When Mary Met Halley

Five

I stood up. "It's cool," I said. "I was just leaving." I smirked at her. "He's all yours. Which I guess you already know."

She burst into tears. "I'm sorry," she said miserably. "You don't deserve this."

I stood three feet from her, the unexpected sympathy making me both mad and tearful. "You don't even know me," I said, not making much sense. "So don't tell me what I deserve, okay?" All along he had been texting and calling me like everything was normal. All along.

"I'm sorry," she said again, wrapping the hem of her red jacket around her finger anxiously, and I felt like a total bitch. Just because it was a fucked up situation didn't give me the right to treat her like that.

"Look," I began, trying to get on top of the wave of emotion threatening to flood me out. "I can't be a nice person right now, okay? Just stop saying sorry."

"I'm sor--" she started to say, and actually put her hand over her mouth. "I'll come back later," she said.

"No," I said. "I'll go." I was torn, I knew I didn't owe her an explanation but apparently I couldn't not talk. "I'm still going to come here. I mean, I'm pissed, and perplexed, and he has a lot of explaining to do when he wakes up, and he's not mine anymore like that or whatever, I get it, I know." My eyes and nose burned and I pinched the inside of my arm to stop it. "Just so you know, I know. But he's still my family, and I can't just let him rot away here without me. Regardless of everything else." Standing there awkwardly wasn't helping. "Even if he doesn't deserve it."

"Of course," she said, surprised, her hands up like I was going to punch her or something. "I know he's your . . . I wouldn't try to . . . I didn't know it was like this," she finished lamely. She took a step into the room, glancing at him.

"He's not any better," I said meanly. "And you didn't know it was like what?" It was too weird standing so I moved to sit on the other side of the bed, close to the window, my purse in my lap. The new position made me feel trapped, which didn't help a whole lot.

She took some tissues from her purse and wiped her eyes. "That you guys were still . . . that things were okay. Even when he finally told me about you the other night, he made it seem like you weren't getting along, like you were about to break up anyway."

Hot indignation washed over me. "It wasn't that way at all," I protested. The dishonest bastard.

"No, I know, because last night I found these in his bag." She pulled out a thin stack of letters that were rubber-banded together, and held them out to me across his body. "Not that I would normally snoop through his things."

I didn't want them. I saw his handwriting and my first instinct was to reject them. But my hand reached out of its own accord and took the small bundle. They were all open. I pulled out the one on top. 

It was short: Dear Mary, please don't hate me. I shouldn't start like that but it's all I can think, that I still love you but I love her too and I couldn't stand it if you hated me. I've fucked up everything. I just wanted to see what it was like to be just me, without being US, and  

The next part was crossed out. Then None of this is what I want to say. 

There was nothing else on the page.

I folded it and put it back into the envelope, my face stiff from the mask hiding the anguish. "Are they all like this?"

She took out her hair tie and began unwrapping her bun, her eyes downcast. Her hair was like gold, falling heavily through her hands. Maybe Caleb had always secretly harbored a thing for blonds. "Pretty much," she said reluctantly. She kept unraveling it until she had a ponytail almost to her waist, then used both hands to smooth it all back together and wound it around and around again, securing it once more. She shook some loose strands from her fingers.