CHAPTER TEN
BLAKELY
“YOU REALLY DON’T remember?” Sarah asks me while walking down the hallway of Barrington Monday morning.
“Nope,” I answer.
She frowns, tilting her head to the side in thought. After a long pause, she speaks. “Well, that sucks.”
“Right? What about you?”
She shakes her head. “We must have had a great time.”
I laugh as she smiles. I allowed a stranger to blindfold and cuff my wrists behind my back, and I’m not even sure we had sex. I do, however, remember him throwing me onto the bed and going down on me. I fucking screamed, or at least I did in my head as I came all over his face. Then I think I blacked out.
I woke up the next morning in my bed, Sarah in hers, and my car in the parking lot of our apartment complex. Our cell phones, IDs, and my car keys were sitting on the kitchen counter with no explanation of how they got there. However, my underwear was missing, but otherwise, I was dressed in the clothes I went wearing.
We did nothing but lay on the couch, wrapped in blankets, eating greasy cheeseburgers trying to get rid of our hangovers. She was sick most of the day, and I felt like I was dying. Thankfully, we feel much better today.
“Have you heard from Matt?” she asks.
“Another no,” I growl. I do, however, remember that motherfucker and his girlfriend. He’s the main reason I even let the stranger touch me. I’m more pissed at Matt than I am at the fact I may have lost my virginity and can’t remember it. When I woke up in my bed Saturday morning, I was pretty sore between my legs with bite marks on my inner thigh.
“He hasn’t even called to try to explain himself? Ask for forgiveness?”
I shake my head.
“What a piece of shit,” she snaps and softens her voice. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” You know what they say—better to find out now rather than five years down the road and three kids later.
My cell phone rings in my back pocket, and I pull it out to see it’s my mother. “I’ll meet you in class.” Walking off, I answer, “Hello?”
“Good morning, dear. How are things going?”
I wonder if she’s calling because Matt’s mother has informed her of our breakup. They are best friends. “Fine,” I answer, testing the waters.
“Nothing new to tell me?” she asks in that voice that tells me she already knows something.
“No,” I lie.
She sighs heavily. “Well, I just spoke to Kimberly, and she said that she heard you and Matt got into a fight this past weekend.”
“A fight?” I snort; the pussy lied to his mother. “He was cheating on me, Mom. We broke up.” Why should I have to hide who he really is? Plus, telling her now is better than doing it in person. She can chase me from room to room, and our house is big. Now I can tell her how I feel, then hang up and go about my day.
“You know that no relationship is perfect, right?” she responds.
My mouth falls open. I know she’s not implying what I think she is. “You can’t be serious?”
“Of course, I am. I think your father and I have given you a false representation of what marriage is like.”
“So, you think I should put up with someone being unfaithful?” I snap.
“I think that sacrifices are made in a marriage—”
“Well, thankfully, I haven’t married him,” I interrupt her, my blood boiling. I don’t know why I’m mad because I knew she’d be this way. That’s why I was afraid to tell her what happened.
“The wedding is still on, Blakely,” she states.
She wants it to be next summer after I graduate. She and Kimberly have been planning it for years. “Mom …”
“You have plenty of time to work through things. This is an opportunity for you.”
I blink. An opportunity? “For what?” I wonder.
“You’ll see.” She hangs up.
I pull the phone from my ear and just stare at it. What the hell is she referring to? An opportunity for what? To see how far he’ll go to make it up to me? The fucker hasn’t even reached out to me. Silence speaks louder than any gift a man can give you. If he wanted to, he would and all that shit. If a woman would just pay attention, a man will tell her everything she needs to know without him even saying a damn word.
My mother once went two weeks without even looking my father’s way. He bought her a vacation home—an oceanfront estate in South Hampton—after that. She forgave him quicker than a stack of cards falling over from a breeze. Now I understand it.
An opportunity to see what I can get out of him. Too bad there’s nothing that fucker could give me that would make me forgive his cheating ass.
I silence my phone before placing it back in my pocket and have that feeling creeping up my spine again. Like someone is watching me.
Looking up, I find a set of emerald eyes. Ryat is leaning up against the far wall. A girl with short, bleach blonde hair stands in front of him, and she’s speaking to him, but he’s looking at me. He doesn’t seem to care that I caught him staring.
Then like he never even saw me standing here, he looks down at the girl who continues their conversation. He nods a few times, and then his lips start moving, but I can’t hear what they’re talking about.