Chapter 18

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      I should have said no. I really should have said no. But I said yes. After how he ignored me like that and didn’t stand up for me I should have just told him I didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. But that was a lie. I really wanted to be with him, no matter how bad he treated me. Because when he treated me well, I felt so perfect. So when he treated me poorly, I tried even harder for him to treat me well again.

      I always think about the first time we found our private beach. I miss that. I miss the way he’d hold me when I was cold. I miss how he’d laugh at all my stupid jokes. I miss how he’d text me 24/7. I miss how he used to make me feel so good. I miss the guy I used to know.

      They say when a guy does that you should ‘cut him off, let him miss you.’ The truth is, that’s not true! He’s not going to miss you. He’s not going to even realize you’ve ‘cut him off.’ He’s not going to waste his time chasing after you- he’ll use that time to focus on someone else.

      That ‘someone else’ would be Kelli, and while she and I technically were still friends, I really didn’t think she deserved to be treated well. I’d rather him chase after me than her. So Cody picked me up at around eight and we went back to his house. He didn’t say anything to me the whole car ride, and I didn’t have anything to say to him either. We went up to his room which I’d never been in before and I saw the opened condom box on his dresser with a note next to it in whispy handwriting- ‘Be safe.’

      “It only took about five months but I guess you finally got to use those,” I said bitterly, but at the same time I knew it would make him feel like shit. That’s what I always do. When I feel like shit I make other people feel like shit so I feel less shitty than them. It probably doesn’t make sense, but for me, it sometimes worked.

      “I think it’s weird she made you think we had sex three months ago,” he fake laughed. “It was three weeks ago. Before she even went to Florida. I don’t know why she’d lie about it.”

      I cringed. I didn’t want to think of Kelli getting to have sex before me. It wasn’t fair. I was always the one who was better with guys. I had more guys liking me and asking me out on dates and hooking up with me. She had one guy before Cody, and they didn’t even kiss. And judging by the fact there was only one condom left in the box, they’d done it a lot. But there’s also the fact that it was three weeks ago, and she hadn’t even told me. Any time I hooked up with a guy, I told her. Why wasn’t she telling me? Three weeks ago we were still ‘friends.’

      “Shut up,” I rolled my eyes. “You’re trying to make it seem like you think it was weird for Kelli to do that. You know that she did it to try to upset me by thinking she had sex before me. But no matter what you’re still on her side- you’ll always be and I should have known that.”

      “You shouldn’t be upset about something like your friend having sex before you. Carter had sex with some girl before any of us and we were all happy for him. Why are you never happy for Kelli?”

      “Because she’s making me miserable!”

      “You’re jealous of her the same way she’s jealous of you. But you can’t be jealous of that, especially since you have a boyfriend of your own to fuck around with. So why the fuck would you not tell anyone and then hook up with me?” he yelled at me.

      “What?? What boyfriend??”

            “The one you thought I wouldn’t find out about,” he said.

      “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said. “Who told you that?”

      “Who do you think?”

      “Kelli,” I said. “You just said it yourself- she’s jealous of me. She’s telling you guys I have a boyfriend so that you don’t talk to me!”

      “She’s making it up?” he asked insulted. “So for the past two weeks when we had her text you to hang out you said no because you had no plans with no one?”

      “She never texted me at all, what are you talking about?”

      “Brooke, stop playing stupid! It’s not cute, or believable, or anything! It’s aggravating as fuck, you know exactly what I’m talking about. She texted you multiple times to hang out and you told her no because you were with him!”

      He wasn’t listening to me- Kelli was lying about everything! I threw my phone at him to shut him up and told him to check my text inbox. Check for any messages from a ‘boyfriend’ or invites from Kel. He did, and I watched his face change expressions when he realized he was wrong.

      “Sorry,” he said meekly, handing my phone back.

      “So that’s why you invited me here? To yell at me for ‘having a boyfriend and cheating on him with you?’ Sounds pretty fucking hypocritical if you ask me,” I started to push past him.

      “I invited you here to apologize, and try to convince you to not bother with me anymore,” he said.

      “Not bother with you?” I asked sadly. “What do you mean?”

      “Don’t hook up with me anymore. Do you know how guilty I feel looking at Kel and seeing how happy I make her when I know I’m cheating on her? Your ‘boyfriend’ would’ve been crushed if he knew about me. Graham already knows and he yelled at me for it and made you cry. Like, I really like you Brooke, but this isn’t going to work out. Not while I’m still dating Kel,” he said.

      “So I guess you’re going to have to pick one of us then.”

      “I’m not doing that. I like both of you. I know you don’t understand how I could like Kelli, but you’re not there when it’s just me and her. That’s when I like her the most. But I can’t see you if I don’t see Kel. If I break up with her, you can’t hang out with me because I’m her ex-boyfriend. If you stop being friends with Kel, I can’t hang out with you because you’re my girlfriend’s ex-best friend. If we lose Kel, we lose each other,” he said.

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