Page 22 of Chasing Chase London: Part 8-Valentines Day
“I—I didn’t—” Daria starts, her face blanching.
“I said, get out of my house,” Lindsey yells, jumping up and pointing at the door. “Get out!”
Daria sighs and slips from the bed, then stops and turns back at the door. “Now you know how it feels to have Elaine’s knife in your back.”
She disappears through the door and is gone.
“Lindsey,” I say, about to tell her that was too harsh. Daria didn’t do anything except tell her the truth.
She wheels around to face me.
“Is it true?” she asks in her steely flat voice.
I shrink back from the cold fury in her eyes. I just witnessed her shooting the first messenger, and I’m not anxious to meet the same fate. Her gun is still smoking.
“Elaine doesn’t talk to me, you know that,” I hedge, trying to think of a way out that doesn’t end with my execution too.
“But Daria does,” she says, looking at me pleadingly now.
I know what she wants. She wants me to tell her it’s not true, that Daria just said that to hurt her. But she already knows. Daria would only have told me something if there was something to tell.
If I tell Lindsey what she wants to hear, I’ll stay in her good graces, but she’ll never forgive Daria. I can’t lie about Daria like that. I can’t let her take the fall for something Elaine did. I’m pretty sure there isn’t room for two knives in Daria’s back. This way there’s at least a chance.
“Maybe you were broken up,” I try. “She said you and Chase have been on and off for years.”
“Chase would never do that,” Lindsey says, disbelief filling her voice. “He can’t stand Elaine.”
“Would Elaine?”
“It can’t be true,” she says, but now her voice is tiny and weak and trembling.
I don’t answer that one. The only thing I can tell her is something she doesn’t want to hear.
Lindsey’s hand goes to her mouth, and her eyes fill with tears. I’m not sure if she’s going to yell at me to leave, so I just sit there awkwardly again, not sure what to do, again. Maybe I was born without the comfort-your-friends-when-they-cry gene, or maybe I just never learned because I never had friends.
Finally Lindsey sinks onto the bed, and I do what she did for Daria—rub her back while she cries.
Every sob slices my heart like a scalpel. Her pain washes over me, a ripple effect that crushes my heart along with hers. Seeing her in pain is torture, and I can’t make it better no matter what I say.
What would I say, anyway? That it’s all going to be okay? What if it’s not? That she’ll get over it? What if she doesn’t? That everything happens for a reason? The only reason for this is that she chose the wrong best-friend-for-life. Elaine said all was fair in love and war, and she meant it. She just never told Lindsey that she was the enemy in this war.
*
Chase London
Now Playing:
“Forever”–Noah Kahan
I sit up and set my phone aside when Lindsey walks into my bedroom without bothering to knock.
“Hey, whoa,” I say. “Is everything okay?”
One look at her face says she’s not okay, if the lack of manners hadn’t already given it away.
“Who are you texting?” she demands.
“The team chat,” I say, frowning. “Why? What’s up?”
