Page 26 of The Red Zone
Shit. What was even worse was that they hadn’t been lying about what they said. All of third grade, I had a massive crush on Molly Goldberg. That same year, Mae had a permanent bad attitude, a unibrow, and a choppy bob haircut.
It took her a while to grow into herself, but by the time middle school rolled around… her looks had changed drastically. Everyone else might as well have been invisible compared to her by that point. By the time she was a freshman, she’d gotten signed with a modeling agency and spent more time being whisked around the world than she did at school.
“All of this bullshit was because of something stupid someone said over a valentine?”
She sniffled, with a small laugh that made something buried deep in my chest clench tightly. “Don’t belittle me. I was seven years old and humiliated because my first crush called me ugly in front of half the school.”
“You don’t believe that’s still true, do you? Mae, you were one of the highest paid supermodels in the world. Didn’t you get named ‘most beautiful woman of the year’ once?”
“Twice.” She corrected me with an ornery smile. “And it wasn’tjustthem talking about valentines, though. That might’ve been the starting point of my hatred, but we both know there was more to this than just that. Not to mention, we’ve been at each other’s throats from the beginning. While I might’ve hated you a bit less without the humiliation factor, it wouldn’t have changed the fact that I still would’ve hated you regardless.”
I guess I couldn’t disagree with that.
“Why don’t I remember any of this? And why hasn’t Scarlett ever said anything about it?”
“You were playing on the back of the playground, so you probably didn’t hear it. And Scar was home sick with the flu that week, remember? You got it right after…” she trailed off.
Shit. I had forgotten about that too. Valentine’s fell on a Friday and I missed the entire week after because I was sick. “So, by the time we got back in school, everyone had already moved on to something else.” I finished the sentence for her.
She nodded with an eye roll. “Well, except for Molly Goldberg.”
“What’d she do?”
“You don’t remember?” The hurt in her voice made my chest ache.
Mae closed her eyes. Not speaking for a long time as she did what appeared to do a few box breaths. When she finally opened them, her eyes were glossy and the urge to cry was written all over her face.
I started to speak, unsure of what to even say, but she held out her hand to stop me.
“When we were heading back inside, you guys were walking a few feet in front of me with Jenna Colligan, talking and you were telling her all about how you wished you had her as a valentine instead of me then she turned to you both and said…”
She paused, looking up at the night sky as she gathered herself enough to finish. She wasn’t hyperventilating, but it was almost as if she wasn’t able to fill her lungs completely.
The heaviness in my chest felt unbearable. I dropped to my knees in front of her, putting the empty bottle on the ground, and placing my hands over hers. “Please, Mae. I need to know what she said.”
“She said, ‘Mae’s birth parents didn’t want her, so it’s only right that nobody else does’.”
Fuck.
Just fuck.
My head fell forward, and I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“And then you laughed—laughed.”She blinked, and one singular tear skated down her cheek. “I’ve had broken bones, and I’ve been called awful things by some of the most beautiful and powerful people in the world… but nothing, nothing, has hurt me as badly as hearing her say those words.”
“Hey, hey, hey. Please don’t cry.” I wiped a thumb underneath her eye to get rid of a tear that was threatening to break.
I hadn’t been the one to say those words, but if I hadn’t been an idiot telling Molly how much I wished I’d chosen her in the first place…fuck. It might’ve been an accident, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t inadvertently responsible for the worst, most heartbreaking pain of her life.
With two fingers under her chin, I tilted her face up so she could see the remorse in my eyes as I spoke my next words. “Mae… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I had known, I never would have—”
She shook her head, tearing her eyes away from mine. “I know.”
I rose to my feet, taking a step back to feel the breeze against my face as I ran my hands down my cheeks. I didn’t know what to say, do, or think at the moment. Everything that came to mind felt wrong, and I didn’t want to screw things up more than I already had.
“Mae! Are you up there?” Scar’s voice traveled up the stairs from the deck below. “We’re about to enter the no wake zone, so we need to start saying goodbyes.”
“Just a minute.” She twisted her neck to call down to Scarlett before turning her attention back to me. “This changes nothing between us. You know that, right?”
