Swallow

Chapter 1.59:

Her bright red thin lips were pulled back in a nauseating smirk.

"What are you doing here?" I spat out my pick onto the bed and mumbled in disgust.

"Aiden called me and I had nothing better to do. I saw you sitting here, moping in the dark by yourself. You looked like you needed this." She walked in and offered me the bottle in her hand.

I sat up from my pillow and moved to the edge of the bed. I took the bottle out of her hand and held it as I looked down at my phone again. I had to make sure I hadn't missed a message from Riley in the four seconds I was distracted by the dumpster fire that walked into my bedroom.

I scrolled through and read the old messages to see if there was something I had overlooked.

Brynn invited herself to sit down on the bed next to me and placed her hand on my thigh. She leaned over and peered over my shoulder to look at my phone too.

"Something more interesting on there than me?" She asked.

"Waiting on Riley to text me. Do you know where she is? She hasn't responded to any of my messages since this afternoon." I sighed. I was feeling absolutely insane. It was to the point that I was about to get in my car to go find her.

Brynn might be able to help me. She probably already knew where Riley was.

"Ehhh... not sure how to tell you this." Brynn pulled her mouth into a hard line, giving me an apologetic look. "I just talked to her about twenty minutes ago and asked her to come over to the house to hang out with us tonight. She said she was busy and already had plans to go out with some of the guys from work."

"Guys?" My head felt heavy at the mention of the word.

"Yeah, there are a few guys she has a regular thing with." Brynn shrugged.

"She's been seeing other guys?" My hands were shaking with the pressurized anger stabbing my insides.

"Well, when I asked her about it, she said you two aren't exclusive. Did you think you were?" Brynn grimaced and patted my knee.

"We never talked about it." I gnashed my teeth together. I had never done the relationship thing before and didn't realize that was something that actually needed to be said out loud. I had just assumed she knew it.

Why did I always fuck everything up?

"You didn't really think she was going to be your girlfriend, did you? Think about it, Ezra. She won't even tell JD about the two of you hooking up. She doesn't look at you when he is around or let you touch her. She obviously doesn't want anything serious with you or she would have said something by now." Brynn rubbed salt into my fresh, gaping wounds.

"There is a reason she hasn't told him yet." I tried to rationalize the situation, more for myself than for Brynn.

"Is there? And why is that?" Brynn turned her head, questioning me.

"You are her friend. You know why. You know what happened to her." I spun the bottle around in my hands. The slightly cloudy liquid swirled inside, creating a tiny funnel like a tornado. If anyone took an x-ray of my insides right now, they would find the same storm raging inside of me.

"Oh, she told you her little story." Brynn framed the word 'story' in quotation marks with her bony fingers. "God, I can't believe you fell for that shit. Men will believe anything for a little bit of pussy."

"You are saying what she told me isn't true?"

"Well, don't tell her you heard this from me, but Riley likes to play the damsel in distress card around guys. It gives her an advantage over them. She can pull it out and use it whenever she wants to get what she wants."