucking car because I went through your phone?”

“He did what?” I ask and dig through my purse for my cell. I pull it out, typing in my passcode and click on my messages. My thumb hovers over the text message with Noah flipping Brody off with a picture of me asleep behind him.

“So now it’s okay for your boyfriend to go through your shit,” he says, and I glance up at Brody and then back down at my phone as the screen blurs. I go back and forth between both of them as an unsettling wave floods into my bloodstream.

“Why do you care?”

“Because I had you first, and I still want you,” he says without the cold, twisted tone in his voice. “Here is something else for you.” He scrolls through his phone and puts his phone up to my face.

“That’s it, Trouble.”

“Don’t stop. Please don’t...I want you to be my... I want you to make me come. No one has made me come before.”

“Then, come for me.” I hear my own moans coming from his speaker and can picture Noah’s eyes watching me so carefully, his gaze too sweet and tender as his fingers got me so high off his touch. That moment entirely private between us is somehow on his phone.

“You’d give it up to him, but you don’t wanna sleep with me?” Brody asks.

“You have a camera in my room?! What the hell!”

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that,” he groans.

“You cheated on me.” I cough it up, and I beg for the numbness to shield me and envelop me again. “How am I supposed to feel? I can’t just let that go. You said we were going to talk, and I find you... fucking my brother’s girlfriend.”

“You’re the one who ended it.” He tilts his head back and lets out a shallow breath.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You blocked me.” He points a finger at his chest. “Remember?” he asks, running one hand over his face. “You told me you were done. Now you’re fucking him? Do you love him? Huh?” He throws his hands up.

“Why do you care how I feel about him? You didn’t respect my boundaries. I didn’t want to sleep with you. But the entire time we were together you’ve been sleeping around with countless girls.”

“But you whore it up with him? You’re nothing but a hypocrite!”

“He doesn’t just want me for sex, Brody!”

“I know. I have a problem. I can fix this.” He steps forward, reaching for my hand and taking it. His thumb rubs across my blue veins.

“You can’t.”

“You won’t have to play roulette if you give me another chance. I’m sorry about threatening to post our videos. I shouldn’t have done that.”

I pull away from his grip and take one step backwards. I’ve convinced myself I’m over Brody. The dust should be settled between us, but he seems to like to kick it back up into the air.

“Stop following me around. Stop threatening me. Just leave me alone. I’m fucking destroying that camera of yours!”

“But, baby, come on. I love you.”

I bunch up my fists and hold them up to my chest, shaking them as I say, “Leave me alone!” I swirl a foot around and make a shortcut across the grass. Surprisingly, he doesn’t chase and badger me. He stands there like a lost puppy, as if I'm the one who broke him. But I know what I'm doing right now, I’m finding that camera and smashing it in the backyard.

“You’ve been ditching me for Brody!” Payton snaps with a high-pitched tone. She’s rampaging through my closet, tossing hangers and shirts left and right. “How could you! After everything he’s done?” Her words slap me across the face, and she’s completely delusional. “I saw you two talking this morning!”

I crumble onto the mattress, with my arms hanging limply between my legs. “You’re making a mess out of my closet,” I say as a hanger hurls across the room, hitting the floor with a thud. Another knocks over my neatly arranged nail polish on my vanity.

“You’ve been ditching me this summer for him. You're totally keeping it from me, you two are back together.” My favorite black dress flings into the air, landing in a heap of clothes on the floor. I hope she realizes she’s picking up my room if she continues to treat it like the trailer she lives in.