by Kelly Myers
If it had just said “Claire,” I might have rationalized it. Claire is a common name, after all.
But he saved her contact information under her full name. Claire Dobbs. And from his lock screen, I can see the first line of her message: Try again! Pls I have to see her.
Despite my riot of emotions, my fingers move with precision brought on by an overwhelming need to know the truth.
He has a four-digit passcode. His birthday is the third of August. I know because he spent it with me, long ago, lounging in the patchy Torrins Park grass and giving each other lazy kisses beneath the scorching sun.
I type in 0803. The phone opens.
Oh Zach, you idiot.
Within half a second, I have the conversation between him and my mother open. It only takes me a few more seconds to realize this is going to be bad. It’s going to be worse than bad. It’s going to be heartbreaking.
Because it’s not just a few texts. I scroll through days and days of texts, and all of them are about me.
A few weeks ago, Zach texts her that the plan worked. He ran into Bea in the Merch Mart.
I clench my teeth and hiss in pain. How dare he call me by a nickname. Especially to her.
Claire sends back a bevy of smiley faces. When Zach tells her a dinner is scheduled, she reminds him that “Bea can be stubborn, don’t be 2 obvious.”
That weekend, Zach texts that the dinner went well, but I’m not that into talking about the past. He says we might hang out again. Funny, there’s no mention of him seducing me. Maybe the sex was just something for him, a little perk for all his trouble.
I cover my mouth as the conversation continues. Claire says she’s thinking of calling me again from a new number, does Zach think that might go over well? He says he’s not sure. He’s pretty sure I don’t trust him.
Of course I didn’t trust him. Only I was more concerned that he was dealing drugs. With the texts right in front of me, I decide that the reality is worse. This feels like such a betrayal. The whole time he was just being nice to me as a favor to my mother. He was the bait she put out to try and lure me back to her. Just so she could ease her own guilt.
It’s clear I’ve been weighing on Claire’s conscience. She says over and over to Zach that she just wants to apologize. That he needs to tell me that she’s doing so much better now.
I cringe when I recall what he told me. I asked him about my mother after Debroah said he was in touch with her, and he downplayed it so well. He said it was only now and then. He said she was working on herself, part of some ex-dealers anonymous group.
He deceived me, but I was stupid enough to fall for his every move. Even when he took me out for lunch and comforted me over how jumpy I got about Torrins, that was part of his play to get me to talk about my mother.
And when he came to my apartment and kissed me and touched me until I couldn’t think straight, that was all a distraction. He wanted me to think he was harmless. Just a bit of fun.
She doesn’t trust me yet.
That’s what he wrote the day after he fucked me in my kitchen. He was right. I didn’t trust him, but I thought he was involved in some dangerous drug scheme.
He probably only slept with me to get me to trust him. The irony is that I only started to trust Zach when the sex ceased, and we started to talk. When he told me he had left the dealing behind for good, and I believed him. When he showed up at my soccer game and told me I looked cute in the uniform.
And last night, when I was so mad at him for questioning me about my mother that I broke down, and he just held me and listened. Even though I was frustrated, I still trusted him.
I want to scream when I remember that before I started crying, I almost had him. I made that comment implying he was on my mom’s side because they were having some sordid affair. I didn’t actually believe that, I just wanted to say something hurtful and dismissive, but I was closer to the truth than I realized.
I didn’t think that he had been asking about my mother with any motive other than trying to understand me. I was self-centered enough to think that he just cared about me and wanted to know why I ran from the past. I was like a dumb teenage girl, flattered by the attention of a guy.
The one silver lining of the texts is that it’s clear there’s nothing romantic between them. Or if there is, it’s not manifested in the texts. They’re polite and respectful. Zach is doing Claire a favor because he knows it means a lot to her to see me. She thanks him over and over.
Then, early this morning, he texted her that he wasn’t sure he could “keep this up.”
I stare at the words he typed while sitting in my own apartment:
Beatrice needs space, I’m not gonna push her anymore.
It’s too little, and it’s definitely too late.
My skin is crawling, I look up and see him approaching the truck. He’s got that stupid charming smile on his face, and I want to slap it off.
Anger solidifies in my soul, and it is as heavy and unyielding as concrete.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The door pops open, and Zach climbs in, chattering like an eager puppy.
“So I was thinking maybe we could drive to –”
He freezes when he sees my face. I have no doubt that I’m a chilling sight. I feel like I could shoot laser beams out of my eyes, I’m so livid.
His mouth goes slack as he sees his own phone in my hand.
My hands are almost gentle as I slowly hand his phone back.
“You asshole.” I’m proud of myself for how steady my voice sounds. There is not going to be anymore crying. Tears got me nowhere. Every feeling of comfort and excitement I had when I woke up this morning was just a cruel joke. The rug has been ripped out from beneath my feet, but I’ll die before I let him see me cry about it.
“It’s not what you think.” He slumps against the back of the seat, as if he already knows how weak his argument is.
“Oh, so you haven’t been reporting back to my mom on my every word?” I ask. “And you didn’t lurk around my office as a favor to a woman that you know I have zero interest in seeing and for a good reason.”
“She’s been working on herself, and I thought that maybe she deserved a second chance.”
I roll my eyes at his words, but he plows on, determined to say his piece.
“But I understand where you’re coming from now,” he says. “After last night, I would never pressure you to reconnect. Bea, I care about you.”
I cut off whatever misguided declaration he was about to make in a last-ditch effort to get in my pants or make me forgive my mom or possibly both by slicing my hand through the air between us. “You fucked me in order to con me into trusting you so you could force me to talk to my addict mother – do you understand how insulting that is?”
Zach’s face is pale as a sheet, and for once, he’s got nothing to say. No witty rejoinder. No clever comeback.
I unbuckle my seatbelt and zip up my coat.
“You tell my mother that I will file a restraining order against her if she reaches out or tries to send another stalker after me.” There’s no way I’m involving the law in my messy family life, but it feels powerful to pretend I might. “And I hope you enjoy your miserable life.”
I reach for the door, but Zach lays a hand on my arm. I jerk away and push at the door.
“Let me just drive you home, ok?” he says. “Please.”
“Stop acting nice, you’re not a nice person,” I say. “And the worst part is, I always knew that, so it's a shame on me, really.”
I hop out of the cab, and turn back to look at him. When an animal is injured or caught in a trap, it goes feral. It lashes out with its teeth and claws, just trying to cause as much pain as its feeling.
I know Zach has hurt me bad, because all I want to do is lash out at him as hard as I can.
“The reason you were left behind in Torrins is because you were never good enough to get out of there,” I say. “You’re no good, just like Finn and my mo
ther and your father and the rest of that stupid place.”
Right before I slam the door and take off running down the street, I see his stricken face. And I know my words hit him in a weak spot.
If I hadn’t recognized the pain in his eyes, I would have known for certain that I hurt him when he doesn’t chase me down and insist I get back in the truck so he can make sure I get home safe.
Once I’m out of sight of the construction site, I call a cab and stomp up and down the road for ten minutes while I wait.
Between the cold air and my frantic pacing, my anger starts to evaporate. I used it all to make sure Zach felt hurt, but now I’m left alone and in agony.
I don’t want to hurt anyone else. I just want everything to go back to the way it was. I want to erase the last few weeks. I was perfectly happy before Zach showed up and opened the door to my past so all my nightmares could come flooding into my present. And then, worst of all, he showed me a glimpse of a future so beautiful, I was reduced to a giggling sap this morning.
It was fake. All of it was fake. And even if he does care about me, it doesn’t matter, because I can’t trust him anymore. He lied to me. He could have told me when I first asked him about his relationship with my mom.
I asked him last night as well. I asked him point blank if he spoke to my mother about me since his questions over pizza had been so jarring. He had said no.
The cab pulls up, and I slide in, just as a tear slips out of my eye. I swore I wouldn’t cry, but at least Zach isn’t around to see it.
I don’t want to be alone though. The driver asks for my address, and without thinking too much, I give him the address of Elena’s school in Lakeview.
I realize how silly my plan is when I’m standing outside the St. Alphonsius Middle School with no way to get inside the building, since I’m not a parent or a teacher, and I have no valid reason to be there.
I can’t help but smile when I imagine myself going up to the secretary at the front desk and begging her to let me in since my heart has just been shattered into a million pieces.
I sit on a bench and text Elena. I tell her that I know it’s out of the blue, and it’s not an emergency or anything, but I’m outside the school. I ask her if she has a free period coming up.
Within fifteen minutes, Elena appears at the doors. She runs over to me, her coat flying behind her.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” Her hands flutter around me, apparently trying to detect my mortal wound.
“I said it wasn’t an emergency!”
“You always say it’s not an emergency when it is!” Elena protests. “Remember you fell off your bike?”
I sigh as I recall my broken wrist and my phone call to Elena asking if she can give me a ride to the hospital, but it was no big deal if she couldn’t. She has a point. Maybe after the childhood I endured, nothing else could really be called an emergency in comparison.
“Well, I’m physically ok.” My lip starts to tremble, and I bite down on the inside of my cheek. “It’s Zach.”
Elena’s eyes are filled with such sympathy that I want to curl up on her lap and let her take care of me for the rest of the day.
“Let’s go to my office, ok?” she says. “I’ll get you a guest pass and all that.”
Elena leads me into the school and through the hallways like she would lead a lost child. When we finally reach her tiny office, nestled in a distant corner, I perch on the chair across from her desk. I look at all the piles of books and papers.
“Did you leave a class to come to me?” I ask.
“No, it was just a study hall,” Elena says. “Don’t worry about that, someone covered for me.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
Elena waves my apology away. “Tell me what happened.”
So I tell her everything. I start with the messages I saw on his phone, but then I have to explain last night for her to understand how awful it was to discover the conversation with my mother. And to explain last night, I have to go all the way back to the summer I was seventeen. This time I don’t glaze over me and Zach and my mother and Finn. There’s no point. The past can’t hurt me anymore than it already has.
I describe how Zach was like this beacon of joy in an otherwise miserable time. How he had a strange loyalty to his father that caused him to do bad things, but how he broke away from it. As I describe the situation, it almost sounds like I admire Zach for getting away from the mess his father forced him into. I guess I do admire him.
When I get to the night I discovered how bad my mother’s addiction was, I don’t cry. Saying it out loud to Zach somehow made it less terrifying. It happened, and it was awful, but I survived. And sharing with Zach last night – it had felt good.
“I felt like we had this connection,” I say. “It’s stupid but I felt like maybe we weren’t ready to be together when we were young, but now the universe had aligned or something dumb like that, and we were getting this second chance.”
I can tell that Elena, a devout lover of astrology, is actually intrigued by the whole “universe aligning” concept, but she doesn’t pry. She just listens in stunned silence as I bring the story to its abysmal end.
“The whole time, he was only pursuing me as a favor for my mom,” I say. “He was just trying to get me to talk to her again.”
“Oh, Bea.” Elena reaches out and hugs me. I bury my face into her dark hair and just let her hold for a second.
When she pulls away, her brows are knitted together with worry. I don’t want her to agonize over this. It’s not worth it.
“The worst is over,” I say. “I was so mean to him after I saw the texts, he won’t contact me again, and I’ll just change my number anyway. I just wanted to tell someone.”
Elena sighs. “Has anyone ever told you that you are insanely good at downplaying your pain?”
“I’m really not,” I say. “You should hear my thoughts, it’s constant complaining.”
“That’s true for everyone,” Elena says. “But you’re the only person I know who doesn’t complain out loud when she has a really, really good reason to.”
She nudges me in the shoulder and smiles. I shrug. I can’t change how I am.
“Bea, it means a lot that you came to me after all this,” she says. “But I’ll be honest, I don’t even know what to say, this is such a rough situation.”
“It’s ok.” I don’t want her to feel bad. “I’ll just go home and rest for a bit, I just wanted to see a friendly face first.”
“No, listen, I’m not abandoning you,” Elena says. “I’m just saying we need back-up.”
I raise my head. Elena is alive with energy, and in that moment, I’ve never loved her more. She is determined to fix this horrendous situation, and if she can’t fix it, she’s at least going to put a dent in it.
“You go home,” she says. “Take a bath. I’ll tell Marianne and Zoe, and we’ll all meet at yours for an Emergency Meeting.”
We started calling Emergency Meetings in college. Basically, if someone in the group calls it, we all have to gather and help that person out. We can never abuse the power of calling an Emergency Meeting. It has to be a true crisis, but once you call it, no one can ignore the summons.
“I don’t know if I need it,” I say.
“You don’t have a choice,” Elena says. “I am calling it by proxy on your behalf.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It is if I say it is.” Elena puts on her best school teacher voice, and I have to relent.
Elena gives me one last hug and walks me out of the school.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she says. “We’ll figure this out.”
She looks so determined that I just nod and wave goodbye.
There’s nothing to figure out though. Zach lied. I fell for a scam. Oh, and my mother is still crazy.
Even so, it will be nice to see my friends. Maybe they’ll even be able to convince me that, given time, everything will return to normal.
The worst part is, I’m not sure if I want to be normal. I want what I had with Zach, even though the whole thing was based on a lie.
Chapter Twenty-Five
If it hadn’t been such a gut-wrenching day, I would be tempted to laugh at my friends’ varying reactions to my update.
I tell them the whole saga as we sit in my living room with a bottle of wine on the coffee table.
When I finish, everyone is silent for a beat.
“Holy shit,” Marianne says. “Your life is an actual soap opera.”
“Don’t make her feel bad!” Elena protests. She pats my hand over and over. “None of it is her fault.”
“The house he was building was in Kenilworth?” Zoe asks. “That’s a nice neighborhood.”
“Zoe, now is not the time to be detail-oriented,” Marianne jokes.
“I’m just saying, he went from out on the streets dealing drugs to running a successful business, that’s gotta count for something.” Zoe swallows when she sees Elena’s offended expression. “I mean, he’s clearly ruthless, all successful businessmen are, it makes sense that he played with you like that.”
“But are we sure he was playing?” Elena asks. “I mean, Bea, is there the slightest chance that he actually does care for you? He just thought he was helping you?”
Zoe’s scoff shows us exactly what she thinks of that pipedream.
“Elena, I know you’re a romantic, but the problem isn’t whether he cares, it’s that he lied,” I say. “I asked him point blank about my mother more than once, and he lied.”
“Wait, so you do think he cares?” Marianne’s ears have perked up. “And it’s just become a big misunderstanding?”
“I think he stalked her and spied on her and reported her every move to her mother,” Zoe snaps. “This isn’t some Shakespeare play, there’s no misunderstanding.”
“Yes, but maybe he could be redeemed,” Elena says.
“Whose side are you on?” Zoe asks. “Because I’m on Bea’s side, not the crazy spy-for-hire.”
