I sniffled tearfully. “Good luck at Clemson.”
“Sasha—“
“I should go now. I’ll ask Jenna to give me a ride home.”
I prayed that this would be the moment he realized what was really at stake, what really mattered. I begged him silently to prove me right, to show me that he would fight for me right now, when I needed him most.
Just fight for me like you fight for everything else you care about.
Jacob watched me, looking smaller than I’d ever seen him look before. “Okay,” he finally said, defeated. “Okay.”
My heart was breaking, but I couldn’t let him see that. It was too painful to bear my soul to him, now that everything was falling apart.
I smiled at him instead. “Bye, Jacob.”
21
I knew in an academic sort of way that I’d initiated the breakup. That I’d been the one to walk out of the dining room after that beat down by Jacob’s parents, that I’d been the one to jump in the passenger seat of Jenna’s car to be driven home. It was my decision, from start to finish, and I even knew that it was the right decision.
I felt raw and broken all the same.
Kiersten and Piper were at the suite when I returned, and looked surprised to see me— concerned, actually, when they saw my face was tearstained.
“Seriously?” Kiersten said. “You broke up with him?”
Piper scowled. “There’s no way. He dumped you, didn’t he?”
“As cheesy as it sounds—it was mutual.”
“Why?” Piper asked, arms folded.
I shrugged a little. “I guess the simplest explanation is just that we want different things.”
Piper rolled her eyes. “I could have told you that. You were never his type to begin with.”
“Maybe,” I said, shrugging again.
“So the real question, Sasha, is does this mean Piper can have him?” Kiersten asked playfully.
“I don’t want Sasha’s freshman cast offs,” Piper said loudly, like Kiersten had suggested she take on insects or drug-resistant bacteria. “Besides, Adams and I are a thing now, and he’s way better in bed than Jacob Everett dreamt of being.”
“You never slept with Jacob,” I muttered. I instantly regretted the words— why the hell did I want to start another fight this evening? Piper’s nostrils flared and her eyes went dark.
“No, I didn’t, and it’s a good thing, too. You took my place as his sloppy hundredth. Come on, Sasha. You thought you were his girlfriend? You were his comfort fuck while his arm healed. He’ll go get his hundred and first piece of ass first thing tomorrow.”
“Oh! It could be me!” Kiersten said excitedly. Piper narrow her eyes. “What?” Kiersten said, and made a face at her. “He’s basically my hundred-and-first too. Besides, everyone else got a piece of Jacob Everett. I wanna be cool,” she joked.
“Go for it,” I said flatly. “I’m going to sleep.”
The thing about ending a relationship, I realized— for the first time, as this was my first real adult relationship— is that you’re suddenly made aware just how much of your life has been knotted up with the other person’s. Jacob had been the thing I filled my time with before class, in the evenings, after hours. He picked me up and drove me to the cute little restaurants in Bulkhead, introduced me to the secret menus at the local bars, knew how to sneak into the quarry where they filmed the zombie shows. Without him…
I was just a college freshman. In Atlanta. Who apparently had no friends, since I’d devoted so much of my social life to Jacob. I went to class and came back, keenly aware of the fact that people were whispering about me in the mirror-world, dark version of the way they had when me and Jacob went public. A girl in my anthropology class— the one where Jacob had come and passed me that note ages ago— leaned in and asked me if the rumors were true, that Jacob left me because I’d lied about being on birth control so he’d sleep with me, and then had had to get an abortion.
Yeah. So that happened.
The morning of the Clemson game, Kiersten and Piper woke early and began the long process of styling wind-and-beer-resistant hair. They both had lottery tickets, though Piper would be sitting in the friends and family section courtesy of Adams.
“The only downside to him wanting me to suck him dry before every game is the size of his cock,” she said loudly from the bathroom. Kiersten giggled, and Piper went on. “I mean, I give great head, but eleven inches! You have to be able to deep throat to satisfy him. There’s just no other way to do it. Lucky thing he came to someone with experience for all this, huh?”
I didn’t say anything; I knew this was another one of Piper’s large supply of pebbles to peg me with. Rarely a day passed without Piper loudly exclaiming how glad she was she didn’t let Jacob’s “used up dick” inside her, or how “nine inches is the new four inches”, or how she’d heard Jacob was now fucking the entire rhythmic gymnastics team, “at their training facility, and he tied them up with those ribbon dancer things they use”.