So if it wasn’t Ian at the door, then who was it? Throwing the blanket from her body and dragging it in one hand as she made her way clumsily across the room, she knocked over an end table along with two semi-freshly watered plants in the process. Though she was willing to ignore the mess and the noise, Petra’s voice came from deep inside her bedroom to confirm that she wasn’t so willing.
“Reagan, what’s going on out there? I’m trying to sleep!”
Sure, she thought to herself, the plant falling to the carpet wakes her up, but the banging at the door?
Once she finally made it to the front door, she raised high up on her toes to peep through the hole, half expecting to see a Jehovah’s Witness or some kid selling cookies to raise money for their sports league. College students seemed to be a good target for those things these days.
But what walked through Reagan’s door a few seconds later was neither of those things. It wasn’t even a groveling, apologetic Ian carrying flowers by the dozens as she’d still hoped from the farthest depths of her heart. Instead, what walked through Reagan’s door was a slim and attractive brunette girl who would have stood approximately Reagan’s own height, had it not been for the five-inch wedges adorning her perfectly manicured feet.
Typical, Reagan thought. I look like beat up rag doll while my kid sister looks like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine.
To further complicate her mood, Reagan stared at the mountain of pink luggage – six large bags classified as a mountain right? – that Katie had hauled up the stairs. If anything was going to tip her life from disastrous to catastrophic, it was the site of her perfectly groomed, perfectly beautiful sister with a mountain of perfectly pink luggage sitting outside her door.
After she swung the door open, she suddenly discovered she didn’t have the energy to properly greet her. “Is it Sunday already?” Without waiting for an answer, she simply walked away, heading back to slump onto the couch and put her head down again. And she was lucky she’d made it that far.
“Umm...Hi?” Katie stood in the doorway, looking around in confusion.
But Reagan didn’t bother to get up. She didn’t have the energy to lift her head. Instead, she pulled the blanket back around her, looking as though she might fall back to sleep. “Hi Katie.” She called from the depths of the pillows.
Leaving her luggage on the landing, Katie followed her sister to the couch. “Did I wake you up? It’s almost noon. Are you sick?”
Reagan looked up, perplexity furrowing deep into her brows as she checked the time again. “It’s just barely ten.” She corrected her. “And it’s Sunday. Relax.”
“You look horrible. Are you sure you’re not sick?” Then she gasped, covering her glossy pink lips with both hands at her own revelation. “Are you having trouble with drugs?”
“No, and no.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean what do I mean?”
“You only answered with one word, I need more details than that.”
“What is it this week with people and details...” She muttered to herself. “Bring your luggage in and shut the door. We don’t have a doorman here.”
Katie stood to do that, but continued talking as she pulled the pieces in. “Well?”
Watching from the comfort of the couch, she finally gave in. “No, I’m not sick and I’m definitely not on drugs.”
“Are you having problems with a guy?”
Reagan knew from the smirk Katie threw over her shoulder, she’d meant this last question sarcastically. But all things considered, it hit pretty close to home and cut just as deep. The tears threatened to well up again, but she managed to suppress them. For the moment at least.
“Not a guy.” The cold tone she used was an attempt to cover up all the other emotions that were surfacing now. “Several, it seems these days.”
“Justin?” Katie asked.
Reagan nodded her head. “Justin. Ian. And maybe a little Brett too, I’m not really sure anymore.”
“Who’s Brett? Never mind. Ian?” Katie pulled her head back in surprise and placed one hand defiantly on her hip. “What’s going on with Ian? I thought you two were friends.”
“Yeah, we were.” Reagan sighed, then she nearly choked on the sound of her own voice as she continued. “Until I fell in love with him. And I thought he loved me too, but last night I saw him kissing Isabella, so I don’t know.”
“Who’s Isabella?”
“The slut Justin cheated on me with.”
“What?! When did that happen?”
“Freakin’ spring break.” Reagan scowled. “Don’t ever do spring break when you get to college, Katie. It messes everything up.”
After locking the door, Katie plopped solidly onto the couch opposite Reagan, who finally began to sit up again. Then she noticed her sister’s bottom lip was quivering and her eyes were beginning to glisten. “Oh, Reag.” Sniff. “You’re worse off than I am.” Sniff.
“Thanks.” She replied sarcastically, and let her head fall heavily into her propped up hand. “How long are you staying?”
“I don’t know yet.” Katie swallowed her meltdown. “Couple days. Couple weeks.”
Reagan arched her brows in surprise and threw a glance toward the pile of luggage that now filled her living room. “That’s some heavy equipment for a couple of days.”
Katie laughed a little and twisted a corner of the decorative pillow around her slim finger. “Not really. Just the necessities. You should have seen it before I narrowed it down.”
“I can only imagine.” Shaking her head, she decided to leave the subject alone. “What do you say we get something to eat later and we can catch each other up on everything then, okay? I think I need to get some more rest.”
The suggestion had seemed innocent enough as far as she could tell, but the quivering lip and watery eyes meant Reagan had somehow hit another meltdown trigger.
“That’s what Kyle asked right before he broke up with me.” By the end of the sentence, her voice had grown so shrill Reagan was afraid it would crack the glass in the window. “How could he do that?” She continued through sniffles and tears, “To me? Me? I’m not dull, and I’m not unattractive.”
Reagan looked at Katie’s face earnestly, and decided the confession hadn’t been vanity, but merely the simple truth and a desire to understand. Compassion started breaking through her own numb, confused shell. “Sometimes men just don’t make sense.” And she quickly realized she was trying to comfort herself as much as Katie.
“Tell me about it. I feel like he broke my heart.”
“How long were you together?”
“Two weeks.” A sob lodged in the back of her throat as she spoke.
But it was hard for Reagan not to laugh at the ridiculous statement. “He didn’t break your heart then.” She hadn’t intended on vocalizing her thought, but the matter-of-fact words had slipped out before she could catch them. Of course, she blamed it on her exhausted state of mind. At any other time in her life, she never would’ve made that mistake.
But she had. And the comment was enough to make the doe-eyed Katie look like a deer in headlights. “Excuse me?”
Oh shit, Reagan thought to herself. The last thing she wanted was an altercation with her sister. No more drama, no more fights, no more misunderstandings please! Yet here she was, right on the edge of one. Regret etched out of a voice that sounded significantly smaller now, even to herself. “He hurt your ego. But he didn’t really break your heart.” She tried to explain. “Did he?”
“How the hell would you know?” Indignation was obviously very present, and while she hadn’t intended on upsetting Katie, Reagan couldn’t help but to almost feel insulted by the sudden shift. It was all too much – the breakup, the crazy week, her friend becoming her love interest, then her love interest betraying her trust, the stupid girl who had been the common factor in all the drama that week, her sister’s personal drama... There was only so much a person could take
, and Reagan had just about reached her limit. Every insecurity she’d ever had had been tested. Her own meltdown was approaching, she could feel it bubbling up in her, and while she’d been trying so hard to keep it together, she could tell the fabric of her emotional sanity was unraveling more with every second that passed.
“Because if he’d really broken your heart, you wouldn’t be all dressed up looking perfect with a thousand pounds of luggage sitting at my door.” With the first burst of rebuttal, the tears had begun to flow again, freely and liberally. It felt so good to let it out, yet hurt like hell at the same time. “You’d be in bed, miserable. You wouldn’t eat, you wouldn’t sleep, you wouldn’t think. And at the same time, you’d think too much, over-analyzing and replaying everything that had happened again and again and again. And you sure as hell wouldn’t have the energy to fix your hair and face. I’ve had my heart broken twice in the past week, that’s how the hell I know.”
To Reagan’s surprise, Katie was perfectly still and perfectly silent for exactly ten seconds after she’d finished – a feat that had never been accomplished before. At least, not that she could remember. There was something in the girl’s eyes, something about the expression on her face that acknowledged completely – albeit regretfully – that Reagan had been right. And therefore, she couldn’t get mad, or offended, or even argumentative. In fact, it appeared as though she wasn’t exactly certain how to react. All at once her very stable and grounded half-sibling was falling apart in front of her, and she was no more equipped to handle that than she was her own dramatic situation. And so she let the thoughts and words roll around slowly as she contemplated the experience Reagan must’ve had that brought her to this point.
“Oh my god. You really are in love with him aren’t you?” The pools of hazel became watery as she replied. “I mean, I guess I figured deep down that you were the way you always talk about him. But you really, truly are?”
“Yep.” Reagan’s answer was absolute and undeniable as she wiped at the trickle of water that escaped down her cheek. Laying back down again, she covered her head with a pillow. “And I’m the last person in the world to realize it apparently.”
“Has he called you?”
“Yep.” She thought of her seventeen missed calls and wondered if she had the emotional strength to listen to the voicemails. Maybe she’d let Katie screen them first...
“What’d he say about what happened?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him.”
“But he’s called you to talk about it.”
Lifting the pillow from her head again, she offered a sheepish glance at Katie in reply. “I’m ignoring him.”
“I can’t believe you don’t want to hear him out at least. This just doesn’t sound like something Ian would do.”
A little laugh escaped Reagan’s throat. “What do you know about him?”
“Umm...everything I’ve heard from you over the past couple of years.” Katie corrected. “Which is a lot, by the way. If everything you’ve told me in the past has been true, and I have to believe it is, then I don’t think he’d do this. At least not in the way that you’re thinking he did.” It looked as though Reagan was about to object, but Katie started again before she’d had the chance to. “No really. Stop and think for a minute. Put your emotions completely out of the picture. Knowing what you do, does this sound like something a guy like Ian would do to someone he loved?”
Reagan was silent as she considered this, looking down at her phone for several long minutes. Then she glanced up, face forlorn. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him in love before.” Then she shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t really love me either. Maybe that’s just a line he used.”
Katie gave her the look. “I think you know that’s not true. I’ve always known he loves you.”
“When did you get so grown up sounding all of a sudden?” Exasperated by the idea, she covered her head with the pillow again. But the more she thought about it, the more she was forced to admit that maybe Katie had a point. It doesn’t seem like something Ian would do to someone he really cared about, he was more thoughtful than that. At least, he always had been in the past. But that’s why it’d hurt so much. She wasn’t prepared for a blow like that. Not from him.
She felt her phone slipping between her fingers and looked up to find that Katie had moved from her seat. With a mischievous smile dancing across her face, she’d grabbed the phone and backed quickly away, out of reach from Reagan’s objections. “Let’s see what kind of messages he left you.” But as she pointed her finger, preparing to flip through the screens and hit play, the phone began vibrating in her hand. With wide eyes, she turned the screen toward Reagan. “Someone’s calling you.”
A look of pure panic washed over Reagan’s face when she saw Ian’s name on the screen, and suddenly her stomach was fluttering with nerves.
“Answer it.” Her sister held it out for her.
“No, you do it.”
“You!” Katie insisted.
But by the time Reagan had snatched it, it had already gone into the voicemail.
“Oh my god, one of you just answer the damn thing.” Petra had come stumbling out of her bedroom, a silk kimono covering the pink lingerie she’d changed into at some point during the night. The matching sleep mask was pushed high up on her forehead to reveal eyes still heavy with sleep.
“Sorry about last night.” Reagan was eyeing her carefully as she crossed the room. “Did I ruin your party?”
After waving her off in a dismissive way, Petra sat down on the couch next to Reagan and looked across at Katie. “When’d you get here?”
“Few minutes ago.”
“Oh.” Petra considered this before turning back to Reagan. “No, of course you didn’t.” She replied calmly. “You would’ve if you hadn’t laid into Justin the way you did though.” The sly smile she offered validated her approval. “He deserved it. And more.”
“You heard about that?”
“Oh yeah. From more than one person.” She was smirking sleepily at the memory.
“But then I bailed.”
“Well, I would have bailed too if I’d have seen my boyfriend kissing another girl.” She laid her head on Reagan’s shoulder, stifling a big yawn. “But it turns out that’s not exactly what happened.”
“I had a feeling you were going to say that.” Reagan’s head fell back against the cushions.
“Told you.” Katie smiled across at them, looking completely satisfied with herself.
“Explain.”
Petra sat up and turned so she could look directly at Reagan as she spoke. “Isabella kissed him.”
“Yeah, got that memo last night. The visual’s still pretty clear, thanks.”
Ignoring Reagan’s eye roll, Petra continued. “He didn’t kiss her back though. Not at all. And when he finally pried her off him – after you left – he laid into her and said he was with you and only wanted you. And he told her never to try to contact him again.”
Reagan looked from Petra to Katie and back again in silence, her mouth open in astonishment. “That’s really what happened?”
“Told you.” Katie interjected again.
“Yep. I watched the whole thing myself.” She gave it a minute to let the news sink in. “How do you feel now?”
“Stupid. Really, really stupid.” She admitted honestly. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
“How do you figure?” Petra nearly levitated off the cushions in her astonishment. “It changes everything!”
“Because I can’t go through this again. Especially with Ian. Some hot girl is always going to want him. There will always be someone better than me flinging themselves at him. So this is always going to be an issue, and I can’t deal with it.” Her stomach turned as she considered the possibility. “It’s better if we just stay friends, if that’s even possible now.”
“He’s not Justin, Reagan. Give the guy a break.” Petra groaned. “He’s been in love with you since t
he day he met you. He’d just never admitted it because of this chip on your shoulder and your preconceived idea of him.” She paused to let that sink in before moving on to her next point. “And you need to give yourself more credit than that. So you’re not a size two. So what? Every girl on campus would kill for your boobs. You’re hot. Deal with it.”
And though she smiled at the compliment, it didn’t really seem to penetrate through her insecurities. So she shook her head, trying to resolve herself of the idea that everything would be okay if she and Ian just stayed friends. That she could forget she was in love with him, and that for a few minutes at least, everything in her world had been perfect.
“It’s probably for the best then.” Petra sighed as she moved into the kitchen. “You don’t really love him. No reason to string him along, so just let him go.”
“What did you say?” Reagan wasn’t certain if she should be offended or amused or both.
“I said it’s probably for the best.” Petra’s voice, her entire demeanor, exuded casualness as she pulled a cup down from the cabinets and began filling it with juice. And that, more than anything, was getting under Reagan’s skin.
“No, after that part.”
“I said you don’t really love him.” Petra nonchalantly took a sip and stared back at Reagan. She was practically daring her to prove the statement wrong.
“I don’t love him?” Reagan took up the challenge, as offended came much easier right about now. “Where do you get off saying a thing like that?”
“Easy. You don’t trust him. If you loved him, you would trust him implicitly. It’s not like he’s ever messed up before, so you have no reason not to. And you would trust what your best friend – yours truly - says about him. I saw the whole thing, it’s not gossip. It’s not some fabricated tale he told me to cover his ass. I saw it with my own eyes. ” She took another sip before practically slamming the cup onto the counter. “So at this point, you’re just hurting yourself. The man of your dreams, hell the man of almost every girl’s dreams, is practically begging for you to hear him out. And you won’t.”
The Boyfriend List Page 17