Only Fools...

'Focus on his eyes' - Chapter Thirty Three

'Jess I wanted to talk to you about that.' She looked me in the eyes. 'I'm sorry if what I said last night seemed unfair, I don't want you to think that I was saying it out of spite or because I don't want the best for you.'

'I don't think that at all!' I spoke quickly, my heart beating fast in my chest. 'I know that you want what's best for me.'

'I do'. She agreed. 'I just don't want you to get hurt the same way I did. But if you want to run that risk then I should be the one to stop you. For all I know, he might've changed. It's not fair on you for me to project my relationship onto yours, I need to try and remember that.'

'I honestly think he has changed Amy. But I'm not stupid, if he cheats on me then I'm out of there.'

'Good, it would kill me to see you hurt as much as I was.'

'I won't be.' If I hadn't felt like crap before, I most certainly did now. As if I was here, defending my boyfriend to Amy. My sweet, loving, funny boyfriend who would never have hurt Amy if it wasn't for me. In that moment I had an urge to tell Amy everything, to reveal to her just how much of a bitch I had been. But I couldn't do it. I was too selfish. Again.

*

The conversation quickly turned to more mundane topics, such as A-levels and the most recent bushtucker trial in I'm a Celeb. The three of us had been chatting for about an hour when we suddenly realised the time.

'Oh crap it's probably time to get lunch.' Amy said. 'We'll need to eat now so we can miss the queue.' She picked up her bag and began to stand up, Zac followed suit. 'Are you coming Jess?'

'No, I think Danny's coming here so I'll just wait for him. Don't worry.'

'Okay, I'll see you later though!' She assured me as she walked away with her new boyfriend.

As I sat on the chairs on my own I began to think about what a great friend Amy had been to me. She was always there for me, and even when she broke up with Danny, she always seemed to be more concerned with how I was doing. She would come over and eat dinner with me when my parents were at the hospital. She would ring me after every round of chemo that my mum had, just to check I was okay. She was a truly amazing friend. And how did I repay her?

I slept with her boyfriend, her first true love. I let her comfort me and pamper me when she was hurting. When she must have been so broken up over the thought of the person she loved cheating on her. I wondered how she would have reacted back then if she'd known that it was me. If she'd known that her best friend was the one person she couldn't trust, the one person that didn't have her back, the one person that hurt her even more than Danny did.

My emotions filled me and I felt my eyes welling up. What the hell was I doing? Here I was, sitting on my own, feeling sorry for myself yet again. Wallowing, yet again, in my own stupid decisions.

'Jess are you okay?' Suddenly Matthew emerged. He was hovering over me, a look of pure empathy in his eyes. 'What's wrong?'

And I broke. The tears that had begun to form fell down my face like the first rainfall after a drought. Matthew held my hand and led me away. He led me away from the stage, down the stairs, into an empty classroom. He sat me down on a table, and looked into my eyes.

'Jess, you need to tell me what's wrong. What is it?'

'Danny – ' I began. But I couldn't form the words. I couldn't own up to what I'd done, the act of pure evil that I had committed.