Their Paid Girl

Their Paid Girl - Part 43

            “Hey,” he replied, and I could hear the smile in his rich, warm deep voice. “You barely gave me enough time to get back to my own dorm room. What, do you desperately miss me already?” Adam teased.

            “I don’t know about the ‘desperately’ part,” I sniffed, “but Adam, I need your advice.”

            I could practically hear the change as he went from relaxed and teasing to instantly alert. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

            I thought about how to answer that. The main reason why I’d been so frozen before Esther was because I had no idea how to even begin to apologize for something that wasn’t my fault, but which was hurting her anyway.

            It wasn’t my fault that Joel had had feelings for me – in fact, I wished with everything in me that we had never met. But had it been wrong of me to keep it from her?

            I took a deep breath. “I think that someone told Esther that Joel… has feelings for me,” I admitted the last bit in a small voice. It was also awkward talking about this with Adam, knowing how guilty he felt about deciding to be with me anyway. But I had no one else.

            There was a short silence on Adam’s end before I heard him exhaling a long breath. I also heard movement on his end, as he pulled out a drawer in his closet.

            “The thing is, honey, I don’t think he does – not anymore,” Adam said gently.

            At that, I let out a breath I’d been holding in too. “Please tell me he’s in love with Esther instead,” I breathed.

            “I don’t know what’s going on with his feelings,” Adam admitted. “But recently, it struck me how little he’d been talking about you lately. And he wasn’t moping around, being all depressed like he’d been before. He’s been happier, going out a lot more, keeping busy. I mean, I was really hoping that he’d moved on and found someone else, but,” Adam hesitated, “I know it’s not easy moving on. But I didn’t really bring it up. I tried to talk about you as little as possible with him, because, well, you know,” he trailed off, sounded gruffly embarrassed.

            Despite being upset, I found I could smile. “Because you wanted dibs on this fine piece of glorious creation,” I indicated myself, trying to sound smug like Adam sometimes did. “By the way, I just gestured to myself. Just to be clear who we’re talking about.”

            “By the way, I’m rolling my eyes at you. Just to be clear.”

            I grinned. I wanted Adam to come over; I wanted to see him again really badly, even though I’d seen him literally a few minutes ago. Being in love made people ridiculous.

            But I knew that right now, my relationship with Esther was more important. The guilt returned somewhat, and I fidgeted uncomfortably, ashamed of my ability to smile and laugh with Adam when Esther had left the room silently crying. The silent tears were deadly. With Esther, silence meant that it went really deep.

I never, ever thought that I’d ever find myself in a position where I was responsible for my best friend’s pain, and it made me feel a little bit unsteady, the way you sometimes feel when you realize that you’re in a place you never thought you’d be. But now that it had happened, I had to make things right.

            “Adam, do you think I was right, in not telling Esther about Joel having feelings for me? Even though I knew how much she cared about him?”