Oh god, was it ever nagging her. Ever since the run-in with Chad, it had built and built until finally here she was, blurting it out just as her friend went for the door.
“Why didn’t he laugh?”
Lydia turned the second Letty spoke. Expression carefully neutral, but obviously just for show. She knew what Letty was talking about. It was obvious, despite the question she went with.
“Why didn’t who laugh?”
“You know who. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do but I’m pretending otherwise in the hopes you’ll come to your senses.”
“I just…if it was all just a game, why didn’t he laugh once it was all over? Why didn’t he toss away the mask and turn into a total dick? Mock me about my sex noises and jeer at me for believing him? He had to know that he couldn’t spin it out beyond that point. He had to get that I would never trust him again.”
“Maybe you shocked him. Maybe he had an attack of conscience.”
“That sounds right. That sounds plausible. I can believe that,” she said, but heard how the words sounded. Mechanical, like a robot version of her trying desperately to make things fit.
“And people can be two things at once. They can grow fond of you and think of you as a sweet person and still want to keep treating you like shit. In fact, most of the world revolves around that very premise. People treat the people they care about like garbage, shocker.”
“God that sounds even better. You’re really good at this, keep going.”
“So you’re not looking for some hope from me that he’s essentially not a piece of shit.”
“Christ no. The opposite. Tell me how bad he is. Tell me he’s the worst.”
She expected the answer to follow immediately after those words.
But none came. Instead, there was just a long silence.
There were just Lydia’s pitch-black eyes, regarding her with a gravity she suddenly couldn’t stand. She had to glance away, only when she did all she could see was Chad’s face. The way he had looked when he told her about the fuck fuck fuck and the email address and oh god.
“I talked to his buddy today. Only his buddy claims Tate hates him.”
“You mean Chad Kilpatrick? The guy with the dark hair and the monobrow?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. That’s him.”
“Tate does hate him. Or at least, they don’t hang out anymore.”
“They don’t? You know that for sure?”
Lydia paused, as though considering some next move. Maybe wondering if she should make it or not—and still hesitant when she decided the answer was yes. Her voice was halting when she spoke, her gaze too soft and sad. Several times she seemed to want to stop, but she kept going.
“I don’t know anything for sure. None of us do. That’s the whole problem with the human race—our big design flaw. Pretty much everything relies on us being able to guess what someone else is thinking, and yet we hardly ever get it right. We can’t possibly get it right. I could tell you a thousand times that I hate you, while one I love you was right there in my head all along.”
“That was…that’s a pretty cool way to look at things.”
“It doesn’t sound like you think it’s cool.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No. It sounds like you’re really upset.”
“Maybe because he said a thousand times that he hated me…” she started.
But she couldn’t finish the thought. It was too awful to even contemplate. Too hard to think about him in high school with that one I love you lodged in his head. Each time the idea surfaced, she came close to losing her lunch, and after a little while of sitting with it the tears just forced their way through.
They were running down her cheeks and invading the sensible parts of her brain.
And it was their fault that she blurted out what she did.
“I just can’t stop thinking about what Chad said to me. And I know, I get how stupid that is, and I see that it makes me an even bigger fool than you thought I was for falling for him in the first place but I—” she babbled, but thankfully Lydia cut her off with a hug. And words, good, good words.
“Oh, sweetheart, I don’t think you’re a fool. I think you saw a chance at something nobody ever gets, and you took it. Of course you took it.”
“And then I threw it away.”
“You had reason to. You had every reason to. The evidence was—”
“The evidence was a bunch of mostly cute pictures he sent to himself.”
More silence rushed in after that bombshell. Worse: Lydia pulled away.
Not by much, and only so she could look at Letty’s face.
But it still felt bad.
“Why would he send pictures to himself? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No. You’re right. It doesn’t. Unless you haven’t got the first fucking clue how to back your shit up and think emailing everything is definitely the way to go.”
“Are you saying here that Tate is that kind of guy or…”
“Tate is definitely that kind of guy. And he’s also the kind of guy who uses one password for everything, meaning I could definitely check if Chad’s claim is true.”
She looked at her friend then, though she didn’t know what she was hoping to find.
Understanding seemed like a long shot, until she saw the hopeful light in Lydia’s eyes.
“I think you should probably…”
“I know I should probably. But I just…I can’t. I can’t. I’m terrified of what I’m going to see. I’m terrified of what I won’t see. I’m terrified of everything always and I don’t know how to stop.”
“Then let me do it for you.”
She was firm now—so firm that Letty couldn’t imagine saying no. Though even if she had she wasn’t sure it would have had any effect. Lydia was already grabbing her laptop out of her bag and settling herself down on Letty’s desk chair. Feet up on the bed, fingers flying over the keys. It took her all of thirty seconds to bring up his email provider and fill in the details Letty provided.
Then it was just thirty seconds more of agonized attempts at reading her friend’s expression. Was it a yes? Was it a no? But more important: which one was the answer she wanted to hear?
It didn’t feel like either in those few moments.
It felt like she was sinking deep into a mess of her own creation.
And she was right to have that feeling, too.
“It’s his account. Password works. Plus there’s a subscription here to burger-of-the-month club and an order for a T-shirt bearing the legend ONLY DICKS CALL THEM CHICK FLICKS, so I think it’s safe for us to call this one.”
“He does really love burgers. And hates people calling them chick flicks.”
“I remember when the cafeteria had those sliders. I’ve never known anyone get so excited over what is essentially just bread and meat. I think he ate twenty-seven of them. In one bite.”
“I found twelve more wrapped in a napkin in his bedside drawer.”
She meant to lighten the mood a little with that confession.
Though somehow it just had the opposite effect.
“I fucked up, didn’t I?”
“We don’t know that for sure yet. He could have sent those pictures to other emails, too.”
“Which is also something we could easily check.”
“So let’s do it, then. Just tell me what I need to be looking at.”
“His other account is [email protected].”
“Remind me to tell you that’s cute if he turns out to be a good guy.”
“I will. Probably while crying some more and cramming comfort cheese into my mouth.”
There was a pause as Lydia typed. Fast but not too fast, like she didn’t want to seem eager.
And then she found what she was looking for, and couldn’t hide it. Her eyes darted across the screen, taking all of something in. Taking a lot of something in.
Then finally, “Well. You should
probably get out the good stuff. Maybe a nice brie or a block of Parmesan.”
“Is it that bad? Or that good? Or both together; I don’t know.”
“Brace yourself.”
“Just tell me, okay? What are you looking at?”
“Emails. Dozens and dozens of emails. From right after your accident.”
“Dozens of emails? No—there was one, there was just one. He only sent one and it was awful.”
“Yeah. I know. But the rest…I think you need to hear the rest. Here:
“So I guess your dad or whatever has blocked me. Well, he can go fuck himself, too. Who the fuck did he think he was telling me that I wasn’t welcome? Didn’t I fucking drive you to the hospital? Was that like not enough to show that I didn’t have anything to do with that dumb fuck’s sudden decision to ram you off a fucking cliff? Because you know I didn’t at all. I didn’t even know what he was going to do all—”
She held up a hand before Lydia could go any further, partly relieved that she hadn’t so drastically misjudged him. Partly sad, that everything was just the way she had thought. He might not have sent that video to other people, but he had said she deserved it. And he’d kept saying it, apparently, over several emails.
“Okay stop. Stop. This was a stupid idea. I don’t want to hear any more.”
“I think you should probably just listen to the next one.”
“The next one where he starts complaining about my mom, too?”
“No. The next one where he says: okay so I fucked up. I know that I fucked up, too. I should have guessed he was getting out of control and, like, stopped him, but I just fucking didn’t, all right? It would have been a totally dumb thing to say: please don’t actively harm the person we shit on all the time. And every time I tried to bring it up he just laughed about it so obviously I didn’t think he’d push you off a fucking cliff. Jesus. Cut me some slack.”
Lydia looked at her over the edge of the laptop when she was done.
Maybe to see what damage she was doing. Maybe because she knew she was doing no damage at all.
“Well…I guess that’s better.”
“Just wait. Just wait, God there’s so much more. Listen:
“I don’t know why I asked you to cut me some slack in that last email. You can’t hear me. You’re not holding any noose around my neck. So how come it fucking feels that way, huh? Why does it feel like I can’t breathe all the time and like I want to scream but I can’t because I’m being fucking strangled? I don’t even know what I’m being strangled by.
“Some days, I wonder if it’s my own hands.”
Letty closed her eyes about halfway through the words Lydia was reading.
It was easier that way to hear it. To just let her continue reading the email after that, like it was all just one big essay he’d written on the subject of her and him.
Why We Hurt Each Other, she thought.
Then Do It Again.
“You’re still in the hospital. I called up pretending to be someone else, some cousin of yours, and they told me you’re doing fine. They said you were lucky somebody got to you quickly and stopped the bleeding, but honestly I don’t even remember doing that. I guess maybe I must have, because the sweater I used is still covered in your blood. It’s stuffed in the back of my closet like that beating heart from the Poe story, only the weird thing is I don’t feel frightened of it. Sometimes I just take it out and hold it, and think about you spilling this messy map of nowhere all over the front.
“Sometimes I hold it to my face. It still smells like you.”
Letty almost told Lydia to stop after that.
But it was for different reasons than the first time. Her heart had started thumping at called up, and now seemed in imminent danger of collapsing in on itself, like a dying star. If Lydia kept on she was probably going to implode, and not just because of the words. She could hear Tate’s voice when Lydia spoke, so soft and warm. Could see his face, without the mask she constantly wanted to put back over it.
He had saved her life and never said a word about it.
“I guess it’s kind of crazy to keep emailing someone who isn’t on the other end. Like I’m just talking to an electronic ghost, or an echo of the person you are. Maybe an echo is all I can handle—I saw the real you on the street the other day and couldn’t get out of my car. I just sat there behind the wheel, watching you help your mom put groceries in the trunk. Thinking I should get out and go offer to do it for you guys, but scared of what would happen if I did. If you started crying or screamed or something like that, I don’t know if I could take it. I can’t even take it now, just thinking about it. Just knowing that this is the way things are between us forever. There is no coming back from this, no moment when I stop being a stupid jerk and apologize and explain why I was such an asshole and you forgive me.
“I let someone violently assault you.
“I am the kind of guy who allows a girl to be violently assaulted.
“What could I possibly tell you to make that okay?”
This, she thought, but couldn’t say.
He couldn’t hear her. She’d gotten the email years too late.
Lydia continued reading:
“Dear Letty,
“I came pretty close today to coming to your home. See, I thought I had figured out what I could do to make this whole thing right. I lay up every night this week planning what I was going to say to you, and what I was going to bring for you—not flowers, because you fucking hate flowers. And not chocolates, because I know how shitty that would look. I was going to bring you a first edition of The Amber Spyglass, because I know you love that book. But then I got to the end of your street, head all fucking full of how forgiving you would be, and it just hit me hard in the gut. I was doing all that shit for me.
“So that I could be a different person, a better person, a person worthy of someone like you. I wasn’t thinking about you. I’ve never thought about you. You weren’t even a whole human being to me, not even back when I was a dumb kid with a crush. I just saw someone I thought I could be happy with, and when you laughed in my face after I asked you out I saw you as a thief. A girl who stole all my hopes for my own future. I never thought for one second about your future. About what you wanted.
“And I’m still doing it now.
“I want you to make things okay for me.
“When I need to think about what would make things okay for you.”
Even Lydia’s voice was wavering now—but that was cool.
It made Letty feel less crazy for clutching at her chest.
“Dear Letty,
“I know how difficult the task ahead is going to be. It might even be completely fucking impossible. It’s not like I can plan how to make sure you have a great life from now on. I can’t force you to have fun and will you to be happy. But I know that I have to try. Even if you never know I’m doing it. Even if you do scream and cry; even if you beat the shit out of me. I want you to beat the shit out of me, so I always know that when I’m doing this I’m only doing it for you. Break my arm and I’ll just keep on going. Call me every name you know of; I won’t give up. Put it all on me; I can take it.
“As long as I know you are one step closer to the life you should have had, I can take it.
“All my love, sweet one,
“Tate.”
She managed to hang on until the very last line, and then it was just too much. The sob she had held in pushed past her lips and broke out into the room, loud and ugly and stupid. It was fine though, it really was, because Lydia practically did the same. She covered her face with her hands as soon as that Tate was out, so consumed by whatever she was feeling that she didn’t even stop to balance the laptop.
It slid off her knee and onto the floor, most probably fucked.
Not that either of them cared. The first thing that Lydia did in the aftermath was stand up, and wipe her eyes with her sleeves, and then clap her hands together.
“Okay, so basical
ly you have to go to him immediately. I fully accept that I gave terrible advice, and that he is not Satan himself, and just come on, get your jacket on, brush your hair, wipe your face, we are going right now to wherever he is. Right now, come on.”
“We can’t go right now. It’s…he…he’s at that college with the name that sounds like a bodily function, for some big wrestling thing. Trumpen or Furtberger or—”
“Parper U, you mean Parper U, Letty.”
“Yes, that is the one, that is exactly the one and it’s like a million miles away and oh my god I fucked up. I fucked everything up. And you know what’s going to happen now? He’s going to fucking die. He’s going to be fucking killed without ever knowing that I know all of this and I just…I just I’m sorry and I—”
It was Lydia’s hands on her arms that stopped her babbling. That slow stroking, with the little squeeze on the end. The way she urged her to sit back down, even though she didn’t remember springing to her feet. And then came her soothing voice, like soft rain on scorched earth.
“Calm down. Breathe, okay. Breathe,” she said, and Letty breathed. She believed everything was going to be okay—until Lydia attempted to reassure her. “He’s not going to die. This isn’t a shitty novel written by Nicholas Sparks. This is real life, where we just sit down and wait for his triumphant return, at which point you then tell him you fucked up with as much beautiful vigor as you just told me.”
Now her voice was trying to rise again.
She was shrugging off those soothing hands.
“But you don’t understand. The reason this has been nagging me is because he’s not going to throw the match. He’s not going to throw it. I messed him all up and now he’s not going to throw it.”
“Okay, so you’re seriously going off the deep end. But that’s cool, because I have Valium that my mom gave me in case college was a nightmare, and we can just take half and then maybe talk about why not throwing matches is a good thing.”
Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1) Page 23
