Gaslighter

39

          My stomach grumbled like a thunderstorm just as I finished emailing my screenplay to my father, purely out of habit, as I didn't have it in me to mail it to Chase just yet—Chase, who had once been the first and only person to read anything I wrote. I was long overdue for a snack, preferably something warm and sugary, but Sarah had stopped by for a quick visit, and she was in the kitchen with Ingrid and Savannah, so I'm reluctant to show my face.

          This wouldn't be an issue to a normal person who felt completely normal emotions regarding their friends. Normal people didn't spend hours, even days worrying about keeping a huge part of their life a secret from their best friends or pathologically mulling over everything they'd said to or did around them. They didn't feel the need to constantly think before they opened their mouths or breathed, and they wouldn't reassess all of it to justify their thoughts about being hated. Normal people didn't push their best friends away for the sake of a mercurial man that had once felt like the most secure, steady person in their lives.

          No matter how badly they had hurt me, I hadn't been a saint. I'd been an awful person, not just by lying to them and isolating myself because I believed they were out to get me and knew a lot more about my secrets than they actually did. Being so proud of being chosen by Chase over them had influenced every single interaction I'd had with them since I wove myself into that relationship; he'd had me convinced they were manipulating me, gaslighting me, and a small part of me had fought back. They were concerned—had been from day one, even when it was just me and Ingrid in that bathroom, engulfed in cigarette smoke—and, even if they weren't going about it perfectly and had said and done questionable things, manipulation and gaslighting were heavier than that. It was a jump he hadn't needed to make, but he'd still crossed that bridge to hammer those ideas on the walls of my brain.

          It hadn't been just him. It took two people to play that game, and I'd been a willing participant, after all. In spite of my doubts and occasional reluctance to keep playing the chess game we'd been attempting to play for so long—the game he'd taught me how to play, even—I'd still sat across from him and chose my own moves. Where did that leave me? Grandmaster or not, mastermind behind a devilish plan to ruin my life or not, Chase hadn't done any of it on his own, and I wasn't completely innocent.

          The girls were all in the kitchen still, as expected, and they didn't notice me at first. Instead of taking it as a reminder of how insignificant my presence was and how easy it would be for everyone if I spent even more time alone in my room, it mirrored how second nature it was for me to slip into the background and not be noticed by other people whenever I had to sneak around to meet Chase.

          I wasn't sure whether his neighbors had ever seen me around with how careful I'd been, waiting around corners and swiftly moving in the dark, not to mention how far I'd parked my car to avoid being spotted near the apartment.

          It hadn't even been just the apartment, had it? I'd had to drive there after nights of drinking, either at my loft, at my apartment, or at my parents' house, simply because he'd asked me to and knew I would do it. I'd done it to make up for ditching him for my family or for my friends, terrified beyond belief I'd lose him if I refused; I'd lost him anyway, and he'd never had the decency to pick me up, get me a cab or an Uber, or to even ask if I'd made it okay afterward. When I'd nearly gotten hypothermia at the cabin, he had only thought about the distant possibility of having picked me up after I'd arrived at the front door, chilled to the bone.

          I'd had the nerve to feel thankful he had opened the door. I'd had the nerve to feel grateful for the minimum level of human decency. That spoke volumes, both about the little consideration he'd always had for me and the little self-respect residing within me.