Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
STEVIE
“Thong Song” by Sisqó plays overhead as three half-naked men dance onstage. Emma whoops and calls one of them over with a twenty-dollar bill. All of us laugh when he takes it and tucks it into his golden underwear before giving her a wink.
“I’m requesting a lap dance from him later!” she yells over the music.
Kamila’s eyes widen. “Emma Faye Haywood! What’s gotten into you?!”
Em shrugs. “Our best friend is getting married, I’m finally twenty-one, and it’s not like I’m sleeping with the guy.” She twirls at the switch of music, and Cameron’s friend Zoey dances with her.
Although Em has drunk a couple of vodka sodas tonight, it seems to have loosened her just enough to have fun. Kamila is stone-cold sober and looking at her best friend as if she’s never seen her before. It is funny to watch such an expensively dressed girl throwing twenties at a male exotic dancer.
Meanwhile, Luna and I have made ourselves comfortable on the leather couch near them.
I was surprised when they brought me to another town to the best and only male strip club in Ulster County.
Emma had gone as far as booking us our own table with a bottle of champagne and a bottle of sparkling cider for me.
Both came with sparklers when the staff brought them to us.
When we walked in, I thought I’d feel uncomfortable, but it was the complete opposite.
There are barely any men here, and the dancers aren’t creepy.
It’s very clear that this is strictly work for them, and the women are here for a silly fun time.
Most of them are laughing with their girlfriends and tipping the men a good amount of money.
Although I’ve kept my promise to Levi about no touching, the rules don’t allow anyone to, which is perfectly fine by me. I wonder if Levi is in the same situation. The thought makes me jealous for a second, but I trust him.
“Girls, I’m scared our innocent Emma is gone.” Kami comes to sit with us.
Luna and I giggle. “I know,” I say. “She’s been—”
“Stevie?”
The voice comes from behind me, and my body goes as stiff as a board. It’s all too familiar. A voice that I’ve heard hundreds of times, maybe even thousands, throughout the years we were together.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Kamila asks angrily over the music, and that’s all I need to confirm that this is happening.
“Look, I just want to talk to her.” Andrew sounds tired, like he hasn’t slept in a while. Unlike him, I’d recognize his kind of mood with just the tone of his voice.
“After what your ex pulled? Fuck no. You are not talking to her.” Kami stands up and points to the front doors. “Get out, or I’ll make a scene.”
Luna stands as well. She’s never met Andrew but recognizes him. Maybe from the Kappa party.
I still don’t look at him.
“Stevie, I tried warning you at the party that Tiffany was going off the rails.”
This time, I shoot out of my seat and turn.
“You didn’t try hard enough!” I yell. “You should’ve used one of your friends, yelled it at the party, hell, you should’ve sent a frickin’ carrier pigeon if that’s what it took.
” I feel my heartbeat in my ears. It’s not his fault that Tiffany did what she did, I know that, yet I can’t help feeling that he’s blaming me for not listening to him when all he ever did was manipulate and lie to me.
Andrew flinches at my words. “Stevie, please. I didn’t know she was going to go that far. Can you just please let me tell the whole story?”
I calm my breathing down. For the past month, I’ve been wanting to know why Tiffany did what she did, and maybe Andrew has the answers. Maybe he can tell me about my suspicion that she was watching me throughout the semester.
Levi said if a person ever treats you poorly, then closure isn’t necessary. But this is different. The woman tried to kill me, and I need to know why.
Em makes her way to the table. “The fuck is he doing here? How did you find us?!” she shrieks. “Leave us the hell alone. Haven’t you done enough?” Her voice is strong for such a petite woman. She sure is scary when she wants to be.
Andrew’s eyes widen, and that’s when I notice the bags under them. They’re almost black. “My friend overheard you guys talking about this club at Roxy’s when you were getting coffee, and I was in the bathroom. It was purely coincidental, I swear.”
I take a moment to look at his face, and all I find is nervousness and desperation.
“He’s telling the truth,” I say to the girls. They turn to look at me with confused expressions. Giving him a quick nod, I make my choice. “Fine, we can talk.”
His shoulders relax. “Thank you, Stevie.”
“But it can’t be far from the couch. My friends need to be able to see me and be close enough to snatch me.
” I know Andrew wouldn’t touch me like that.
He might be a cheating, lying douchebag, but he’s never been physically abusive.
However, if I’ve learned anything from my experience with Tiffany, it is that you never know how evil someone can truly be.
He nods. “I completely understand.”
Em pulls my arm as I stride to the wall next to the stage. “Why would you want to talk to him, Stevie?”
I grab her hand gently. “I need to know why.”
Kami, Zoey, and Luna hang close behind me, and somehow, Emma and I have our first silent conversation. She lets go of me and shoots Andrew a nasty look. “Touch her and I’ll break your nose and kick you so hard in the balls, you’ll never be able to have children.”
Kamila laughs. “Trust me when I say we both know how to do that.”
Andrew shifts uncomfortably as he moves to where I point.
Giving the girls one last smile of reassurance, I saunter to the wall that’s only a couple of feet away from the stage and couch.
My ex-boyfriend faces me and takes a moment to look at me.
It’s not a sexual gaze, only an observant one.
His eyes freeze when he catches sight of my engagement ring. This time, I shift uncomfortably.
I clear my throat, and he looks back up. “I only agreed to talk to you because I have some questions that need answering.”
“Okay, ask anything you want.” His eyes are alert, but the exhaustion behind them is evident. I cannot feel bad for him. I won’t allow myself to.
Straightening my shoulders, I put on my most confident voice. “Was Tiffany stalking me?”
Andrew answers without hesitation. “From what I know, she followed you a couple of times. She wanted to look at you and Levi, to see how serious you guys were.”
My brow furrows. “Why? She already had you.”
He lets out a deep breath. “We might’ve gotten into multiple fights over me still being in love with you.
” I don’t react on the outside, keeping my face impassive.
On the inside, I’m not overly surprised, but after the night at the bar, I thought he would’ve let me go.
I doubt Andrew knows what being in love feels like anyway.
“Well, that was stupid,” I reply.
He flinches once again. “I deserve that…and more. Anyway, after our fourth fight, which pushed both of us over the edge—I’m talking an extreme screaming match about us and you and our situation—she changed.” He pauses. “That’s when it started.”
I push off the wall. “The stalking?”
He nods. “Yeah. One of my buddies saw her standing outside of the auditorium right before you got out of rehearsal.” Andrew quickly explains how he knew it was a rehearsal of mine.
“My friend stayed after Tiffany ran away when she saw him. A minute later, he saw you exiting the building and got suspicious.” He rubs his neck.
“As you already know, Tiffany only ever wears jean skirts or shorts and tight shirts when it begins to get warm.” Rolling my eyes, I nod.
I can’t believe how blind I was to him constantly glimpsing at her ass in those outfits.
“Well, that day she was wearing a hoodie with the hood up and sweatpants. She also had a pair of sunglasses on when it was already dark outside.”
I remember seeing someone wearing a hoodie at the bar, but I couldn’t make out her face, and her hair wasn’t Tiffany’s bleach blonde hair.
“Did she ever wear wigs?” I ask.
Andrew thinks for a moment. “She wore one for Halloween last year. It was long and black.”
Talk about a walking cliché.
I don’t stop Andrew from speaking again because I want to know as much as possible. “After that, I tried being nicer to her and paid more attention to where she was going. I know that the bar fight was terrible and stupid, but I didn’t know about Tiffany’s past back then.”
My right eyebrow pops up. “And what would that be?”
“As you know, Tiffany and I met in our first year in Driscoll. During our friendship, she barely talked about high school, and kinda gave me a summary about her life at home. That was until one of her friends from high school surprised her this semester, and we went out to drink. After Tiffany passed out, her friend was still drunk and very chatty. She kept going on and on about how great high school was after Tiffany got better.”
“Better?” I tilt my head.
He nods. “Turns out she spent the summer before her sophomore year in a psychiatric center because she was picking fights with her teachers, students, and family. She physically fought some kids, too.” He waves a hand around.
“I don’t know all the details because her friend was drunk and kind of dumb.
All I was able to find out is that she was diagnosed with a personality disorder and had to go to therapy and take some pills every day. ”
Biting my lip, I urge him to continue. Everything’s clicking into place now.
“Then I started looking at every single thing she did very carefully, and I realized she never once went to a therapy session, and I only ever saw her take pills before we started to…you know.”
Grabbing a piece of gum from my pocket, I nod once more. “After you guys started fucking.”
Andrew flinches again, but I find no satisfaction in making him feel uncomfortable; I only stated the truth.
“It seems like a couple of months after we started doing…that, she stopped her meds, and when you found out about us and I was trying to repair things, she started lashing out and having mood swings. Moments where she was completely reckless and angry, then calm and apologetic.”
“Why didn’t you break things off?” I ask, because who wouldn’t?
He hangs his head. “I did, two days before the Kappa party.” My mouth drops open, and the timeline starts clicking into place.
“This time, she didn’t fight me. She was eerily calm.
I waited for her to explode, and when I learned from her friend that she acted the same way before an incident in high school, I knew the one person she’d want to hurt was—”
“Me,” I finish.
He crosses his arms. “Stevie, I thought she was only going to try to fight you or something like that, and your friends could protect you. I didn’t think she’d pull something so extreme. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“You brought her into my life,” I say softly. I’m not angry at him—how can I be when he also suffered her wrath? Sure, Andrew sucks, and he wasn’t good to me, but hell, maybe he can get some help that’ll work.
His eyes well with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could take it back. I’m so, so sorry, Stevie.”
And he means it. Crap, I feel kind of bad for him.
This is not how it’s supposed to be, but I guess that’s the difference between him and Tiffany.
He’s a dick who said some messed-up stuff, but he never tried to hurt me physically or even hurt me on purpose.
Tiffany was annoyed and angry when I found them together.
Andrew was nervous, sad, and scared, as any normal person would be in that situation.
“I’ll forgive you on one condition.” In truth, I forgave him a long time ago, for me, not for him. I let go of him months ago, but I feel like he needs to hear this.
“Anything.”
“Go to therapy and find out why you manipulated me the way you did. Why you cheated and why you chose someone like Tiffany to do it with.” My tone is final. This isn’t only for him, but to help the future men and women who come into his life. They don’t deserve the same treatment I got.
He sticks his hand out. “It’s a done deal.”
As I reach to shake his hand and end the conversation, it’s snapped away, and he’s pushed against the wall by a tall man.
Not just any tall man, but Levi.