Coffee Cup Confessions - Trish Williford Page 0,61

everything, Mandy. Don’t leave anything out,” I demand.

She sits up straight and takes a deep breath. “I hired Jake—”

“No,” I interrupt.

She looks at me with confusion.

“From the beginning. Tell me everything, starting with how you and Noah got together.”

Her mouth gapes open slightly, and I don’t give a shit if this makes her uncomfortable. “Misha, I don’t know if you want me to go there.”

“I said, tell me everything. If you want to talk, we’re going to go back to the point of where our relationship began failing again.”

She sighs heavily. “All right. I’m being one hundred percent honest here. I first realized that I had a crush on Noah when I was thirteen and you all were eleven. There was no way I could tell anyone I had a crush on a kid two years younger than me; my friends would have made fun of me. For years, I kept my feelings for him to myself, and part of me thought they would just eventually go away. But they didn’t.”

Her nose is red—a telltale sign that she’s fighting back tears. She’s always been a great actress, but she’s never been able to make herself cry. She’s telling the truth, which makes a ball of guilt slowly form in my chest.

“You two were always close, and I was envious. My junior homecoming was your freshman homecoming. Finally, I had the courage to tell Mom that I liked Noah, and she said I should ask him to the dance. He came to the house one day for you, but you weren’t home. I walked outside with him and asked him if he was going to homecoming. He said yes, and I was excited. I was about to ask him to go with me, and that was when he blurted out that he was planning to ask you to go with him. He told me he had a crush on you and begged me not to tell you.

“You guys went to homecoming together, and I knew you had no clue that I liked him, but it made me hate you. I wanted everyone to hate you too. I made up rumors about you in hopes that Noah would hear them and believe them, but he never did. It made me like him even more; he was so loyal. Even though you all were just friends for so long, just knowing that he was interested in you broke my heart. You got to spend the time with him that I would have died to have.

“For a few years, things seemed to get a little better. Noah and I would hang out when he came home for college breaks, although it irritated me that he would always ask about you. When he moved back home after graduation, I was going to confess how I felt about him. Take a chance to see if he felt the same. That was when you brought him to family dinner and announced that you two were dating. Each and every time I saw you two together was torture. I felt like I was suffocating … dying slowly. You went from being my sister to my absolute worst enemy.”

Tears are streaming down her face, and my cheeks are also wet with tears. I was the villain in my sister’s story and had no idea.

“Why didn’t you tell me that back then? I would have never dated him, I swear. You were my best friend. I would have never betrayed you if I had known.”

“He was so happy that he was finally with you, and I never wanted to take that from him. I thought that seeing you two together would help me get over him, but that definitely wasn’t the case.

“When you thought he was starting to pull away, I confronted him. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t cheating on you. He wasn’t, but he said he felt like you two were in a rut. You both were feeling the same way but were afraid to talk to one another. I encouraged him to talk to you, and when the breakup happened, I was so happy. It’s so screwed up that I felt that way, but he was single and away from you, so I finally had a chance.

“Once you moved out of his townhouse, he and I began to hang out again. It wasn’t romantic at first, but his feelings developed after we spent time together. He was conflicted for a long time, and that was why