Chapter 59
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Savannah
Hurt People Hurt People
“Do you even know a hacker?” I ask Dallas as I pull into our driveway.
He wants to hire one to take down Kinsey’s post, and possibly delete her entire digital footprint, which makes no sense.
I’ve already had to convince both my brothers not to fly home to make sure I’m okay, so I’m picking my battles.
“The site says they can’t remove it.” Clay curses, and I can hear him angrily typing a response.
“Of course they can’t. Kinsey posted a picture of herself with an honest caption that doesn’t violate any community guidelines.” I dreaded this happening for so long, but now that the truth is out there, it feels insignificant to the pain in my chest every time I think of Noah. Which is a lot.
“What do you want us to do?” Dallas asks.
I almost want to switch to a FaceTime call now I’m sitting in a parked car, but I know the look they’d give me, and I don’t want to walk into the house already crying.
“It’ll blow over as soon as a bigger story comes along.
I can ask Conor if he’ll go public with Willow? ”
I smile at the offer and am overwhelmed with love for my brothers.
“I didn’t want to be known as Baby James, but you know I’ve always been proud of being your sister.” I sigh. “I just wish she’d used a better picture.” And that I’d told Noah sooner. That he’d told me.
“Beth got the PR team to untag us and recommends I do my own post if we’re choosing to confirm it, without liking, commenting, or referring to Kinsey’s, so we don’t feed her algorithm.”
He’s paraphrasing a much longer plan I can partially make out, that includes legal jargon, but it makes sense.
“Sounds like a plan,” I assure him.
“You sure you’re okay, Banana?” Clay asks for what must be the twelfth time between the two of them.
“I’ll be fine.” I try to sound convincing. “I’m home now, so I’ll just go inside, let mom take me in her arms, and wait for it to blow over.” I believe almost none of that statement, but my brothers do me a solid and pretend they do before hanging up.
I find the most recent picture I have of the three of us, one my mom took at my dad’s birthday, tag them, and caption it: “Partners in Crime. To the best brothers a girl could ask for…thank you for being you.” Then I take a deep breath, silence my social media notifications, and head inside with the best fake smile I can muster.
I freeze when I walk in the front door and find the Crowleys sitting at the dining room table with my parents.
Brunch.
Fuck.
I don’t swear, but this moment calls for it, as Kinsey takes one look at me and a glib smile crosses her face.
“I thought you had plans?” she asks, almost knowingly, then turns to my mother. “I ran into Savvy at the hockey game last night and invited her, but she insisted she had other plans.”
“I forgot an assignment,” I lie.
“Well come on over, sweetheart, there’s always room for you,” my mother insists, clearly unaware that my secret is out. She pulls out a chair and rushes to get me utensils and a plate, ignoring my attempts to say I really have to work upstairs in my room.
“How was the game?” Mrs. Crowley asks once I’m seated.
“It was fun,” I say, getting a pang that feels like a knife to my chest because everything seemed so promising last night.
I was starting to feel like I had friends, Noah acted like he truly wanted to be with me, and I was on top of the world.
Do I think Noah is necessarily an asshole who has been leading me on for months?
Probably not. But at the same time, there was a huge shift that happened after Parker’s party, and the only thing that really changed is that he found out.
Which I need to talk to Parker about, but for now I want to suffer through brunch and lock myself in my room until the Crowleys go home.
My mom and Brenda mostly carry the conversation while I eat as fast as I can, then bring my plate into the kitchen once I’m done, hoping I can escape to the basement before they come looking, but Kinsey has other plans.
“He got tired of you already?”
Of course, she followed me.
“Not today, Kinsey, I’m really not in the mood for it.”
“I guess it’s hard to be as smug as you were last night without your lackey backing you and coming up with lies to make you feel tall.”
“I’ve never been smug, I just try to get by in a world where I can’t trust a single person not to be secretly trying to screw me over. So I’m sorry if I don’t feel like facing you right now.”
I don’t even care if she sees me cry, that she won, as long as she leaves me alone.
“Yeah, no, just come into your perfect family, at your Ivy League school, listen to you drone on about your amazing boyfriend who’s so perfect when I had the perfect guy, that I’ve been in love with my entire life, who will never look at me because I was friends with you.”
“Don’t lie now, Kins, we were never friends.
I was an annoying neighbor your mother forced you to hang out with.
And I’m sorry, but it’s not like you told me you were in love with Dallas, or that you gave him any reason to give you a chance when you turned around and ruined my life the second he turned you down. ”
“He broke my heart.”
“You broke mine,” I throw back. “Do you know what it feels like when the only friend you have says she never wanted to hang out with you in the first place? I have deep-seated trust issues and zero confidence because that’s what happens when the person you trust the most obliterates you. So your woe is me thing…I don’t care.”
“Hurt people hurt people. We both know that.”
“Not all of them,” I argue. “You lashed out, but I buried myself.”
“I’m sorry.”
I laugh. Out loud.
“As fun as it was the first time, I think I learned my lesson.”
“I’m not trying…” she sighs, loudly, and for a second, she’s not the Kinsey who has tormented me for the past year, she’s the girl who did my hair before we went to birthday parties, who stayed up all night talking about our hopes and dreams…
she’s my Kinsey, and I want so badly to reach for her that it scares me and breaks my heart all over again. “You were my oldest friend.”
“Don’t do this.”
“I didn’t say you were my best friend, that was always something you decided.
I wouldn’t have hung out with you as much if my mom didn’t make me invite you all the time, but most of those sleepovers when it was just you and me, camping trips with your dad…
those were all things I would have done because you were still my oldest friend, who lives close by, who I would have lost touch with in college, but found again when we both got married and came home for holidays with our kids, that we would force to hang out together and start the cycle all over again. ”
It makes sense. It’s what I thought when she first told me how she felt. Like, okay, we’re not best friends, and maybe I’m coming on a little strong, but I still thought we were close.
“Friends don’t say the things you said, in the way you said them, specifically to hurt each other. They don’t make out with each other’s crushes, or tell secrets to guys she meets at college parties specifically to get back at me.”
“That’s why I said I’m sorry, okay? Yes, I wanted to hurt you, because you were the reason I was feeling so hurt.
But the stuff I told those guys was to get back at your brother, not you.
He’s a two-faced hypocrite who would have let one of his friends date you, or gone after a friend’s younger sister if he was interested. ”
“And everything you’ve done since then? That photo last night as soon as you realized I was keeping it on the DL?”
“We both know I hold a grudge.” She shrugs as if that excuses it.
“I was never your enemy until that’s what you made me.”
“So that’s what we are now? Enemies?”
“Every time I see you it’s a minefield of underhanded insults and statements meant to hurt me.”
“Yet you never told your mom what happened. Dallas didn’t either.” She seems surprised, and I guess she would have run to her mother if the situations were reversed.
“We didn’t want to cause a rift between her and her best friend.” It was bad enough I lost mine. “It’s not like you said anything.”
“I’d die if she knew.”
“I’ll remember that,” I say in a way that could mean I’ll keep her secret, or that I’ll use it against her as needed.
“It’s hard when you lose what you think you love the most in the world. You think you won’t, but sometimes lashing out is the only thing that makes you feel something other than pain.”
I think of Noah and everything I ran away from this morning and my chest feels so tight I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep the tears at bay. But I don’t want anyone else to feel like this. Not Noah, not Tanner, not even Kinsey. I just want a hug and for it to go away.
“No, that’s just an excuse to be a bitch instead of dealing with your crap.
” She looks like she’s about to retaliate, but I put my hands up to stop her.
“That wasn’t meant to hurt you, but I’m not staying quiet and letting you try to break me anymore.
I’ll play nice for our parents, but you don’t get to make me feel insignificant anymore.
” I sigh, because I really don’t think I care what she thinks anymore.
“I wish you the best, Kinsey, but I don’t want any part of it. ”
I leave her there and go up to my bedroom. I want to call Noah and tell him what just happened, but the aching in my chest reminds me that isn’t a good idea. I consider working on my book, but hide under my covers instead.
I must have fallen asleep, because it’s late afternoon, if I had to guess, and my face is wet from the tears I wasn’t awake to stop. I grab my phone to check the time, but there are texts from Noah, and my heart sinks.
Noah
I am so sorry about this morning. That I didn’t tell you the second I found out about your brothers. That I lied. I should have been honest with you.
I don’t know if it’s intended or not, but I feel the guilt pressing on me, that I should have been honest as well.
That I should have told him, so he didn’t have to find out at Parker’s party, so my dad wouldn’t have to hide all our family pictures, and my brothers could have met him.
But we weren’t really a couple then. He was afraid of us, and I didn’t want to be too serious and scare him away.
Which is a bad start to a relationship anyway.
Red flags flashing in all directions. But they don’t soften the blow.
Noah
I am so grateful that you helped me with Izzie, and I loved our time together, but I think you’re right, and we should go back to friends.
This feels so much worse than when I stormed out this morning.
That felt like running away from feelings in the heat of the moment, when Noah was still coming after me, and I just had to sit in my feelings for a while until I got some clarity.
This text, however, is Noah, level-headed with some time to think, deciding that he was wrong, and I am not worth it.
Someone who lies and keeps things and complicates his life.
Who wants someone with zero confidence in need of constant reassurance?
I remember when he said he would remind me every single day, and it feels like my heart is splitting open. I want to hide under the covers and never come out. Clearly, I was right to leave him before he could leave me, but that doesn’t help me feel even remotely better.
I force myself out of bed and drag my comforter to my desk, then pull out my laptop to get back to work on the book.
I tell myself I’m better off alone, with fictional characters, who only hurt me when I want them to.
Characters who are brave enough to fight for what they want and risk it all in the name of love.
Noah might be right, that I’m hiding behind my writing, but who could blame me when the alternative feels like this?