Chapter 25 #2
“She said a lot of things. She said you were incredibly smart and very good at math which was a shock to me. She also knew about me, and not from the past few weeks, but for months, and months. Apparently, she’s heard a lot about me.”
His grip tightens on the steering wheel as he continues to drive.
“So I guess my first question is did you even need tutoring?” I ask.
He shrugs, and I’m not usually blunt like this asking Bellamy questions, but there’s a bit of anger I feel in my chest. Confusion, and anger, and now as I watch him shrug his shoulders. I feel anxiety spreading.
“I did at first,” He admits.
“At first?” I ask, and he sighs.
“Look Ryn-” I stop him right away, not wanting to hear him admit to anything at all right now.
“Bellamy. You lied to me. You never needed me, you… You what? You wanted sex? Is that what it was? You thought this would be the way to get it? Faking stupidity?” My voice doesn’t raise once.
My words are more harsh than I had intended.
“I never faked stupidity, I just am stupid. God Kamryn, do you think there was a way I could casually speak to you outside of class without-”
“Yes! There were plenty of ways! There are thousands of other ways besides wasting my time. You… Ugh! Bellamy, why did you do the list? Don’t make up some bullshit lie either. Tell me the truth.”
He sits in silence.
“You’re not going to like my answer Kamryn.”
My stomach drops, a thousand reasons crossing my mind.
“But I want to finish it with you…” He says.
I let out a small laugh, “Bellamy...”
I shake my head, my eyes locking outside of the car, not on him. I can’t look at him.
“Kamryn… One more date, that’s all I’m asking.”
I sigh, wondering how he’s even going to ask me that right now.
“You lied,” I speak the words again.
“I did, but... Kamryn, give me the last date, give me the beach just to hear me out. Let me mend some things. Please. I’ll tell you everything.”
“I just want to go home,” I admit.
What was his reasoning? Why did he do the list? Why was he so persistent? Why did he go so far as to add his own date? My heart sinks at the possibilities, and the fact that he knows I won’t like the answer. There are only a few good reasons, but most of them sound horrible rolling through my head.
“I’ll take you home then. I’ve never once wanted to do anything to upset you Kamryn. And I only lied once. Only once,” He tells me.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You shouldn’t have lied at all.”
He nods, “I know that, and you do too, and I’m sorry. Once doesn’t make it better but I’m telling the truth,” His voice is timid.
He’s not being aggressive as he tries to explain himself. That doesn’t make me want to hear him out, though.
“I’m sure you are sorry, and I want to think about all of this, and I’ll text you tomorrow about the date, but for now I just want to go home.”
My head is already full of muck, and tarnished thoughts of him, and what we’ve done the past two weeks.
“Kamryn, I never used you for sex,” He says and I feel relief but not fully. “I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t. So please don’t think that’s what all of this was.”
I look at him, and he looks worried, his face showing distress I’ve never seen on him before, “I believe you.”
His words from before are replaying in my mind. His words about the insecurities I’ve shared, about the insults that have been thrown at me. Bellamy might be dumb sometimes, but he’s not cruel. He’s not heartless. I have to believe him.
“Kamryn, is that the only reason you’re upset?”
I shrug. I feel hurt. Not just upset but hurt.
I shouldn’t because none of this matters.
Fake dating, then done. No strings, but it feels like I’m a puppet being pulled by about a thousand strings right now.
There are so many strings I’ve tangled myself in it feels like I might never find a way out, and that’s not his fault.
It’s mine. I let feelings get in the way, and if this was between me and anyone else, his lies wouldn’t bother me.
They wouldn’t surprise me, but with Bellamy, it just feels different.
So I'm lying now. I shake my head no, and shrug.
“No, I'm not even upset. I guess it just took me by surprise is all. You just…You took me by surprise,” The lie burns in my mouth.
I don’t want to lie to him, but he lied to me. For months he lied, and I hate the thought of all of it. I hate that I wasn’t something that happened, I was something that he planned.
“I could say the same for you Ryn,” He speaks softly, and I stay quiet after that.
I want my time to be without him, and then I want my date.
I want my date. I want one last night with Bellamy before I cut it all off.
That’s all I want. Bellamy drives us the rest of the way back to my apartment and he looks at me the minute he parks the car.
I open my door without waiting for him to open it for me, and he doesn’t fight it.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” I tell him even though I don’t know if it’s the truth or not.
He starts to say something but doesn’t get it out before I get myself out of the Jeep, and head to my apartment, silence filling the air, but not my mind.
Bellamy hasn’t tried once to text me in the hours it’s been since he dropped me off.
I made myself a sandwich and didn’t eat it.
I tried to take a nap, and couldn’t sleep.
I tried to watch New Girl, but couldn’t focus.
My mind is spinning with thoughts of Bellamy the past semester, wondering if every word was something calculated, and planned.
I think back to every tutoring session trying to pull everything from the depths of my head, trying to see if there’s something I missed at the moment.
He had good intentions. But it shouldn’t matter. He still lied about everything.
I send Sienna a text, an SOS. I wait for her response.
When she replies, I’m relieved. She started training for fall ball, and spring season with her teammates.
She’s serious, and I know the rest of the teams are too.
She tells me she’s on her way, and I sigh to myself, not even knowing what I’ll be able to talk about.
Not knowing how I’m supposed to feel now with everything between Bellamy and I.
Sienna is walking through my door not even twenty minutes since I sent the text.
My knees are pulled up to my chest, and my apartment feels empty right now. I hug myself and she looks worried.
“I feel sick to my stomach,” My words sound hollow.
“Are you pregnant, or did Bellamy do something?” She moves quickly toward me.
“I’m not pregnant,” I tell her, not even questioning why she would suspect that.
“So what did he do?”
I tell her everything that happened today, what his sister said, and how he responded. Sienna presses her lips together tight.
“The worst part of all of this is the fact that I feel like I can’t be mad. I feel like it would be… I don’t know. I just feel like it’s wrong. I feel like I’m not allowed to have feelings at all.”
“You’re more than allowed to have feelings, and you’re allowed to be mad at him for lying. But I don’t think he did it to have sex with you,” She tells me. “I think maybe he was just trying to get to know you. Maybe he just thought you were cool, and didn’t know what else to do.”
Sienna is always the best at playing devil's advocate. I swear it’s her favorite thing to do. But I’ve been through this kind of thing before. I’ve been through the lies, and the hurt, and this is exactly why I steer clear of feelings.
“Even if that was the case, it’s still not fair.
It’s not fair because Bellamy and I swore on it all along that this was meant to be nothing.
No strings. No ties. Nothing. So if he went into this with different intentions.
If he went into this already having feelings, big or small then that’s just. I don’t know,” I say.
It’s unfair.
“It’s romantic. Just like all the movies he was trying so hard to replicate with you,” She argues.
I don’t know if I feel warmth because I’m angry, or if that just sparked something inside but they feel one in the same right now.
“It’s crazy because I feel like I know him. I feel like I’ve really known Bell for months… Even for years, but I haven’t. Bellamy confuses the hell out of me, and I just don’t know, Sienna. I’ve never been so lost for words and for a plan on what to do next.”
There’s no way I can stay on campus for summer sessions. There’s no way. I’m not hurt by his lies, I’m confused. I’m a little angry too. I feel like I was blindsided a bit.
“I know it’s really messy, and it feels unusual but maybe you should for once just do what your heart is telling you to do, and then maybe you can deal with the repercussions of that later.
I think you should hear him out tomorrow.
Just understand his reasoning for lying about the tutoring, and going into this whole thing with you. Maybe it’s not what you think.”
I contemplate it.
I was going on our last date tomorrow night already, it was set in my head before Sienna had even come, but I still feel sick.
Every time I think of going home while feeling this way, tears threaten my eyes.
I’m not the sensitive type, but that’s all I’ve felt since I got out of Bellamy’s car.
My phone buzzes and I look, seeing Dylan’s name on my phone.
I groan. Sienna’s eyes catch his name on my screen.
“What does he want? Why didn’t you block him?”
I slide open the text. My stomach sinks, a picture, and a message.
“I thought this was your new boyfriend?” It reads.