STRIPPED (The Slate Brothers 3)

I walk back to the apartment in a sunny haze.

When I get inside, I hear Trishelle on the phone, talking loudly.

I go into the bathroom, leaving my purse out on the couch as I freshen up. When I come back out of the bathroom, Trishelle is sitting on the couch, staring at her phone.

“What have you been up to? You hungry?” I ask as I walk to the kitchen and fill up a pot to make a box of macaroni.

“No,” she says, voice steady— far steadier than it was a moment before. “In fact, I suddenly lost my appetite.”

“Why, are you feeling sick?” I ask. “I can make you some chicken broth if you want.”

She doesn’t answer and now I’m getting worried. Maybe she’s really sick and not just a little under the weather. I leave the kitchen and see that Trishelle is still looking at her phone, her eyebrows furrowed, her mouth a line.

Except then I realize— it’s not her phone. It’s my phone.

“Trishelle,” I say, heart pounding. “That’s my phone. Why did you take it out of my purse?” I walk toward her, but Trishelle springs away down the couch, all without ever taking her eyes off the phone. “Trishelle!” I say, voice growing higher, more desperate.

“I knew it,” she says, voice almost a whisper. “I knew there was something going on, some reason why I never met your mystery boyfriend.” Her eyes are tearing up and her voice shakes.

“Trishelle, please,” I say, and now there are tears in my eyes because I know exactly, exactly what she’s looking at, and I can’t undo it.

I know that I should have just told her the truth about me and Tyson Slate from the beginning, but I was a coward and now I’ve hurt my best friend.

My hands fall to my sides, and shake as I speak. “Trishelle, give it back.”

“Don’t lie to me anymore,” she says, even though I’m not able to speak, much less lie, right now. “Is Tyson Slate the guy you’ve been seeing, the person you’ve been sleeping with?” Despite her words, though, she looks like she might still be convinced that she’s wrong.

“You! You and Tyson Slate!” she snarls. “How? How the hell did you even meet him?”

“At your tryout. I didn’t know who he was, Trishelle, and then he and I were…we were sort of a thing before I even knew you wanted him,” I stammer.

“You were already with him when I told you I wanted him, and you didn’t bother mentioning it to me?”

“I didn’t think you’d believe me!” I answer, and I’m crying, and she’s crying, and I don’t even know what to say or how to say it or who I am or who she is. Everything is a dark blur of speed and anger.

“You didn’t give me the chance to believe you,” she says. “The auction— he bought me at the auction and then…it was to get to you, wasn’t it? It wasn’t about me at all? I’ve been— fuck, I’ve been throwing myself at him like an idiot, and you just let me!”

“We didn’t want to tell anyone. We wanted to keep it a secret.”

“I’m your best friend, Anna. You aren’t supposed to let me humiliate myself so a guy you’re sleeping with can avoid telling the world that he’s with you.”

“Best friend? I barely even see you anymore, Trishelle! And when I do, you’re like some psycho cheerleader version of yourself,” I snap, emotion shifting like a riptide— though the tears are still coming.

“Sure, yeah, pretend like I’ve become a bitch when you’re the one fucking a football player and running around in secret, laughing at me behind my back.”

“I’m not laughing at you, Trish. I would never.”

“Sure you are,” she says. “And just so you know, he will never be seen with you in public, Anna. This picture is as good as it will ever get. Trust me.”

I swallow, choking on the breath I’m trying desperately to take. She’s wrong. I know she’s wrong— I know I held Tyson’s hand today, I know he took the time to get me into the theater to practice, I know he thinks I’m perfect. I know she’s jealous. I know she’s angry.

I know there’s nothing I can do or say to make myself feel anything but sick and furious and awful and wrong.

I bite my lip hard, then spin around. I gather my phone, my purse, a few incidentals, and I hit the door just as the pot of water I started a lifetime ago begins to boil over.

16

I probably should have sorted out where, exactly, I’m going, before I got outside. I don’t even have a car, and can’t think of a single other friend I can call to stay with. Hell, I don’t even have the last name of the other students whose numbers I’ve gotten for study groups or class projects. I make my way to the student center and collapse onto one of the oversized couches, just like I did that night of the auction earlier in the year.