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Guilty awkward silence.
“Sky, I really care about you a lot, you know that, right?”
A curl of dread begins in my stomach. “Yes,” I say slowly. “I like you too.”
My pulse has gone erratic, and my mind is racing. Does he know? Did Meghan post something online about our date, and tag me, and Todd saw it, and now he thinks I’m cheating on him, even though I didn’t so much as touch Oliver’s hand in the popcorn bucket?
I may not know much about relationships, but my brain is screaming,Red flag! Red flag!
“I’d never want to hurt you,” Todd says. “I have so much respect for you. So I have to be honest with you. You deserve that much.”
The curl of dread tightens into a knot. Despite having never had a boyfriend before, I know by instinct alone that I’m being dumped. Todd doesn’t say anything for a while, and I want to scream into the abyss like Chase, tell him to just spit it out and put me out of my misery. But I sit in silence and wait.
“I slept with Elaine.”
I don’t say anything. My brain is a total blank.
“Are you still there?” he asks, after an endless silence.
“I don’t know.”
“Aren’t you going to say anything? Aren’t you mad, or…?” His voice trails off.
“I don’t know.”
I need to do something to help me process, so I stand up and make my way out onto the balcony, needing to move.
“Is that it?” he asks after another long pause. I realize I’m supposed to say something, feel something, but I can’t seem to find the appropriate reaction. “Are we done, then?”
“I don’t know,” I say again. I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but what does he expect me to say?
Why the hell do you keep sleeping with the coldest, most horrible person I’ve ever met?
Why do you seem like such a good guy when you’re not?
He’s worse than Chase. At least Chase only strings me along and flirts with me and makes me crazy. He never goes through with it.
“Okay,” Todd says, sounding so sad I think he might cry. “I guess I’ll see you next week. Have a good time at the lake.”
“Okay. Bye.”
I hang up and just stand there holding my phone. It seems so final.
Why do I feel guilty for hurting him and not saying that we’re still together, when he’s the one who slept with someone else? Maybe he wanted me to say it was okay, that I forgave him.
Do I forgive him?
Megan comes out a minute later, her phone in hand. “Listen to this,” she says, then glances up and sees me. Her face falls.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know,” I say. Why can’t I say anything else?
“Need a smoke?” she asks, waving her pack of cigarettes.
“Sure, why not? Not like I’ll be kissing anyone anytime soon.”
“What happened?”
