Page 85 of Ladybirds

He must see how pale she is, see the shock edging the rims of her irises, because the words stop falling out of his mouth (even though she can see the way he has to bite his lip to keep them in). He closes the door and follows her into her living room. Sara makes a point of sitting in Seth’s chair.

Nervously, David glances around the room before sitting stiffly on the couch across from her. He licks his lips, swallows, before speaking again. They’re still jumbled, but significantly less rushed. “What happened to your foot?”

Sara shrugs awkwardly, keeping her answer short in hopes that he’ll drop it. “I tripped.”

He fidgets, seeming to get the hint. “Sara, I’m so sorry. I—I have no idea what came over me. Those things I said—and your car—I wouldn’t even believe it if I didn’t remember doing it. That—that’s not who I am. It’s not—that wasn’t me. I would never—”

So Seth was right. He did mess with her car.

Sara runs a hand through her hair, not missing the way his eyes caught the motion or the slight frown creasing the smooth skin between his brows. He used to love her long hair, would twirl in around his fingers and watch it coil like a spring. “All the phone calls? That text message? Was that you, too?”

His expression confirms her suspicions before his voice can. “I’m so—”

“David, it’s ok. I know.”

And she does. She’s known for a while now that the words he said—the ones that cut her—weren’t from the same man she’d fallen in love with. What she’s struggling to understand is why it changed. “When,” she swallows, tries to recapture her voice. “When did you remember?”

“This morning,” he says, leaning over the coffee table between them and grasping her hands. Sara lets him, frozen despite how unfamiliar they feel. “Right when I woke up. I tried to call, but you weren’t answering and I—well, I couldn’t wait. I figured you had to be here.”

This morning… Her eyes flit to her bedroom door, realization dawning with the subtlety of a knife.

Seth.

Kissing him didn’t just break his curse, but David’s too.

“I—” she trails off, unsure of what she wants to say—what she feels. There’s a tangle of emotion in her chest, squeezing on her heart, but she’s too busy drowning in the shock of it all to begin untangling it. Then she hears her bedroom door creak open, and it feels like the world stops.

“Sara?” Seeing them, Seth freezes in the hallway. Sara can tell the exact moment when he figures it out. His head tilts, his brows furrowed and his mouth parted in a perplexed frown as he stares at the man across from her. “You’re back.”

David looks between the injured, half-naked man in her home to her, and back. “Uh, who are you?”

Seth’s gaze finds hers; a brief meeting. Too brief. “No one of consequence, I assure you. I’ll be in, well, the only other room. Pardon my interruption.”

The silence that falls between them is punctuated only by the click of the door latch.

David can’t seem to take his eyes off her door, eyebrows furrowed in what she recognizes as concern. “… Who was that?”

If that wasn’t the question of the week. Sara settles for the closest thing to the truth. “A friend.”

“He came from your bedroom.” He blinks, shaking his head. “He went back to your bedroom.”

Sara’s eyes close. Of course, he remembers the layout of the apartment. “A good friend.” When she opens her eyes, David is still staring at her as if she owes him more of an answer, so she adds, “His name is Seth.”

“Ok… should I be worried?” He gives a nervous laugh. “I mean, there’s a half-naked guy hanging out in my girlfriend’s bedroom.”

Sara’s heart drops. Rises. There’s an ocean in her ears; a flood of static white noise threatening to drown her.

Oh.

Oh no.

“David…” she breathes, struggling to find the right words. She hates that she can’t find any—hates that there aren’t any. “I’m not—our relationship ended a year ago.”

He pales, grasping her hands. A look of panic pinches his features. “No. No, no. I know—I really messed up, but I swear I didn’t remember anything until this morning. I swear. I—I still love you.”

Once, months ago, she would have begged to hear those words from him. But now… her gaze lingers on her bedroom door. The David sitting in her living room is the same person she fell in love with, but she isn’t. The trauma of being abandoned by him, of losing Oma, has changed her. Being with Seth—seeing the regret he carries, the way he forces a smile through his suffering… The way his mask slipped, little by little, until she saw the man shielding himself behind it.

The way David looks at her now—on the precipice of self-righteous anger—she understands why Seth embraced the role of a villain for so long. There’s nothing she can say that won’t make her seem cruel. Maybe, in some ways, she is. But she won’t force herself to try when she knows it’s destined to fail. She won’t sacrifice the happiness she’s found, the love she’s found, trying to salvage a relationship she’s already given up on. Not when she can’t even look at him without remembering the way he tore her life apart—without hearing the echo of his fists pounding on her door.

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