“You’re right,” she said. “Frank should have told you. He should have been honest. And when you told him about your dad, you gave him the perfect opportunity to come clean.”
“Right? Thank you.”
“But I bet he was scared shitless,” she added with a slight giggle that for some reason made me smile through my tears.
“Good. I hope he was scared. And I hope he is now,” I said, my tone a little more vindictive than I’d intended.
Britney pulled her head from my shoulder and squared to face me. “Wait, what does that mean? Are you going to do something psycho?” She rubbed her palms together. “Don’t you dare go off the deep end without me. If you plan some kind of revenge, I want in!”
I narrowed my eyes and pulled back from her. “Whoever said white girls weren’t crazy, clearly never met you.”
“Damn straight,” she said with a proud grin.
“For the record, I’m not doing anything psycho. I just like the idea of him being scared or worried. Of him feeling . . .” I paused, searching for the right words. “He needs to feel something because I’m hurting, and I want him to hurt too.”
I stopped for a second, realizing how awful and immature my words sounded, but I refused to take them back. They were the truth.
“And I know it’s probably dumb. Like I shouldn’t feel like this over someone I barely know,” I admitted, hating how weak I sounded and felt. “I feel like I’m mourning a loss or something.”
“It’s not dumb. You liked him. You wanted to date him. Of course you’re hurting and grieving. You did lose something tonight.”
Once again, Britney was right. I had liked Frank, and I had wanted to date him. Until tonight, he’d represented possibility and hope, two things I hadn’t had with a man in a really long time.
“You know, I never even asked if he had a girlfriend, but I assumed that if he was spending time with me that he didn’t have one. It didn’t even occur to me. And it’s not like we were hiding. We hung out in his bar. Anyone could have seen us.” I replayed in my head the moments we’d spent together, even though there were only a few, and I felt so foolish.
“It’s all of those reasons why I think there really might be more to the story. You should talk to him.”
“I don’t want to talk to him,” I insisted, and I meant it. I didn’t want to hear Frank’s explanation or reasons. None of it changed the truth or altered the situation in any way. “I don’t want to talk to any of them.” I pushed up from the couch and stretched my arms over my head.
“There’s no way Frank just disappears on you and doesn’t explain things. Not a chance in hell that he ghosts you,” Britney insisted, referring to the way guys would stop returning texts and phone calls like they had never existed in the first place.
“Does it really matter? He has a girlfriend, Britney. I don’t care what he does.”
“There isn’t any part of you that wants an explanation from him? Because I do, and it wasn’t even me he was dating.”
“He wasn’t dating me either,” I said softly before shaking my head, too many thoughts racing through my mind, refusing to cut me any slack. They were exhausting. “I need to sleep so I can stop thinking about all of this.”
“Okay. For the record, I’m really sorry. I didn’t see this coming at all.”
I swallowed hard as her face became blurry. “Me either.”
I felt so vulnerable and naive. Should I have seen it coming? Was there something I missed that was so blaringly obvious that I had simply overlooked it?
No. I refused to take the blame for this. Frank was the one in the wrong here, not me.
Then why did I feel like I was the only one paying the price?
The Ugly Truth
Claudia
When I woke up early the next morning after a restless night, the reality of what had happened with Frank crashed back into me at full force. My alarm went off and I smacked it into silence, half wishing that I could call in sick to work today, but knowing that I wouldn’t. Not for something like this.
Reaching for my cell phone, I was surprised to see that it was off. I never turned my phone completely off at night, and I searched my mind trying to remember exactly when I’d done it. I came up empty as I waited for it to turn back on, the screen practically blinding me with its brightness as it did. When it had fully come to life, it was devoid of any new text messages or voice-mail notifications.
Frank hadn’t even attempted to reach out to me. Last night I’d said I hadn’t wanted him to, but this morning I found myself bitterly disappointed that I wasn’t worthy of an explanation or an apology.
Don’t I deserve one?