by L. D. Davis
“No!” I said sharply as I snatched my arm away. “You tell me now. You can’t say something like that and not tell me why.”
“I will tell you,” he said gently. “I promise. Just…let me go support my friend first. Whatever you do, whatever you hear, please wait for me to talk to you.”
The conversation was over. He got out of the car and closed his door. Reluctantly, I got out of the passenger’s side and closed my door, too. He walked around the car and held out his hand. I looked at it and then looked at him. He was wearing a mask. I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling and it only added to my escalating anxiety, but I took his hand and let him lead me onto the yacht.
We found Christina almost immediately, a tall, gorgeous blonde that I knew I had seen somewhere before. I tilted my head as we were introduced, trying to place her face, but she solved the mystery for me.
“Leo tells me that you are friends with Donya Stewart,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, with some surprise. “I’ve known her since, well forever. I can’t remember not knowing her. She is like a sister to my cousin.”
Christina pointed, like an ah-ha gesture. “Emmy.”
My eyes widened. “You know Emmy and Donya?”
“Chris is a model,” Leo explained, winking at her. “She’s worked with Donya a lot in New York.”
“And Emmy helped me keep my finances in check,” Christina added.
“Small world,” I said, nodding. I didn’t want to talk about Emmy. I didn’t want her to ask me about Emmy so that I’d have to admit that I not only didn’t want to talk about her, but had no idea what the hell was going on in her life, but fortunately, she didn’t ask.
She looped her arm through mine as if we were old friends. “Go away, you,” Christina said, waving Leo away. “You’re late. I’ll take good care of your lady.”
Leo looked relieved, but at the same time, he looked apprehensive. “Thanks, Chris. I’ll see you in a while,” he said to me. He put a hand on the back of my neck and kissed me, briefly, but deeply. He kissed Christina’s cheek and moved away, looking over his shoulder at us every few seconds until he disappeared through a door.
Christina kept me occupied, telling me stories about her and Donya and her other modeling adventures. She asked a lot of questions about my books because apparently, she was a big fan. She told me how Gil and Leo became friends—they used to live in the same apartment complex when Leo first moved to Miami, and they used to go partying together and pick up girls together. She told me when she first met Leo, he was an absolute man-slut.
“Maybe that’s not something you want to hear,” she said. “But the best part of that is that he settled down, he tucked his dick away, and eventually, he took life seriously. He still had the occasional casual relationship with a woman here and there, but he did the serious thing, too. And now—” She looked at me with a huge smile. “—you’re all he’s ever wanted. I’ve been hearing about you since the day I met him.”
That warmed me, made me feel a little better, but I gave her a suspicious look.
“Did you sleep with Leo?” I asked bluntly.
She was unfazed. “Hell yes,” she said unapologetically. “He was hot—he’s still hot, but we actually had a relationship. It only lasted about a month before we realized we weren’t compatible, and my life was in New York.” She winked at me. “My life is still in New York.”
I should have felt all kinds of jealous, but I didn’t. She didn’t try to hide it from me, and other than mentioning how hot he was, she didn’t seem interested in taking him from me, either.
As other guests began to show up, Christina introduced me to many of them. I forgot most of their names, but I did remember Rohanna, because she looked at me with indifference, her husband Corey, because he looked slightly uncomfortable around me even though he hugged me, and I remembered Gale because she was very sweet. I had mixed feelings when I found out we would all be sitting together at the reception.
I sat between Christina and Gale for the ceremony. The groom, Gil, looked pretty nervous, but happy and excited at the same time. The bride was gorgeous in her strapless gown, and the deep blue of the bridesmaid’s dresses were pretty, and of course, Leo, the best man, was ridiculously good-looking in his tux and with the Miami afternoon sun shining in his hair. When he caught my eye and winked at me during the ceremony, Christina elbowed me and gave me a knowing look.
The wedding had been beautiful, and short and to the point, which I really appreciated. I especially appreciated the bar at cocktail hour. I was on edge, and even though I didn’t want to get drunk, I definitely needed something to help soothe my nerves. I ordered two screwdrivers and followed Christina to our table. Rohanna and Gale were already there; their dates were standing with several other guys at the back of the room, having a loud conversation about football even though the season was over.
“I like your dress,” Gale said to me after I had been seated for a few minutes.
“Thank you.” I smiled at her and took a sip of one of my drinks.
“I love black and white and red together,” Christina said admiringly.
“I like compliments from supermodels,” I said, grinning.
Two things happened very close together. My phone chimed, and when I checked to see who messaged me, I saw Leslie’s name. It only took her two weeks to return my text…
And Rohanna, who had been very quiet and texting on her phone since I sat down, finally spoke to me.
“You and Leslie were best friends growing up, right?”
I looked at her and nodded slowly, not really grasping how or why she was talking about Leslie. Maybe Leo told her, told all of them, about his past relationship with Leslie. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities, but it was weird that Rohanna was talking to me as if she personally knew Leslie.
“Ro!” Christina said sharply.
Gale looked wide-eyed and quickly put on a nervous smile when she caught me looking at her.
Rohanna ignored Christina and continued. “If you were such great friends, what makes you think it’s okay to start fucking her ex?”
“God, Rohanna,” Christina hissed. “You’re such a bitch. The only reason you’re even at this wedding is because you’re with Corey.”
“You promised you wouldn’t,” Gale said to Rohanna in a tiny voice.
I’m so slow. So damn slow. I still didn’t get it. I didn’t get why Rohanna was so angry, or why Christina looked like she was ready to jump onto the table in her white Louis Vuitton Monogram Canvas shoes and kick Ro in the face. I didn’t understand why Gale looked at her in disbelief and kept glancing at me with anxiety and maybe sadness. I didn’t put any of it together, but my South Jersey hackles did rise.
“I don’t know who you think you’re talking to,” I said evenly, but calmly. “And I don’t see how anything that happened between Leo and Leslie more than ten years ago, or between me and Leo now is any concern of yours.”
She snorted. “Are you kidding me? Ten years ago? Try three months ago. What kind of a friend are you? If it was ten years, fine, okay, but it was three months ago! Don’t you care? Don’t you care about what she went through with him? They were engaged. They got pregnant, they lost the baby, and then he dumped her and you just stepped into her place like it’s nothing.”
The only way for me to describe my emotions at that moment in time was…horror. I was horrified. I felt like my lungs had been ripped from my body and thrown into the ocean and torn apart by sharks. I felt like my heart stopped, died, and turned to dust in my chest. I felt as if I had stood still on a road to get run down by the biggest, baddest truck there was.
Then there was hysteria, disbelieving hysteria welling up my throat and bursting out into the open air into loud, hysterical, nonsensical laughter, and before anyone could fathom what the fuck was so funny, I let out a quiet, choked sob. Rohanna, who had looked so deadly only seconds earlier, suddenly looked at me with apprehension, and maybe a li
ttle regret.
“She didn’t know, you asshole,” Christina whispered harshly. She looked around to make sure that people weren’t paying attention to us, and they weren’t. They were all happily feasting on their hors d’oeuvres and sipping on their free cocktails and enjoying the sun and the gorgeous water lapping at the boat, making it rock softly.
Rohanna narrowed her eyes. “You really didn’t know?”
“I wouldn’t be here had I known,” I said scathingly. “But thanks for opening your big, bitchy mouth.”
I grabbed my purse and hurried out of the room. I needed to get the fuck off the boat and get the hell out of Miami, but I couldn’t even think straight. I couldn’t even remember how to get off of the piece of floating shit. My eyes were blurring, but I refused to cry. I refused to cry in front of these people that I didn’t know, but Leslie knew. Leslie, because Leslie had been here, in Miami, with Leo. Living a life with him. Engaged. Engaged! And pregnant! And I had known nothing. He had told me nothing. She had told me nothing. Fuck’s sake, Sandy had told me nothing!
“Tabitha, wait!” Christina caught up to me as I descended a set of stairs I thought lead to the second level where I could get off of the boat.
“I need to get out of here,” I said, my voice cracking and breaking.
“Look, it doesn’t matter,” she said, following me. “It doesn’t matter about Leslie. Rohanna is a bitch and shouldn’t have said anything. She and Leslie were close, but you should let Leo explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain!” I yelled, spinning on her. “He lied to me! Everyone except for Rohanna lied to me. I should give her a fucking medal.”
“No one lied,” she said softly. “It’s just that…no one said anything.”
“It’s the same as lying,” I pointed out. Then bitterly, I said, “But if that’s what makes you feel better, word it however the hell you want to.”
I turned away from her and hurried down the gangplank to solid ground.
“Can I help you, Miss?” A man in a crisp white uniform asked me.
“I need a cab,” I said. “Immediately.”
Using a little radio, he called to someone and asked for a cab. I hurried to the parking lot of the marina to wait for it, knowing I was on limited time. It wouldn’t take long for Leo to figure out what had happened and come looking for me.
I ignored Leslie’s message. I just couldn’t look at it. I had no doubt in my mind that she texted me because Rohanna had been talking to her via text when I sat down at the table. It angered me that she probably had a full conversation with Ro but didn’t take a few minutes to answer my text until she found out about me and Leo.
I was humiliated. Everyone, all of Leo’s friends at that wedding knew about Leslie. I was left to look like the betraying bitch, the woman who stole her best friend’s man. No wonder Leo had told me to wait, not to leave, made me promise. He knew that’s how I would perceive it. He knew that had I known about Leslie from the beginning, I would have gone back to my hotel the night of the party and flew out of Florida and out of his life again the following day. I stayed under false pretenses, and that was unforgivable.
The cab arrived faster than I expected. Just as I was climbing in, I heard the reception begin as the DJ announced the first bridesmaid and groomsman. It wouldn’t be long before Leo realized I wasn’t there if he didn’t know already. Christina probably told him.
I told the cab driver where I needed to go and offered him a fifty dollar tip if he could get me there in record time without killing us or getting pulled over. He got us there so quickly that I gave him seventy-five on top of the base cab fare. Using my spare house key, I hurried inside of Leo’s house. I took my shoes off so that I could move faster without falling on my face. I was pissed off that all of my things were unpacked; I’d have to leave most of it. All but my computer, my external hard drive, and other writing paraphernalia were replaceable.
As I shoved those items and a few others into my laptop bag and a duffel bag, my eyes fell across the unmade bed. The sheets were rumpled and the soft scent of our mixed scents and the scent of sex made my body react with heat, but my heart broke into a thousand pieces. I swallowed back my tears, zipped up my bags, and walked away.
I was stowing my bags into my rental car when Leo started calling me. Katy Perry’s voice cut through the early evening with an acoustic version of “Teenage Dream.” I had set the ring tone in the middle of the night during our food run at Disney, the night I had let myself go.
I didn’t want to answer the phone and talk to Leo, but I had to know what kind of head start I had on him. I had ignored the first three calls, but I answered on the fourth as I navigated through the weekend Miami traffic not far from his house.
“What?” I snapped into the phone.
“You promised!” Leo shouted. “You fucking promised me you wouldn’t run! I’m ten minutes from home; don’t go anywhere, Tabitha. I swear to god—”
I hung up the phone. I had a decision to make. I could go to the airport, in which case I wouldn’t put it past Leo to search me out there, buying airline tickets to get through security to find me, or to take the first flight back to Philadelphia and intercept me there. I had no choice. I had to drive back. It would be a long trip, but maybe I’d stop a few times along the way and take the time I needed to pull my head together. Maybe after he realized I wasn’t at my place in New Jersey after a few days, he’d fly back home.
My phone rang again. Part of me wanted to go back and hear his explanation, but I knew there was no excuse for what Leo had done, for what he had failed to tell me. I was done. I was so fucking done.
“Girl Code Is Real. Don’t break it... BUT, some things to consider:
- Are we really best, best friends? Or have we grown apart and our friendship is nothing more than memories?
- Is my best friend a bitch (and by bitch I mean, a conniving, calculating, mean cunt) and I failed to realize it until now?”
Marta V., New York, United States
Chapter Eighteen
I was about halfway home, halfway to New Jersey, driving through South Carolina when it hit me. It really hit me, hard, like driving eighty into a brick wall.
I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted Leo Pesciano. Never in my life. Even when I was a teenage girl and he was dating my best friend, I wanted him. I never admitted it out loud, or even to myself, but I wanted him. It wasn’t just a want. It was a need, like every part of me needed him in a way that I couldn’t have him. I needed his smiles just for myself, his laughter, his words, his embrace, his kisses, and his love and affection. A hole as deep and dark as space had been left in me during our nine-year absence. Every day that I was with him in Florida, he filled it a little more until he was consuming me, until I was wrapped in him entirely, and completely whole.
But he was never mine, never could be mine. Even for those couple of brief days when I thought he was mine and I was his, he wasn’t mine. He would always be hers as far as I was concerned. Any other woman could walk into Leo’s life and claim him and that would be fine, but not me. It didn’t work that way for me, because he belonged to Leslie, and long ago, I had promised her that I would never take him, and in a way, I had kept my promise. I didn’t take him. I never really had him. I could never really have him, the one person that I ever really wanted.
My broken heart was my own fault. The pain roaring through my blood and touching every part of my body was my own doing. I did something I was never supposed to do, and I foolishly believed that I could have something I was never meant to have. But I also hurt because Leo didn’t tell me the truth. He hid the truth about Leslie from me, and I hurt because Leslie, who was supposed to be such a good friend, didn’t even tell me she was back with Leo, didn’t tell me about the baby they apparently lost. It was like I meant nothing to her anymore, and that wasn’t fair. I had sacrificed the biggest thing in my life for her and she couldn’t even give me a phone call.
I stayed co
oped up in a hotel in South Carolina for days, absorbed in my misery, until I couldn’t stay any longer. I had my assistant, Suzanna, gather everything I needed for New York, and there were only a few days’ grace period between that and Pittsburgh. I needed to pull myself together because I had commitments to tend to.
I half expected Leo to show up in New York during the signing, but he didn’t. For most of that day, I didn’t even get one of his myriad of phone calls. It was like he knew to leave me alone during those hours, and maybe he did. I had gone over my schedule with him in great detail, and it was all on my website and Facebook page to see anyway.
I never responded to Leslie’s text. I did eventually look at it, but I didn’t answer it. How is Miami? was all she said. I had no doubt that she knew how Miami was. She had most likely spoken to Rohanna and probably even Leo by then. Maybe I had no right to be angry with her. I was the one that broke the pact, but she abandoned me as a friend, dropped me like I wasn’t good enough. It’s no excuse for what I had done, but Leslie earned my anger just the same.
And Sandy. I loved Sandy, but she had let me down, too. She had known about Leslie, though she claimed she didn’t know how serious it was. She only knew that Leslie had been in Miami. It didn’t matter if she thought it was serious, or if she thought they were just fucking, or just friends, or whatever. Knowing my aversion to a relationship with Leo and why, she should have said something long ago.
I wasn’t in the mood to talk to any one of them, even after I’d had some time to cool off. I wanted to go check on my parents and brother, because other than a few text messages between my dad and me, I hadn’t spoken to my family in weeks, and I wanted to pull myself together for all of the traveling I had ahead. I had less than two weeks before I had to be in San Francisco and after a stop in Long Beach, I only had a few days between there and Chicago.
When I unlocked my apartment door for the first time in weeks, I was flabbergasted to find Leo there, waiting for me with his arms crossed and his jaw ticking. I only needed one guess to know how he got inside, his co-conspirator, Sandy.