Chapter 4 #3
“Good job, Selene. I also want you to note where you are in your menstrual cycle when these headaches happen, as well as their intensity and the number of hours they last. Write down everything, whether it happens before, during, or after your period,” she advised me.
My period had just ended, and it had been just like clockwork, but I hadn’t paid attention to whether my headaches were more frequent or more intense during that time.
From now on, I’d have to make a note of that as well.
“How is your concentration?” The doctor turned to my mother, who watched me as I approached them.
“She still hasn’t started her classes back up, Doctor,” Mom said, referring to the university I’d be attending as soon as I could transfer back. The doctor smiled and tucked her hands in her coat pockets.
“A nice long rest is required after an accident like this, but I can confirm that Selene is perfectly able to get out of the house or travel. She can comfortably enjoy a weekend vacation, and it will do her nothing but good.” She looked first to my mother and then to me.
Getting Dr. Burke’s permission was soothing, but the knowledge that I was definitely going to see Neil again made my stomach clench.
It was insane the way my whole body reacted to him, even when he wasn’t physically present.
It had never happened to me before, becoming so fascinated by a man—becoming obsessed with him.
I was alarmed by my own thoughts, especially considering the fact that he was probably right at that moment cheerfully doling out incredible orgasms to the parade of women that followed one another through his pool house. While here I was, still outraged about what he’d done on Halloween.
How dumb.
We scheduled our next appointment and said our goodbyes to Dr. Burke before heading home.
When we stopped in front of the house, I tried to help my mom with the shopping bags, but she insisted that I shouldn’t strain myself, which kicked off a long mother-daughter argument about who should get them inside.
Her excessive worrying was more exhausting than the headaches.
“I’m telling you, Mom, I’m fine…” I trailed off as I spotted two figures waiting on the porch for us. Or, rather, waiting for me.
“Hey, world traveler!” cried Janel, running to meet me along with Bailey. They were my two best friends, and my mother, wanting to give me a wonderful surprise, had invited them to spend the whole day with us.
I turned my attention first to Janel, whom I had met during my freshman year of college, a petite dynamo forever clad in the tightest clothing, her sly little face framed by a black bob.
She looked like my exact opposite, and, in some ways, that was true: She was an extroverted chatterbox, always full of energy, who lived to hit up frat parties and ogle the basketball players’ muscles.
She hated studying and had only gone to college to please her parents, who were both highly educated professionals with good careers.
“Let me get a look at you! Goddamn! Look at that bod; you’re looking like a model,” Bailey put in, wrapping me in a hug so tight that it impeded my breathing.
Janel was the one who had introduced me to Bailey just a year before. I thought she was so beautiful, with her red hair that contrasted sharply with her green eyes, only enhancing her appeal.
Unlike Janel, Bailey was a genius at school, but her love life was a disaster. She dated tons of boys because she was firmly convinced that love existed and she needed to be the one to go out and find it.
She always said, “Prince Charming isn’t going to come knocking on your door; you have to go knock on his.” It was a philosophy that led her to project a hypothetical love story on every new guy. Which, of course, caused her inevitable misery when said guy used her and tossed her aside.
I invited my friends in without further hesitation, and we talked about my accident and everything that I had been up to while I was gone and all the news I’d missed at home.
They ate lunch with us, praising my mother’s cooking, and then spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out, with the occasional long break for salty snacks and high-calorie desserts.
“So are you back with Jared again now that you’re home?” Janel asked, lifting a handful of potato chips to her mouth.
We were in the living room, the two of us on the sofa with Bailey cross-legged on the Persian rug, which she insisted was “more comfortable.”
I considered Janel’s question, uncertain whether I should tell my friends everything or just try to change the subject. Ultimately, I knew lying would be counterproductive because they’d find out about the breakup soon enough, so I opted for the truth.
“No,” I answered. “We broke up,” I said quietly, and both of them turned incredulous eyes on me.
“What? For real?” Janel was the first to break the silence.
“Yes, for real.” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell them what happened. Knowing them, the first time I mentioned another guy, they’d want all the details, and I didn’t know if I was ready to talk about Neil and what we shared.
I felt possessive over my memories of our intimacy.
“How come? You two seemed like the perfect couple. You know, like something from a book,” Bailey noted sadly.
She was sadder than me, honestly.
“Was it because you wouldn’t have sex with him?” Janel blurted out after a long, reflective silence. I flinched and immediately darted my eyes toward the kitchen, afraid my mother would overhear us.
Fortunately, she was still on the phone. I had noticed more and more lately how she’d been getting text messages that had her grinning like a teenage girl with her first crush.
I hadn’t asked her about it, but I was beginning to suspect that there might be a man in her life.
If I was being honest with myself, though, I didn’t know how I would have reacted if she actually told me that she had a boyfriend. So I pushed that insidious idea back down and refocused on the girls, who were staring intently at me, waiting for me to spill.
“No, that wasn’t the reason.” My friends knew that Jared and I had never done the deed, and they believed I was still a virgin. They could not possibly have imagined that, in a move that was completely unlike me, I had lost my virginity to Mia’s son.
But who had the strength to resist him?
“Then what was the reason?” Janel pressed and set off a terrible internal struggle for me between the idea of making something up or explaining what had really happened. They exchanged questioning looks while they waited for me to answer.
“Is there someone else?” Bailey guessed, and my eyes went wide.
Was there an obvious guilty look on my face or something?
I stared down at my jeans and traced invisible circles there with my index finger to hide my unease. My friends had never judged me before, but, up until then, I had always been the sensible one. And now…
“Yes,” I admitted straightforwardly, and they both perked up, ready to bombard me with questions.
Oh God, the look of shock on their faces was so embarrassing.
“What the what?” Janel cried, startling me.
“And this is how you tell us? Who’s the lucky guy?” Bailey got to her knees and clapped her hands, ready to hear my nonexistent love story.
I didn’t even know where to start. I checked again to make sure that my mother was occupied with her phone call, and, with a deep sigh, I decided to come clean.
“So I might have lost my head over a guy. But the whole thing is insane,” I admitted, uncomfortable and embarrassed. I began to tell the whole story then, trying to explain the situation to my friends.
“It doesn’t sound so crazy to me. We all fall for someone at some point.” Bailey twined a lock of red hair around her index finger and watched me with a dreamy expression on her face. “And it’s not something you can predict or control,” she added with certainty.
“I have to agree. Love often makes you do stupid, irrational things. And the fact that he’s an asshole but you’re gone for him anyway?
That’s happened to all of us at least once in our lives,” Janel said.
She could say that, though, because I had left out some of the most important details: Neil’s confusing behavior, his outbursts, the blonds he selected for his almost compulsive sexual encounters, those times when he would simply vanish before turning up with cuts and bruises, my suspicion that he had borderline personality disorder, the room full of boxes that I had only been able to enter once, and the price I’d paid even for that brief visit.
Basically, I had described him to my friends as an everyday guy with incredibly good looks and a fuckboy attitude, a sexual expert, and a skillful seducer.
I never brought up the entire unexplored inner world that he had barred me from entering.
“Take me, for example. I was head over heels for Tyler and then…” Bailey waved a hand in the air, referring to her most recent fling that had turned into a total flop.
“And the worst part is, she’s still stalking his Instagram every day.” Janel jerked a thumb at her, rolling her eyes.
“Girls, social media is the most powerful tool we have for keeping tabs on men. Where they go, what they do, who they are doing it with…” Bailey fished her phone out of her jeans’ pocket and tapped out something before turning it to show us her Instagram profile.
“What are you doing?” Janel asked, annoyed.
“What everybody does—stalking.” Bailey winked back at her.
“No, not everyone does that. I’ve never checked up on Jared or any other guys,” I replied thoughtfully.
I didn’t consider myself a jealous sort of person. Jared always had his freedom, and I had mine, especially on social media.