Page 70 of On the Line
“The constant partying, the endless drinking, the sleeping with random guys. You’re acting exactly like you did right after Mitch left.”
“What exactly is wrong with me partying and hooking up?” Lexie asked, seething. HowdareBerkley throw Mitch’s leaving in her face right now. “If you’re not doing it, I’m not allowed to either? I’m not a little girl, Berkley, and I don’t need you mothering me.”
“I’m not mothering you, Lexie. I’m standing here begging you to start taking care of yourself. You keep doing this. Blowing everything off, acting like nothing matters but what you want and how you feel. You should be trying to fix things with Mitch! Instead you’re getting drunk off your ass and fucking randos every night.”
“I’m sorry,” Lexie said quietly.
“I know him leaving was hard, but you can’t keep doing this to yourself. Or us.”
Amelia studied Lexie, then asked, “Are you ever going to tell us what happened with you guys before the trade, anyway?”
If Lexie had her way, they would never know. But Berkley couldn’t get much madder at Lexie than she already was, right?
So she opened her mouth, and the entire story spilled free. How her parents came to visit and acted like they always do—Berkley and Amelia had met Robert and Christina Monroe enough times to know how they were—and instead of keeping his head down and his mouth shut like she’d asked, Mitch defended her. And it blew up in their faces.
“I broke up with him,” she said. “I told him I couldn’t love him like he deserved and to leave. I didn’t think he’d take it literally and leave the fucking state.”
“What is wrong with you?” Berkley hissed. “Why are you so fucking selfish?”
Berkley’s words were a slap to the face for Lexie, partially because she deserved it and partially because Berkley rarely, if ever, spoke to anyone like that.
“Selfish?” Lexie asked, incredulous.
“Berkley,” Amelia warned.
Berkley cut her eyes to Amelia and said, “No, she needs to hear this.” Then she leveled that steely blue gaze back on Lexie. “Yes, selfish. You pushed him away so when he got traded, he left all of us! We could’ve spent this entire time still being friends with him. Instead you did what you always do, and ruined the best fucking thing you’ve ever had.”
“Berkley, you weren’t there,” Lexie said, voice pleading. “My parents…they were horrible. To me. To him. He was doing the right thing in standing up to them.”
Because I was too weak to do it myself.
“Then why did you break up with him? Seems to me that if you loved him that much, and he did the right thing in standing up to your asshole parents, then you had no reason to push him away.”
Lexie looked Berkley dead in the eyes and said, “I’m a master of self-sabotage. I seem to recall you know a little something about that.”
Berkley’s cheeks turned pink, and Lexie knew she had struck a chord. Berkley had broken up with Brent for the same reason: to protect her heart.
“That still doesn’t explain everything afterward,” Amelia said. “The days between that fight and the trade? The day of the trade. Why didn’t you call him?”
“I did,” Lexie said. “I called him upwards of forty times when I heard the news. I even went to his apartment to see him. He was just…gone.”
“Okay, fine,” Berkley said. “The way he left was shitty. We know this. But when he came back and was in the hospital, why didn’t you go see him then? You clearly still love him.”
“I don’t—” No, she wouldn’t admit her true feelings. Not yet. Possibly not ever, so she focused on Berkley’s question. “I did go see him.”
In the wake of Mitch’s most recent rejection, Lexie had shut down and reverted to old behaviors. It was the only thing she could do in the face of her heart potentially cracking wide open again.
When Lexie had talked to Berkley after attempting to go see Mitch, as soon as she was back in Detroit and the tears had dried and she’d once again gone numb, she’d lied through her teeth.
In her mind, it was better to look like the bad guy, the one who couldn’t take that step forward, than to be the one rejected. She couldn’t suffer the embarrassment, or the pity Berkley would certainly dish out.
So she’d told Berkley she changed her mind and hadn’t gone to see him. Berkley was, understandably, upset. But not nearly as upset as Lexie was.
She wasn’t proud of her behavior in the three months since that day. Growing up, she had tried everything to get her parents’ attention. Drugs, alcohol, sneaking out of the house, and staying at random house parties until all hours of the morning, indiscriminate sex. The final straw for them had been when she brought her first boyfriend home, a guy ten years her senior who was covered head to toe in tattoos, piercings peppering his ears and face.
They didn’t stay in Baltimore long after that.
This was what she did: she drank and fucked her way through the pain and loneliness.
