Page 7 of The Other Side of Paradise
Ugh. Right. Because it was that easy. When someone’s partner cheated with you, it was as simple as waving a hand and sayingoh, it’s not my fault,and then you were absolved of all guilt. I looked away. “If you say so.”
She got a smile I didn’t like, leaning in towards me, and she folded her arms on the table. “So… something you want to share with the class?”
Ah, shit, she was onto me. I bristled. “What are you talking about?”
“Someone cheated on you over the last year, or what’s the baggage about?”
I huffed, feeling my face flush, and I folded my arms protectively. “Oh my god, BB, I don’t have baggage.”
She gave me a look like she knew I had baggage, and suddenly, she stood up. “Well, if that’s true, then I guess we’re all good here. Let me guess, you want food?”
That wasn’t why I was here. But… I wasn’t saying no to food. Especially if she might offer me pizza. “I’m famished,” I said.
“Pizza?”
Score. “You’re the best friend in the world,” I said, which honestly, it was kind of true, but I couldn’t possibly admit it without the sarcasm as a shield.
But I could only hide from it for so long, and I could tell BB knew I was sitting on something, so by the time we were out in the patio behind her house, with the brick-fired pizza oven crackling bright in the night and a mug full of ginger beer, I hunched into the corner of the ultra-soft patio couch she had, and I mumbled—apropos of nothing—“I kind of did the same thing.”
She glanced over at me from the chair to my left, her feet kicked up on the table. “Cheated on someone?”
I shot her a look. “What do you take me for? No. I, uh… someone cheated with me.” I withered, looking down. “I didn’t know she had a girlfriend…”
She stared at me for a second, her gaze scoping me out, before she softened, setting her drink down. “It’s hard as hell to stop blaming yourself for it. Promise it’s not your fault, though. How long ago was it?”
A lifetime ago and just yesterday at the same time. I could still see her face next to me at the bar—I’d gotten smuggled into a friend’s party at a club, and I was still nineteen, so I felt like the queen of the world getting to sit at the bar and ask for a drink. And when I’d seen Ellie at the bar, all sun-kissed glory with freckles and blue eyes with the most perfect eyelashes, short messy hair and a grin like all she knew how to do wasradiate,maybe it was just my first time feeling tipsy that gave me the courage, or maybe it was from feeling like a mature adult with the confidence to go for what she’d wanted, and I’d sat next to her. Flirted.
My heart had beenpoundingthe whole time, thinking somewhere deep downholy shit this girl is actually flirting with me.Thought I’d won the lottery. She talked about her music—a corporate drone by day and escaping to play in a local pop-rock band at night. I talked about my classes, my art, my dreams of traveling the world to paint people and sceneries in every corner of the world, and I’d been thinking the whole time,maybe you could come with me.
Because I was a fucking sentimental dumbass who couldn’t take the littlest bit of attention from a girl without falling uselessly for her in ten seconds. Laughter and gestures turned into flirtatious touches—a brush of the hand here, a touch on the shoulder there—and when she’d taken me dancing in a different room away from all our friends and we’d laughed over my clumsy steps, she kissed me, and I soared to the moon.
Then she came back to my apartment and fucked me like it didn’t mean anything. I’d kept on a smile, riding the high while feeling hollow all the while, and I’d fallen asleep while she was in the bathroom. She wasn’t in the apartment when I woke up half an hour later, and I found out the next day when I asked a friend—being tactful and acting like she was just a cool friend I’d crossed paths with and was idly curious about—more aboutEllie. The friend lit up, all,oh, Ellie’s wonderful, shame her girlfriend couldn’t make it, she’s great, you’d love her.
Yeah. Maybe I would. Probably I wouldn’t. What was for sure, though, was thatshewouldn’t loveme.
I shook my head, back to the present moment. “It’s been a minute… that was back in March.”
She nodded. “So, how’d it go? Girlfriend blew up at you?”
Ugh—she was assuming I was a better person than I was. I winced hard. “I wish I were as good as you are at this,” I said. “Nope. She never found out. Far as I know, they’re still together.”
“Ouch.”
“I’m a terrible sack of shit.”
“We’re all terrible sacks of shit at one point or another,” she said, a small smile on her face. “You only really do well for yourself in life if you recognize it and start to do something about it. It should be her responsibility to come clean, though.”
She jumped up to her feet, fetching the pizzas from the oven, and I sighed, looking out into the distance, the wind rustling the palm leaves around the little brick patio.Her responsibilitywas a nice thing to say—an easy little out to absolve myself of the guilt. Sure, it was her responsibility, but that didn’t really mean much when I knew she wouldn’t do it anyway.
But whatever. I let Brooklyn grill me about the details, extracting my sordid past like pulling a tooth, and as much as I never in my life wanted to admit to it—to having sex with another woman’s girlfriend and then hiding it, to getting duped like that and falling for a girl so easily when she was leading me on just for the thrill of infidelity, to sitting here wringing my hands knowing the girlfriend wouldn’t have believed me if I’d tried to tell her anyway because Ellie was so far out of my league—as much as I didn’t want to say it, I guess I did feel better withit off my chest. It was a hollow feeling in my gut, but almost in a good way, like I’d had something stabbed into me and I’d pulled it out, and I was bleeding, but it meant I could heal.
“I’ll…” I started, shifting awkwardly as I did, looking down at the pizza I’d been working my way through, the night getting late now. I swallowed back the thick feeling in my throat and said, “I’ll work up the guts to tell her. And if she brushes me off and tries to give me shit over attacking her relationship, then I can at least say I tried.”
She smiled. “That’s the spirit. If it goes badly and gets you down in the dumps, I’ll bring you food while you lose yourself in video games for a while.”
I laughed, a shallow thing more from relief than anything else. “Look, I’m not even gonna pretend I won’t take you up on that in a heartbeat. Thanks, BB. And thanks for the pizza, too. I owe you one.”
“Forget it,” she said. “Don’t owe a thing.”
