Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
EZRA
I park my truck and look around the area. Only one other car is here, which gives me relief because I’m not in the mood to see or hear people. I get out and look up at the cloudy sky—the ones above me aren’t dark yet, but further out I can see them darkening. I still have some time before it rains.
The soft flow of the river glides over the pebbled rock as I walk alongside it to the spot my friends and I used to go to when we were younger.
Friends.
Can I even call them that anymore?
Except Vi. She will always be someone special to me. Especially after what happened to us.
The closer I get to the spot, the sound of sniffling grows louder ahead of me.
My pulse quickens, and my heart drops when I finally make out who it is.
I freeze in my tracks, staring ahead at the girl who stole my heart the moment I first laid eyes on her.
Right here at this very spot. She’s kneeling by the river, her back hunched as she drags a stick through the water.
Her hair falls in a tangled mess around her, shielding her face.
I step forward, and the sound of a twig cracking makes her quickly shift her gaze towards me.
My heart drops even further at the sight of her.
Red rims and dark circles reflect in her eyes.
Her tears glisten against her puffy cheeks.
She shifts her head away from me, drops her stick, and sits back with her legs against her chest. Her shoulders slump forward, and her chin rests on top of her knees.
Her black leggings are covered in dirt. How long has she been out here?
“Vi.”
“Hmm.”
I come up closer to her and take a seat right next to her. The second my shoulders come beside hers, her shoulders shake. She shifts her head down between her knees, shielding me from her cries.
I wrap my arm around her shoulder and rest my head against hers. Her sniffles grow louder. I don’t say anything. All I do is let her cry. What does someone say to their best friend they just slept with after finding out her husband was cheating on her with her best friend?
My wife.
Saying all that in my head sounds worse than I actually feel. Does that make me a bad guy?
I thought I would know what to say the moment I saw her. But now I am tongue-tied, and my thoughts are scattered.
After her shoulders stop shaking, her body seems to relax a bit, as if the tension has finally left her.
Slowly, her head falls against my chest, and her breath is shallow and uneven as she tries to catch a steady breath.
My heart shatters even further seeing her like this.
The pain of knowing how much she’s hurting twists inside me.
Fucking Zayn.
Fucking Rya.
Some days, it’s hard to believe what they did. Not only were we married, but we were all best friends. Since childhood. I’ll never understand how two people can be so, fuck, I don’t even know the right words to describe what they are. What they’ve done.
Because who does shit like this?
I wrap my arms tighter around Vi and plant a kiss on the top of her head. She lifts her head from my chest, wipes her eyes, and stares out at the river flowing in front of us.
“Was I not good enough?” she mumbles.
“Vi, don’t say that.” I squeeze her tighter in my arms.
She looks over her shoulder, and the dark circles that linger under her red-rimmed eyes are more pronounced.
“No. Really? Was I not a good enough friend to Rya or a good enough wife to Zayn?” she asks, leaning up and wiping her eyes again.
“What did I do to deserve this? What did we do to deserve this?”
“Nothing,” I say firmly. “You did nothing and don’t ever blame yourself for how fucking cowardly those fucking idiots are.”
Her eyes squint as she focuses her gaze on me.
“What?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I wasn’t sure how you felt about everything.”
“Why?”
“Because that night you seemed as if nothing fazed you.” She tilts her head. “Well, I guess compared to how I reacted. I know everyone reacts differently, but I still couldn’t read you.”
I was shocked to find out that my wife had slept with my best friend.
But for me, things haven’t been the same with those two for a while now.
I’ve kept it to myself because I haven’t known how to feel about it or what to do about it.
All four of us together is all I’ve ever known.
Was it the comfort of them? Maybe. I feel guilty sometimes not having the same reaction as Vi is having.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I’m more hurt that two people so close to us could do something like that.”
She shifts her gaze back towards the river. “Yeah, I think that’s what hurts the most—it’s not only that we are losing our spouses but also our best friends.”
“You have me. You will always have me,” I say, placing my hand around her arm, pulling her closer to me even though we’re already shoulder to shoulder.
She lets out a sigh. “I know. I really don’t know what I would do if I lost you too.”
“You’ll never lose me. I promise.”
She nods her head. “Same here, Ez.”
She lets out a heavy sigh.
“What?” I ask.
Her shoulders slump forward. “I just…I just don’t know how to feel.
I’m hurt and angry, and I feel like I’m in mourning all at the same time, and I don’t know how to handle my emotions.
I don’t know what’s right or what’s wrong.
I don’t know my next move. And those fuckers are…
are…fuck, I don’t even know what they’re doing. ”
“Have they not contacted you?”
“They have, but I’ve been ignoring them.”
“Hmm,” I say.
She squints her brow. “What?”
“At least I know I wasn’t the only one being ignored,” I say with a smirk.
“I’m sorry, Ez. I didn’t know what to say to you after…” She pauses. “You know.”
“Yeah, I get it. I thought I knew what I would say to you once I saw you, but the moment I saw you I wasn’t sure what the right words were.”
“It’s okay. At least I’m not the only one speechless,” she scoffs.
“I want to talk about it, though. But I know right now isn’t the best time.”
She sways back and forth as if it’s a calming mechanism she gained after all this.
“What made you come to the river?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted to feel something other than what I was feeling.
Memories of our childhood kept coming up as if I were mourning them.
Next thing you know, I ended up here.” She scoffs again.
“Like this place was going to be any better. Just brought up more memories I forgot I had.” She looks over her shoulder. “Why did you come?”
I want to tell her I came because of her. But I hold back on telling her how I feel, how I’ve felt since the first day I laid eyes on her. Right now is not the right time to lay out all my truths and regrets. “I was sick of going home to an empty house.”
“Do you miss her?”
“I miss her as a best friend, but as a wife I’m a little relieved.”
She sits up straight, taken aback by my words, then turns her body towards me. “What! What do you mean?”
“We had problems long before all of this happened. Did Rya not tell you anything?”
She shakes her head, her forehead creases getting harder with each shake.
My eyes widen in surprise. Don’t best friends tell each other everything? I mean, I tried to talk to Zay about it, but he brushed it off—like he did with many other things.
“No.” Her mouth parts. “I’m at a loss for words with everything.
The only question that keeps running through my mind is who were we truly friends with?
” Her jaw sets tight. “Like none of this makes any sense. I thought we knew them, but now that everything has come to light, I don’t feel like we knew them at all. ”
“Right. I’ve actually felt this for a while now.”
“You have?”
I nod.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t know what to say or how to feel about it. My best friend and my wife were changing before my eyes. They’re all I knew. I was holding on to our friendship.”
“Did you try talking to Zay about it?”
“I tried to tell him how I was feeling about Rya, and he brushed it off like we were in some rut and things would get better. I knew then I couldn’t come to him about our friendship.”
The sky rumbles with a deep roar. I look up and the clouds are now dark above us. “It’s going to rain. We should go.”
She giggles. “Remember all the rainstorms we would play in?”
I chuckle alongside her. “Yeah. I was just thinking about that when I pulled up here.”
Tears stream down her face.
“Don’t cry, Vi,” I say, and wipe her tears.
Raindrops fall, making me blink back when they fall on my eyelashes. The river ripples with each raindrop that lands on top of it.
“How do we get through this? It’s all so much,” she says in exhaustion.
“Together, Vi. We get through it together.”
She leans into me, resting her head against my chest. The rain picks up; the soft patter against the river turns louder.
She shivers against me as a gust of wind sweeps through.
I pull her a little closer and my heart aches at how fragile she feels in my arms. More fragile than before.
She must not be eating. Who would be after all of this?
The world around us is silent as we hold each other.
“Ez,” she whispers.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t regret it.”
My heart flutters with an overwhelming rush of emotions. That was one question that ran through my mind repeatedly over the past week.
Did she regret it?
Did she make a mistake?
Did I make a mistake?
“Me neither, Vi.” I press a kiss to the top of her head, then rest my cheek against it, breathing in the earthy scent that surrounds us.
The rain falls in a steady rhythm. My clothes grow heavier, clinging to me as the water soaks through, and droplets slide down from my hair.
Each drop that hits the ground feels like it’s washing away another piece of what the four of us were. Washing away a friendship that we thought would never end.
Maybe this storm symbolizes our chaos, showing us that even in the darkest of times, something better will rise. It’s the beginning of something new. Just like the darkest clouds bring the brightest skies. Our pain will end and turn into something brighter.
It has to.