Page 11 of After Everything
I flipped forward. More photos. A camping trip: Sarah roasting marshmallows, David setting up a tent. A formal event: Sarah in a black dress, elegant and poised, David in a suit looking at her like she'd hung the moon.
I stopped on that one.
The way he was looking at her. I knew that look. It was the same way he used to look at me.
Used to.
Past tense.
My hands were shaking. I kept flipping through the album, faster now, like I was looking for evidence that would prove me wrong. That would show David and Sarah were just friends, just colleagues, just two people who happened to orbit each other for three years of law school and then went their separate ways.
But every photo told the same story.
Study sessions where they sat too close. Group dinners where they always ended up next to each other. A weekend trip to DC where Sarah was wearing David's jacket. On Halloween, she had dressed as a lawyer, him as a defendant, some stupid couples costume that everyone probably thought was hilarious.
I stopped on that one.
Couples costume.
The album ended with graduation weekend. The whole group at a bar, celebrating. Sarah and David in the center of the frame, arms around each other, her head tilted toward his shoulder, both of them glowing with that particular kind of joy that comes from surviving something hard together.
At the bottom, in that same silver sharpie:End of an era. Love you guys!
I closed the album.
The room was too quiet. I could hear my own breathing, shallow and fast. Could feel my pulse in my throat.
David had told me they were likesiblings. That Sarah was just a friend. That I had nothing to worry about.
But he'd been lying. Maybe not about sleeping with her… that came later, when they "reconnected" for the case. But about what she meant to him. About what they'd been.
She wasn't just some random woman he'd cheated with. She was the woman he'd spent three years of his life with, studying with, laughing with, looking at like she was the most fascinating person in the world.
And I'd given up med school to follow him across the country, away from her, only for him to bring her right back into our lives the second he got the chance.
The rage hit me so suddenly I almost couldn't breathe.
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand.
My contacts list blurred as I scrolled. My hands were still shaking. I found the name I was looking for.
Rachel.
My older sister. The one who'd gone to law school while I'd been in nursing school.The one who'd made partner at her firm in Boston by the time she was thirty-five. The one who'd always been the practical one, the one who knew how to handle things, how to fix things.
The one who'd never liked David.
"He's charming," she'd said at our wedding, champagne in hand, watching him laugh with his groomsmen across the reception hall. "But I don't trust charming."
I'd brushed her off. Told her she was being overprotective. That David loved me, that we were building a life together, that everything would be fine.
God, I'd been so fucking stupid.
My fingers moved across the screen.
I need your help.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
