Strangers

Chapter 16: Hopeless

“What do you mean Gemma thinks she’s a bitch?” Linda questions.

“Gab slept with Harry, the night before we got together.” I say, repeating it only makes me angrier.

“Holy shit, are you and Harry okay?”

“I honestly don’t know anymore. Like I feel like him fucking Gab before we got together is the least of our issues. WE hadn’t spoken for over a month when he did that, he didn’t know we were going to get together the very next day. Besides, I know he just did it to spite me. As for Gab, she can go fuck ehrslef, quite literally because she will never be fucking Harry again. If Haryr and I work through this then I will make sure he never sees her again. She clearly has some sick obsession with wanting to take him from me and she is such an idiot if she thinks that’s going to work. Without sounding vain, he only loves me, like we’re made for each other and she is delusional if she thinks that is ever going to change. And Gemma must’ve know, she had to know because that’s why she thinks Gab’s a bitch.”

“Holy shit.”

“What the fuck is going on? Why did everyone just suddenly decide that it’s okay to leave me completely in the dark about everything? This is ridiculous. Like who can I even trust? So, Linda if you’ve got something you’re hiding something too, if you’ve been lying to me for months like the rest of them have please put me out of my misery and just tell me now.” Linda is my best friend and I know she wouldn’t be hiding anything from me, so this is really just a precautionary demand and me wanting to be overly dramatic.

“Um…” She clears her throat.

Wait, what?

“Brad and I are moving to LA, just temporarily. He’s been offered a job managing a big band over there and he can’t really say no. We leave in two weeks.” The words leave her mouth and my finger presses hard against the screen, ending the call and throwing my phone as hard as I can against the passenger seat, so hard in fact that it bounces back up a tad and then falls of onto the floor. Good. I don’t want another word out of it for days, months, years even. Anyone on the receiving end of that phone is someone I have absolutely no interest in talking to. I have absolutely fucking no one. My boyfriend is a  jerk, my best friends are liars, each one worse than the last and the only one I thought I could count on is fucking  moving miles and miles away and told me two weeks in advance. Where was my time to prepare? How long has she known and just kept it to herself? And why? Did she think I wouldn’t be happy for her? Did she think I would make it all about me and be really upset? Or did she just not want to upset me and was too afraid to tell me? I don’t know why she did it. But I don’t know why anyone does anything anymore. Everyone is  a fucking liar. I contemplate how true this is as I start the drive back to Manchester, a few brief angry tears treacling down my face but I refuse to full on sob over the mess that every thing is.

It will be better back at uni. Everything is easier there. I can go to class and listen to stuff I don’t’ care about, I can spend my time in my room doing assignments that I’ll probably fail because I suck at this. Yep. Life is peachy.

Even my parents have deserted me. Granted, they’re helping people who need them more than I do, but I miss them and I’m 23 and I want my Mummy because everything sucks and I need perspective.

I can normally count on Linda, or Gemma for perspective but they’re position is distorted now. I can’t trust a word out of their mouths because people are too good at lying. I can’t believe Gemma has known for four months that Gab slept with Harry again, I told her the second I found out about Ashton and yet she could easily keep this secret from me for months. I don’t even know who she was trying to protect, Gab or Harry? I would like to think she was protecting me from the pain of finding out that Gab is a fucking slut and the worst friend I’ve ever had. I can’t even think about Gab without shaking, everything about her makes me mad. I moped around at that apartment for weeks, sooking about how Harry wouldn’t forgive me and how badly I wanted to be with him. She knew how upset I was, she saw it first hand and then she went and did that. For fucks sake this is bullshit.