Not Your Fault

“Before what?” she pries, her eyes lighting up at the anticipation of drama that I fully intend to give her.

“Before his ex-girlfriend showed up and yelled at him in front of everyone.”

“What!” Cat’s eyes get so wide, I’m tempted to press my hands to her eyelids so they don’t fall out of her skull. She covers her open mouth with her hands. “Oh my god oh my god,” she says behind her fingers, rocking back and forth on the couch. And then, as if reading my mind, she asks, “Was she hot?”

“That’s the thing,” I say, pulling my knees closer to my chest as I ignore another text from Nathan. “She looked like…” I pause, trying to think of the right words to describe the woman from tonight. Somehow, “trailer trash” doesn’t seem accurate enough. “She looked like someone who’s been around the block a few times,” I say. “Maybe even around the city. And possibly in jail.”

“No freaking way,” Cat says. “I mean, he’s obviously rich since he bought the gym. He could get hot girls.”

I shrug, trying to ignore the pain in my chest. “You have no idea. This girl was so…” I hold my hands up, and then squeeze them into fists when I can’t find the words to describe her.

“What’d she look like? I want details.”

I glance to the ceiling to think, but it isn’t necessary because I could never forget what that woman looked like. “She had brown wavy hair that looked either greasy or covered in hair spray. She had gigantic boobs, kind of a big stomach pooch and she wore shorts that were way too small for her.”

Cat scrunches up her face in disgust. I continue, “But the weirdest thing was this massive tattoo she had on her leg. I mean it covered her whole freaking leg. It wasn’t a beautiful tattoo either; it was poorly done and just looked like an ink gun threw up on her.”

Cat’s mouth falls open. “Was it a dragon?”

The knots in my stomach twist themselves into knots. I ask a question that I’m not sure I want to know the answer to. “Do you know who I’m talking about?”

Cat nods. “Lucy Delanco.”

A chill runs down my arms and legs when Cat says her name. There are so many things I want to know about this woman, so many questions I want to ask. But none of it is my business, and I don’t see how knowing anything about Kris’s ex-girlfriend would benefit me in any way. Because I am not allowed to like him. And I’m not allowed to care about who he dated after he dated me. But then Cat gets up and grabs her iPad from her purse, holding it up as if it’s the answer to my unasked questions.

“Wanna stalk her Facebook?”

My chest runs cold, and nothing but reckless adrenaline and the thirst for forbidden knowledge flows through me. I know what I should do, but I don’t care. “Yes,” I tell her. “Definitely.”

“It’s so ironic that you just ran into her,” Cat says as she searches through her massive friends list to find the one we’re looking for. “I had a few high school classes with her but we were never really friends. I had forgotten all about her until about two weeks ago when she randomly added me on Facebook and I went through her photos, trying to remember who she was. The tattoo thing tripped me out, though. I knew she was wild in high school, but damn.” She clicks on a profile whose default picture is of Lucy holding a newborn baby.

I suck in a deep breath. Cat shakes her head. “Don’t worry, that’s her niece. It’s not Kris’s kid or anything,” she says with a snort. I shrug as if I don’t care, but I’m glad Cat answered my mental question.

We skim through her timeline, looking for any mention of Kris. Cat scrolls back six months of stupid status updates and sarcastic e-card shares until we find something remotely useful. “Life changes. People break promises. Oh well, one day I’ll find my prince charming.”

“Looks like they broke up six months ago,” Cat says. “Bad for her, good for you.”

“Why would you say something like that?” I ask her, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks in embarrassment.

“Uh, duh. Because you want him.”

“No I don’t,” I say with rock-solid conviction. “He can die for all I care.”

“Pah-leeze,” Cat says all dramatically. “You want him so bad.” She clicks on Lucy’s photos. “Let’s see if she kept any pictures of him. I want to see what he looks like now. I barely remember him from when I was ten.”

As much as I want to get up and walk away out of fear of finding a photo of Kris and Lucy sucking face, I stay right where I am, looking over Cat’s shoulder at her iPad. Lucy has hundreds of photos, mostly from partying, drinking and going to rock shows. “You’re like twenty thousand times hotter than this bitch,” Cat says, pausing on a particularly unflattering photo of one very drunk Lucy posing with the Hooters girls.

“I’m done looking at her,” I say, reaching out to close the Facebook app. “I think maybe I should go to bed now.”

Cat swats my hand away and flips to the next image. “Oh my god. Sweet baby Jesus that man is gorgeous.”

My breath catches in my throat, silencing me from any kind of rebuttal. But there’s nothing I could say anyway, because she said it all. Kris Payne stares at us from the photo—shirtless and in board shorts, standing on the beach with a goofy smile on his face. He has six pack abs and chiseled arms, strong shoulders and one tiny dimple in his left cheek.

The way the photo was taken makes it look like he’s staring right at me through the pixelated screen. I open my mouth to say something, but all that comes out is, “Damn.”

The front door slams shut and I spin around, not realizing that it had even been open. Mild panic grips me at the thought that an intruder might have just walked in my house, but then my eyes meet a pair of familiar eyes staring at me from across the room.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Nathan stares at the iPad in Cat’s hand, the photo of Kris filling up the entire screen. “So are you fucking your old boyfriend now? Is that why you’re ignoring my texts?”