by A. K. Evans
“You spread all those rumors about me,” I told him.
A crease formed between his brows. “What?”
“You were the one behind all the gossip and all those horrible things people were saying that I did,” I accused him. “And you know what the worst part about all of it was?”
Mack didn’t respond. He seemed to still be stuck on the fact that I was dumping all of this on him.
I couldn’t hold myself back. I’d opened the floodgates, and it was all pouring out now. “I used to tell myself that at least people weren’t accusing me of sleeping around with half the school. Even if none of what was being said was true, at least they were only saying I was doing all of that with you. It made it hurt less because you were the guy I’d fallen in love with.”
Mack’s whole body went solid. “Marley…” He trailed off.
“Why did you do it?” I rasped.
He shook his head. “I never spread any rumors about you and me.”
“So, you’re telling me I didn’t hear you when you were talking to Kelsey at Ryder’s house that Friday before I told you never to talk to me again?” I asked.
Mack didn’t even hesitate when he replied, “You heard that conversation?”
I nodded and could only focus on the fact that he knew precisely what I was talking about. He didn’t even have to ask what the conversation was about.
“So… so, why are you mad?” he retorted.
Was he serious?
My eyes widened in shock. “Is that a serious question?”
“Yes.”
“You told Kelsey that I was oblivious to who was spreading the rumors,” I started. “You told her that you’d keep that a secret from me. Then you told her that you needed her to put one more thing out there for you. And Kelsey, being who she is, obviously agreed to do anything for you.”
“Yeah, and you realize how the rumors stopped the next week?” he shot back.
“Well, I wasn’t exactly getting rides with you to and from school any longer,” I noted. “People saw that we were no longer speaking to one another. Of course, the rumors stopped.”
Mack stared at me, completely dumbfounded. “No, Marley. Nobody realized that we weren’t speaking for a little while afterward. The rumors stopped because I made them stop.”
“What are you talking about? I heard you talking to Kelsey,” I reminded him.
His brows shot up. “Well, it seems you might have missed something.”
Obviously, I knew that I’d walked away before I listened to whatever disgusting rumor Mack was going to have her spread about me. But I’d heard enough. He made promises to her and told her I was oblivious.
“Marley, look at me,” Mack demanded.
At the harshness in his tone, I immediately brought my gaze to his.
“Kelsey liked me,” he began again.
Instantly, I was uncomfortable and put my hand up. I didn’t even want to think about that. “Please don’t, Mack,” I begged. “Do not sit here and tell me about the relationship you ended up forming with Kelsey after all of this happened. Knowing you were in cahoots with her was enough to break my heart. Seeing you hanging around with her after the fact, seeing you arrive at school some mornings with her sitting beside you, completely shattered whatever was left of my heart. I don’t need you to sit here and share the sordid details of whatever went down between you two in the physical sense.”
“I was never in a physical or romantic relationship with Kelsey,” he declared.
I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t you dare do that,” he ordered.
“Excuse me?”
He shifted closer to me on the couch, took my hand in his, and stated, “For years, I’ve watched you roll your eyes at me. Every time, it was like a knife to the gut. We’re here now, and we’re fixing this. You’re not going to roll your eyes at me anymore, Marley. I refuse to go back there. I will not lose you again.”
I didn’t respond.
This was mostly because I didn’t quite know how to respond.
Mack was holding my hand, providing me with comfort, but he was also speaking in a tone that was not to be questioned.
When I made no move to speak, Mack took it upon himself to continue. “Kelsey liked me, and I used that to my advantage,” he shared. “When she said things in school, people listened to her. I hated seeing what the rumors were doing to you, and I wanted them to stop. Kelsey never actually fessed up to being the one who spread them to begin with, but I knew it was her. I managed to convince her to be the one to make it stop.”
That made no sense. “Why would she ever agree to do that?”
“Because I promised her my friendship,” Mack answered. “She wanted me in any way she could have me. I wasn’t about to be in a relationship with her like she really wanted, but I could offer her my friendship if it meant that I could fix what was happening to you.”
“I still don’t understand,” I told him. “I heard you tell her that you needed her to put one more thing about me out there.”
“I did,” he confirmed.
I tried to pull my hand away from him and began squirming in the seat. “Let me go,” I pleaded.
Mack shook his head. “I can’t do that, Marley. I will not walk away from you again. And I’m definitely not letting you walk away from me again, either.”
“Please,” I begged.
He squeezed my hand a little tighter. “I’m sorry, but no. You need to hear this. I told Kelsey that everyone knew she had gone with Easton and me out to the bus when I hurt my shoulder. She was the only one with the exception of Easton who could rectify the situation. And since that was when it started, I knew it had to be her. People would listen to her before they would listen to Easton.”
“What did you do?” I questioned him.
“I told her that she needed to make sure that people knew that what they were saying wasn’t true,” he remarked. “I told her she needed to put it out there that she ended up coming back out to the bus earlier and saw us from outside. She was going to tell them that nothing ever happened between you and me. She agreed to do it because I promised her that I’d be her friend if she fixed that mess for you.”
Years had passed.
More than a decade had passed.
And while Mack had been around, I didn’t have him.
I lost out on so much time because I hadn’t stuck around to listen to what ‘rumor’ Mack wanted Kelsey to spread about me. If I had, I would have known that he was trying to make things better for me.
Instead, I hid in a bathroom and felt sorry for myself. I pushed him away and lost years of being his friend.
“Oh, God,” I whispered.
“Breathe, Marley,” he urged.
I heard his words, but I couldn’t manage to do what he wanted me to do. “Oh, God,” I repeated a little louder, sitting up and shifting my legs out to the side.
“Marley?” Mack called.
I got to my feet, yanked my hand from Mack’s hold, and echoed the same sentiment once again. “Oh, God.”
All I could do was pace. It was the only thing I could manage that made me feel like I was even close to keeping up with the thoughts racing through my mind.
How could I have done this?
I knew better. I knew who Mack was. Why didn’t I trust what I thought I knew about him? Why had I ruined years and years of friendship and love between us because I decided to react before having all the facts?
This was, by and large, the biggest mistake of my entire life.
No wonder all of our friends hadn’t cut him out of their lives over the years. They never experienced anything but genuine friendship from him. He didn’t betray them the way he betrayed me… or the way I stupidly assumed he betrayed me.
I wanted to go back and do it all over again. I wanted to tell my teenage self to not be so blind and foolish.
How different would my life have been if I had just stuck around for another minute or two to listen to what
he had to say? How much different would his life have been?
I ruined this not only for myself but for him, too.
Suddenly, I came to a stop and focused my attention on him.
Worry consumed his features as he stood there waiting for me to speak.
“You have every right to hate me for what I did to us,” I started, my throat aching as I pushed out each word. The tip of my nose began to sting when I continued, “I am so sorry, Mack. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to tell you how sorry I am for what I did.”
“It’s okay, Marley,” he assured me.
His voice was so sweet and gentle. That almost made it worse for me.
“It’s not okay,” I cried. “I destroyed our friendship for years because I assumed you were somebody that you could never possibly be. You did all of that for me; you made the rumors stop, and I thanked you by telling you the only way to prove I ever meant anything was for you to never talk to me again.”
“And I was stupid enough to think that was the way to do it,” he argued. “This doesn’t all fall on your shoulders. I could have tried harder to figure out what went wrong. I gave you what you thought you needed. I made the wrong choice, too.”
Tears rolled down my face. “I’m so sorry, Mack. How could you ever possibly forgive me?”
Mack didn’t respond with words. He stepped forward, wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me close to him.
The moment my face was buried in his chest and my arms wrapped around his waist, my body was wracked with sobs.
Maybe that was Mack’s way of telling me he forgave me, but I knew it would take me a lifetime to forgive myself, if that was even possible.
Thirteen
Mack
If it weren’t for the fact that my shirt was soaked from Marley’s tears of sadness and devastation, I would have loved everything about my current situation.
Technically, I guess I still loved it.
It was the heartbreaking knowledge that Marley was so upset that bothered me. But the fact that we were on the couch, she was in my arms, and most of her weight was resting on me did not upset me in the least. I just wished that the reason for this was completely different.
Years.
God, entire years.
A decade and a half of lost time because of this whole situation.
I didn’t blame Marley. I was just as responsible for what happened to us. When she pushed me away without any justification or reason, I should have dug my heels in and demanded answers. I might not have gotten them, but at least I wouldn’t be sitting here now feeling all this regret for what I didn’t do back then.
The thing about it all that wrecked me the most was knowing that Marley believed for so many years that I would have ever done what she thought I did. Marley was one of the biggest and best parts of my entire life. Nothing could have ever made me turn my back on her. Nothing would have ever caused me to bring the world of hurt on her that those rumors in high school did.
I absolutely hated that I had been looked at by others in school as some kind of hero at her expense. It was terrible. Not only because nothing had happened like that between us—nothing more than that one kiss that I could never forget—but because it ruined any desire I had to push for something more than just friendship with her.
My worry was that if I had pursued an actual relationship with her, Marley might have thought that I only wanted one thing. Though I couldn’t deny my physical attraction to her—she was effortlessly beautiful—it wasn’t her physical appearance that made me fall in love with her. It was everything else about her that made it so she was the only girl I’d ever considered dating back then.
Sadly, we missed out on that shot because of high school gossip. We couldn’t get it back, and there was no use dwelling on it.
At this point, it was done. It was over.
Neither of us could go back and change what had happened.
All we could now was learn from it and move forward together in a way that was healthy and meaningful.
What happened in high school needed to stay there. There was nothing left for me to say about it other than that we were both young and had made foolish choices.
Marley and I were both smart and had grown up now. We weren’t young kids making stupid decisions. We were adults who could talk about things like adults. We could process and power through anything, and I was relatively certain neither of us cared what other people thought of us now. Not the way we might have in high school, anyway.
The last thing I wanted now was for Marley to continue to punish herself for this. I’d already seen how much she was taking on her shoulders, and I knew I needed to figure out how to make that stop.
I had only one idea for that.
Marley needed to see that even though we’d lost so much time with each other, we still had everything that was ahead of us. We had now, and we had everything that would come from this.
I was going to start trying to make it all good for us right now.
Marley was no longer crying, but she was still holding onto me tightly. I had one arm wrapped firmly around her back while she kept her cheek pressed against my chest. My other hand was resting on her shoulder, and my thumb was gently stroking back and forth there.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Without moving a single part of her body, she replied, “I’m sorry, Mack.”
“Marley, I don’t want you to feel like you need to keep apologizing to me,” I informed her.
At that, she lifted her head and looked up at me. “How are you not angry?”
I took a moment to consider her question because she seemed so sure that someone in my shoes should feel anger. I didn’t feel any. Was I missing something?
“Maybe if I stood here and told you the truth and you didn’t believe me, I might feel angry,” I started. “But that’s not what happened. You listened, you believed me, and now we have a chance.”
“A chance?” she repeated.
I nodded. “Yes. We have a chance to move on and heal from this. We can repair our friendship. Maybe we can’t get back any of the time we lost, but I completely believe we can make it all good moving forward.”
“You should hate me for what I did to us,” Marley murmured.
“I don’t,” I assured her. “And you shouldn’t either. We’re here now, and we’re talking to each other. We’re going to get back on track, Mar. I promise you that.”
She was silent a moment as she took in my words and processed them. “Do you think it’ll be hard for you?” she asked.
“Do I think what will be hard?”
“Trusting me,” she answered. “Trusting that I’m not going to do something so ridiculously stupid like that again.”
I offered a smile, hoping it eased some of the tension she was feeling and insisted, “It will not be hard because I already do trust you.”
A rush of air left her lungs. Relief. I hated that she had any doubt about how I’d feel about her moving forward. If I had my way, she’d just know that I wouldn’t hold this against her. But since she didn’t, I was going to do my best to prove to her that she had nothing to worry about.
“How do think it’s going to be between us now?” she asked. “Do you really think we can get past this?”
“Absolutely. As long as we both want it to get there, I know that we can. In fact, I think that yesterday proved to us that we can do it,” I explained.
Shooting me a look of disbelief, she noted, “Yeah, but that was before we talked about everything.”
“Exactly. Up until a few minutes ago, you believed that I spread awful rumors about you in high school,” I pointed out. “Yet, despite believing that, you and I had a great time together yesterday.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I watched the surprise wash over Marley’s face. “You’re right.”
I let out a laugh. “It’s not very often I hear those words.”
For the first time all morning, Marley smiled. Se
eing it, I felt something squeeze in my chest. I felt like I’d waited a lifetime to see that. I’d gotten some of it yesterday, but there were too many questions lingering for me to really be able to appreciate it for everything it was worth. Now, it was mine.
I loved it.
And I wanted nothing more than to kiss that beautiful mouth. But I held myself back. This had been a rough morning, and I needed to make sure Marley was in a good place before I attempted to take those steps.
“Thank you, Mack.”
“For what?”
“For everything,” she started. “For looking out for me back then and doing what you could to fix that situation for me. For taking care of me here on this trip, even when I probably didn’t deserve it. Mostly, I’m just thankful to you for being a genuinely good guy. You were the best friend I ever had.”
“Have,” I corrected her.
“What?”
“You still have me, Marley,” I said. “I’ve got you back in my life. I’m not letting you go.”
Her eyes searched my face as her lips parted. “I missed you so much,” she rasped.
Now I was the one feeling relief. I tugged her toward me again, hugged her tightly, and replied, “I missed you, too.”
Marley and I stayed like that for a long time, holding on and finding comfort in each other’s embrace.
Eventually, and much to my dismay, we separated.
Far more light was now filtering into the room than when I first walked upstairs and found Marley curled up on the couch. I glanced out the window, noted what was happening outside, and said, “It looks brutal out there.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I don’t think anybody is going to be coming up here today.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “And unless that wind dies down, I’m guessing that riding is out of the question today, too.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
I grinned at her. “We’ve got a lot of time to make up for. I think we can figure out something. For now, I’m guessing we should start with breakfast.”
