Face the Music /Jordan Knight Fanfic/NKOTB

02

Emma

I stare at the four little words.

I love you too.

Too. That indicates that he said it first, and this person is replying.

I don't know who the contact in my boyfriend's phone named Harry Lloyd is or why this person is texting him that they love him too, but I intend to find out as soon as he gets back from the bathroom.

I hold his phone up and wave it around calmly from where I sit on the couch we share in the apartment where we live together. "Who's Harry Lloyd?"

The color drains from his face, but he recovers quickly. "A friend from work."

"You have a friend named Harry Lloyd at work? Why haven't I heard of him before?" He drones on and on ad nauseam about people from work, so if he's close enough with Harry to text him, he'd tell me about him. And if he loves this Harry guy, well, then surely I'd be in the loop. Unless he's lying, and he's been caught.

He glances nervously at the television, where our favorite slapstick comedy, Dumb and Dumber, plays.

"Wait a minute," I say, connecting the dots. "Harry? Lloyd? Like the main characters in this movie?" I jab my thumb toward the screen and stand. "Who is she?" I ask, my voice a lethal hiss as I throw his phone at him. He misses the catch, and it bounces onto the floor.

He glances from the television to me and then down at his phone, and then he heaves out a breath. "I'm sorry, Emily." His voice is soft.

"Who. Is. She." I repeat the question, punctuating each word as I grit them out through clenched teeth.

"It's Beth." He says the words quickly and quietly, like ripping off a bandage.

But we all know how much that hurts.

"Beth?" My legs seem to give out as I fall to the couch behind me. "Beth?" I repeat. "As in one of my closest friends?"

"This isn't how I wanted you to find out..."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" My legs seem to find themselves again and I stand. I move slowly toward him as my voice rises in volume. "This isn't how you wanted me to find out?" I jab my finger in his chest, and he stumbles back a step. "You didn't want me to find out at all or you wouldn't have hidden her under some fake name!"

"I know, I know. Calm down." He's trying to appease me, but calm down is pretty much the last thing you should say to a woman who's as pissed off as I am.

"I will not calm down!" I scream at him. In my anger in the heat of this moment, I just want him gone. I don't think about the fact that technically it's his apartment and it's his furniture, not ours. "I hate you! We're over. Done." I point at the door. "Now get out! Get the fuck out!"

He looks around the apartment, and then he looks at me. "This is my place. Where do you expect me to go?"

I stare at him for a minute. I can't believe the irony that we were just watching a movie called Dumb and Dumber. I'm not sure which one I am and which one he is right now...me for believing his lies, or him for being the lying, cheating asshole he is.

Not to mention Beth. What a damn traitor that bitch turned out to be.

I shake my head. "Forget it. I'll go." I grab my purse and keys and stalk out before he has a chance to stop me.

I call the first person I can think of after I slide into the driver's seat of my car.

"Hey girlie, can I call you right back?" Amber answers, her voice filling my car through my speakers.