Page 23 of Chasing Chase London: Part 8-Valentines Day
“Let me see.”
“Okay,” I say slowly, handing my phone to her.
“Ball-Stars?” she asks, looking up from the screen. “Is that like a porn thing?”
“No, Linds, it’s a basketball thing. Like all-stars? Read it if you want. It’s probably boring to you.”
She thumbs through for a minute, looking at the dumb memes, jokes, and clips of cool shots from online we’ve sent each other.
“Who else are you texting?” she asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know, everyone. What’s going on?”
She messes around on my phone for a few minutes. When she looks up, her eyes are pooling with tears.
“Whoa, hey,” I say. “Talk to me, Linds.”
“Did you sleep with Elaine?” she asks.
My jaw clenches, and my balls try to crawl back up into my body.
“Did you?” she demands. “Don’t lie to me, Chase! I know you did!”
I don’t say anything. It’s not something I think about, let alone talk about. Not even when the other guys brag about nailing Elaine.
It’s different when it’s a conquest. None of us brag about shitty first sexual encounters, though I’m sure lots of us have them.
I wouldn’t even know how to talk about it if I tried. I didn’tsleepwith her, but I’m not sure what I would call it. A surprise gift wrapped in a hundred layers of conflict, shame, rage, guilt, doubt?
“Tell me the truth,” Lindsey begs, a tear spilling down her cheek. “I need to hear it from you.”
I wish I could tell her the truth, but even I don’t know. So I stay silent while she stares at me like a stranger who just shot her at point-blank range, and she’s trying to comprehend why before she bleeds out.
“At least have the decency to say it to my face,” she cries. “Tell me you didn’t have sex with her.”
I still don’t say anything.
“Oh my god, you did,” she whispers, a tear spilling down her cheek. “How could you? She’s my best friend.”
I reach for her, the instinct to comfort a girl, to comforther, while she cries ingrained in me too deeply to ignore. It’s an empty gesture though, when I can’t do anything to make it better.
“Don’t touch me with your cheating hands,” she seethes. “All I want is the truth, Chase. Now be a man and say it to my face. Did you fuck her?”
I flinch. That’s probably the first time she’s ever used that word, and I know if she’s angry enough to say it, she won’t give up without the answer she came for.
“I don’t know,” I say quietly.
“What do mean, you don’t know?” she asks incredulously.
“I was drinking, and—”
“Oh, no you don’t,” she bursts out, interrupting me. “Don’t you dare use the excuse that you don’t remember!”
“I remember,” I say, unable to meet her gaze.
I remember, and maybe that means I wasn’t too drunk.
I performed, and maybe that does.
