Their Paid Girl

Their Paid Girl - Part 43

           I stared at Esther and she stared back at me. For several long heartbeats, neither of us said anything, though the tears continued to flow down her face in the silent streams which betrayed the seriousness of the situation. She must have taken my prolonged silence for agreement, because she looked down at her hands, gasped for air once, then seemed to master herself.

            She wiped the tears off her chin with the back of her hand, then pushed her laptop and blanket off her body as she climbed out of bed. Still without looking at me, she pulled a sweatshirt off a nearby chair and tugged it on.

            I kept opening my mouth, but nothing would come out. The thoughts in my head were a complete incoherent mess.

            Her question had caught me utterly by surprise, and in truth, I had been avoiding the possibility of a moment exactly like this by refusing to think about it. I had convinced myself, in the past month or so since Esther had told me about her feelings for Joel, that she would never find out. That there were some things that you just don’t tell others, for their protection. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her with the truth, so I had kept it from her.

            But who were you protecting, exactly? asked the quiet voice in my head as I helplessly watched Esther put on a pair of jeans, still unable to say anything.

            I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but maybe the truth was that I was just a coward, who couldn’t bear to tell her best friend the truth. I thought about how naïve I’d been, believing that I could change Joel’s feelings for me. As if making him stop feeling that way about me could change the fact that I was the mystery girl Esther was trying to figure out. As if it could change the fact that I was supposed to be Esther’s best friend, who owed her the truth, at the very least.

            “Es, please,” I managed to say faintly, as she headed towards the door. Outside our window, the night was black.

            She didn’t turn around. All I could see was her gold head shake from side to side once, and then she shut the door behind her and was gone.

            I stared at the closed door.

            Esther had never refused to talk to me about how she felt. If anything, she was always giving me too much information, and for weeks I’d listened about Joel’s stupid smile and his stupid laugh and his stupid poems and his stupid sensitivity and his stupid fashion sense and his stupid everything.

            Stupid Joel. He had almost ruined things between me and Adam, and now, he was ruining things between me and Esther. And the guy was too stupid to realize that he was ruining things for himself, too.

            To push away a girl like Esther was stupidity at its finest. The monumental blockheadedness on display was astounding. You’d think that a guy as sensitive as Joel was supposed to be, would get his head out of his butt and stop believing himself to be in love with a girl he barely knew.

            I didn’t know what to do. I bit my lip to stop the tears from spilling over.

            I felt absolutely terrible. As always, the guilt was the worst part of it all. I’d had enough of feeling guilty over things I couldn’t even control. Hadn’t I said that aloud just a few hours ago?

            I pulled out my phone and dialed his number. He picked up on the second ring.

            “H-hey,” I said, my voice a little wobbly.