Ex Games

“It was me.”

My shoulders crashed as I cried hard, wanting so badly to crumple to the ground. Mason reached out for me but I pushed him away, sobbing as I thought about how my gut feeling was right. Completely and utterly right. I hadn’t felt good about getting back with Aaron after the break because I shouldn’t have. He did cheat on me that night. He did have sex with Whitney Decker. And it wasn’t even just once. The texts he’d just sent me included a picture for every round they went for, and they drove his message home with a confirmation of his checkin and checkout times at the hotel where they’d gotten a room. Worse than that, the pictures were all screenshots from Whitney’s phone. He hadn’t even looked at his own that night – hadn’t even known I was in trouble at the bar till he saw all the missed texts and voicemails from Sofia.

By the time he called her back, she told him to forget it, that I was home. And it was then that he listened to the voicemail left by Mason. Once he called him back, they put their stories together. Mason let Aaron pretend it was him and together, they agreed to never speak of the night again.

“I didn’t know he cheated, Taylor, or I would’ve never agreed to let him have it,” Mason said, remorse thick in his voice. “And even then I was going to tell you. We didn’t talk like that but I was going to.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Grief dragged at his features, his whole posture. “I thought on it for too long. And then it was too late.”

“Because I got pregnant.”

“Yes.”

I was so livid I could hardly see anymore. Then again, it might’ve been the tears. Funny enough, while they blinded me, I could clearly picture the life with Mason that could have started two years if he had just told me the fucking truth. “Had I known the real story,” I murmured shakily, my entire body trembling, “I would have never taken him back. I would have never let him back in my bed. I wouldn’t have let him touch me let alone carry his child. I would have saved myself a world of the worst suffering I have ever experienced if you had just told me the truth, Mason! It didn’t have to happen – none of it did!”

I was screaming but I couldn’t stop myself. Sofia and Noah stood frozen by the jet. Others working out side stared at me, but I wasn’t sorry. Not for this. All I was sorry for were the years I’d lost to one lie. When Mason came forward, I stepped sharply back.

“Don’t,” I warned, my voice guttural. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t try to talk to me. Don’t call or see me. Tell Sofia the same. Just leave me alone.”

I could see the hurt my words left in his blue eyes. I could see his body rigid, tortured as he controlled his urge to grab and hold me and kiss away my tears. I wanted it but I didn’t and he knew that. He knew well that he wronged me – that there were consequences to his inaction that I would never forget. So despite the need I could see in his twitching fingers, Mason kept a respectful distance. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he said finally. “I only wanted to protect you.”

“You did the opposite,” I returned straightaway. “You hurt me worse than he did,” I said. I didn’t have to say whom. He knew and he only nodded, chewing back his lip as he accepted my contempt.

We didn’t exchange another word before I left without him.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Warming my hands with my coffee, I stared out at the brilliant sheets of fresh powder outside my window. My mood in the past ten days had left little room for smiling, but I had to kind of laugh when I saw the kids in the yard across from the B&B playing in the nearly two feet of snow, wearing only short-sleeved T-shirts and ripped jeans. By most people’s standards, it was freezing outside but most people didn’t include kids who grew up with Vermont winters. As melodramatic as it sounded, I had little to look forward to growing up in this town. But at least I had Decembers in Vermont. Even as a angsty, moderately surly teenager, I had known that there had to be few other places in the world that were better to spend the holidays than here.

Pulling the blue armchair to the window, I settled down in it with my coffee, making sure my old Nokia flip phone was well within reach. It was a quarter to nine, so I’d be making my daily call soon but till then, I had time to get a bit nostalgic about the last Christmas I had spent in Vermont.

It was with Mrs. Nolan.

I was days from being eighteen and since I was saving up to move out, I’d resigned to spending my entire winter break locked indoors and maybe watching conspiracy documentaries with Aunt Joy, even though she preferred to sit alone. Of course, upon hearing my plan, Mrs. Nolan stepped in, inviting me to join her and her family on a Christmas Day trip to Montpelier, the capital city of Vermont. My memory wasn’t exceptionally clear considering the amount of fun I had, but I did remember thinking the Vermont State House reminded me of a small, gold-topped White House, and that the amount of glittering lights wrapped about the poles and trees was good practice for all the lights I’d see in New York.

It was crazy to think that that was seven years ago, and this was the first time I’d been back since moving to New York. It was only a four hour drive and I used to try to appeal to Aaron by saying he could go snowboarding, but he always said that if he was going to ride, he might as well book a trip to Colorado or somewhere further west.

So no returns to Vermont were ever made.

At least not till now. It made me almost itch to make the hour drive to Montpelier. But then I remembered I had a call to make. As usual, it rang twice before being promptly picked up.

“Merry Christmas, Eeyore,” Lori drawled on the other end.

“Merry Christmas,” I smirked, sipping my coffee. “Yesterday was Holden Caulfield. Today is Eeyore. What cruel nickname are you going to have for me tomorrow?”

“Whichever angsty, depressed character from literature I can think of. On that topic, how are you feeling, pal? It’s Christmas and you’re alone.”

“I was fine until you phrased it that way.” I rested my woolly socked feet on the windowsill. “And I would’ve been alone anyway. Even if I didn’t decide to participate in… whatever that whole wedding ordeal was.”

“Oh, is that what we’re calling your fauxmance now?”

“We’re calling it whatever makes me least nauseous to say out loud. It varies by the day,” I said, trying but failing to figure out how to put my crappy, old phone on speaker. “By the way, how do you put this thing you gave me on speaker?”

“You don’t. It’s old and it doesn’t have that function. You win some and you lose some when you’re trying to avoid all your friends back home.”

“Fine. I can live without speaker,” I said, tense over the fact that she had to bring up my “friends” at home. Usually, that was a segue for a report on Mason and it was no different this morning.