Chapter Eighteen Amanda
Chapter Eighteen
Amanda
Opening up to others was something Amanda rarely did.
Opening up to a man she was screwing was something she never did.
But just a few weeks into her relationship with Townsend, Amanda found she wanted this person to know her, really know her, both inside and out.
A stupid mistake, of course. She’d gleaned enough experience with men to know that few—if any—were worthy of trust. Still, at the time, she felt sure: This man didn’t just have the means to offer her financial security; he would keep her secrets safe too.
It’s hard to say what made her trust Townsend, exactly.
After all, this was a man who’d cheated, deceiving both his girlfriend and his paramour in the process.
But something about the way he focused when she spoke, eyes never straying to his phone screen or some other more interesting distraction—it was new yet comforting.
Good breeding had made him this way, yes, and maybe some good acting.
Still, Amanda had never felt more interesting.
She would have told Townsend anything, if only to bask in the glow of his attention for another minute.
That’s probably why she told him what she did, that night they drank too many prickly pear margaritas at De Nada Cantina.
It was late January, about a month after Talia caught her and Townsend in bed together, and Amanda felt certain that she’d never been happier.
Too drunk to make it all the way back to Townsend’s condo, they decided to crash at Amanda’s East Austin apartment, where they had sex, smoked, and then had sex again.
It was only then—only when Amanda’s guard was completely down—that she decided to tell Townsend the story. Such a stupid fucking mistake.
They had been on her mind a lot, her parents.
The two-year anniversary of their death was in February, a few days before her sister’s birthday.
And because she was feeling unsteady and sentimental and emboldened by the intensity of Townsend’s stare as they lay in bed together, she told him what happened the night her parents died.
The night her parents were killed, more accurately.
At the time, Amanda didn’t have a car, because after her parents moved to East Austin postretirement, she didn’t need one; she could always borrow theirs.
She tried to be respectful of it—cleaning up her take-out bags, filling the gas tank when it was low, replacing the windshield wiper fluid every once in a while—but sometimes, she was thoughtless.
And that’s exactly what she was when she drove home drunk one night after partying with coworkers.
It was less than a ten-minute drive. She’d driven drunk before; she thought she’d be fine.
Even after she drove up onto that curb, the car miraculously looked okay—no scratches or dents, nothing to indicate what had happened.
According to her outgoing calls, she’d apparently reached out to her sister at three a.m.—a foolish move—but as long as Kaitlyn didn’t tattle, Amanda thought their mom and dad would never be the wiser about her drunken joyride. And unfortunately, she was right.
Steering failure was the cause of her parents’ crash.
Both her parents were in the car, and they both died instantly—or, at least, that’s what the police claimed, so that’s what Amanda chose to believe.
The alternative—that they’d survived the initial impact and suffered several minutes in the smashed-up vehicle, terrified and in pain—was too unbearable to contemplate.
Over the next two years, she asked herself the same question hundreds, if not thousands, of times: Had she somehow fucked up the wheel when she hit that curb?
Would her parents still be alive if she had just told them about the accident instead of returning their car the next day like nothing had happened?
Would she ever feel peace, knowing she could have possibly prevented her parents’ death, or would she live with this guilt until the day she died herself?
But still, she never told a single soul the truth, not even her sister Kaitlyn, who deserved the truth more than anyone. No, she kept it all locked in, letting it eat her alive—until Townsend put her at ease enough to confess.
“It’s not your fault,” he said over and over again, rubbing circles on her back. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t have known.”
It wasn’t true, what he said, but it was exactly what she needed to hear. So she just held him and cried, feeling that, if this were the closest she ever came to peace, she would be okay.
The peace didn’t last. A few weeks later, when Townsend started to pull away, she thought it was, once again, her fault.
Maybe she’d said too much. Maybe he’d decided that, yes, she was to blame for her parents’ fatal crash and he no longer wanted anything to do with someone like her.
But when she confronted him, asking why he’d grown so distant, he just claimed he was tired, or busy with work, or distracted by his dad’s failing health, or in need of a little space.
And when he finally broke up with her, just days after the anniversary of her parents’ death, he even had the audacity to say this: “It’s not you. It’s me.”
“That’s bullshit,” she replied, “and you know it.”
It took a little coaxing, but eventually, she got him to admit what had really changed his mind about her. “You’re just coming on a little strong. Your messages . . . They’re intense.”
“What are you talking about?” Amanda hopped off the bed—where she’d just given Townsend a fantastic blow job for nothing—and retrieved her phone so she could rattle off her last few texts to him. “‘Let’s hang later.’ ‘I’m horny.’ ‘Want pizza?’ What about these messages is intense?”
“Obviously not those,” said Townsend.
She paused. “Are you referring to the thing I sent a few weeks ago? After I told you about my parents’ accident?
” Her face grew hot just thinking about the uncharacteristically sappy message she’d written to him, her head still fuzzy with after-sex bliss and the tangible relief of having finally unloaded her sob story: I can’t tell you how good it feels to have finally met someone I can trust .
. . He’d never replied, and she’d been stewing in regret for having sent it ever since.
“All of this is just too much,” Townsend continued. “You’re too much.”
Amanda didn’t even bother to defend herself, because it was over, and what was the point? Instead, she bid adieu to his slightly smaller-than-average prick and made her way home.
Before deleting the Cuff app from her phone, she’d scrolled through her messages with Townsend one last time, not so much out of nostalgia but for closure.
His double entendres and flirty come-ons—which had once charmed her—now seemed immature, gross.
But what really made her squirm was the smattering of over-the-top effusive messages she’d sent to him, many of which she didn’t even remember composing.
This feels like the beginning of forever.
Your my missing puzzle piece.
I want to have five kids and I want them all to have your eyes.
Jesus. Apparently, she’d blacked out and let her fingers loose on more than one occasion.
The cringe-worthy missives just felt like further proof that she wasn’t cut out for this kind of vulnerability.
Who was this person, who’d been so enamored that she’d written words that she now couldn’t even recognize?
If this is what being in a committed relationship did to her, then Amanda didn’t want any part of it, not again.
This is what she was going to do: She would quit her job.
She would sublet her apartment. And then she would buy a one-way ticket to Paris, or Barcelona, or Rome, where she would have such a fabulous time that she’d entirely forget the name Townsend Fuller.
If living well was the best revenge, then she wasn’t going to just live well—she was going to live exceptionally.
And she wasn’t going to let anyone—certainly not Townsend Fuller—stand in her way.