Stay With Me (She's With Me #2) - Jessica Cunsolo Page 0,77
them, and it loosens up about midthigh, flowing elegantly to the floor with a slit running up to my left thigh.
“‘Whoa’ is an understatement!” Charlotte’s smile is so big it must hurt her cheeks. “I’m so glad I sent Aiden away so he didn’t see this before you were properly glammed up. He’d jump your bones!”
“Char!” I laugh, my spirits lifting slightly.
The dress is gorgeous and I feel beautiful in it. It’s dizzying and makes dark thoughts pop in my mind. It’s not illegal to feel happy. There’s no reason you shouldn’t wear this dress and pretend it’s your prom, it’s not like you’ll get a real one with Aiden. It’s not like you’ll want to go to prom with anyone other than Aiden. Make the most of the situation.
“I’m going to go get shoes!” Charlotte giggles, her excitement contagious as she turns and runs to the shoe section.
She leaves me staring at myself in the mirror, and I take a deep breath, decision made. For the millionth time since I met Aiden, I let myself be selfish. I’m going to let myself pretend that this is our prom, the one that I’ll never get to have, and ignore the stabbing in my stomach, ignore everything telling me that I’m going to hurt all the people I care about, including myself.
We get home without Aiden having a clue which dress we bought, as per Charlotte’s demands, and I model it for Annalisa, who claps in delight and declares the rest of the evening a girls’ spa night.
Charlotte makes face masks in the kitchen while Annalisa and I are in my room gathering all our nail polishes together to have options, when Annalisa’s phone rings. The look on her face when she examines the caller ID tells me something is wrong, but she answers the call out in the hall anyway.
“What happened?” I ask as she sits back down on the floor across from me.
“Nothing.” She dismisses me, but then changes her mind. “That was Luke.”
She actually answered the phone for her brother? I guess that’s progress from having his number blocked and cursing the day he was born.
“He called me from jail. He was arrested a couple of days ago and charged with killing Greg. Second degree murder.” She looks down and fiddles with her nail polish bottle.
“I’m so sorry, Anna,” I say sincerely.
“Why? Don’t be sorry. I’m not. He deserves this,” she states fiercely, maybe too fiercely, the kind of statement that makes me feel like she’s really only trying to convince herself.
My brief silence prompts her to keep talking. “He’s a shitty brother, and he killed a person! A shitty person, but still! Plus, he killed my mom, so I say good riddance!”
She’s definitely trying to convince herself.
“Why do you say he killed your mom, Anna? I thought her addiction did?” I ask gently, because I know it’s a touchy subject for her, but I want to help her work through it.
She takes a deep breath, her tough façade slowly deflating.
“My mom may have had her faults, but she had a tough life. She was still my mom and I loved her.”
I move closer to her and give her my full attention, knowing she’s going to open up, which is incredibly rare for her.
“She was depressed and mostly absent from my life because of an incident from before I was born,” she admits quietly, still not looking at me. “She was sixteen and pregnant, kicked out of her house, written off by her family, and left to fend for herself. She was a fighter, though, and managed to land on her feet and do pretty well for herself and Luke. But then I came along and fucked everything up.”
“What? Anna! How could you even say that?! You didn’t ruin anything by being born!” I say, slightly mad that she would think that about herself.
Her mom would’ve been twenty or twenty-one when she had Annalisa, which I get may have been hard for a young, single mom already, but it wasn’t Annalisa’s fault!
“I did ruin everything!” she says and looks at me, tears welling up in her eyes. “She was raped by some guy at a party, and that resulted in me being born. She never came out and said it, but I knew she looked at me as a constant reminder of that awful night.”
“Oh, Anna. I’m sure she didn’t feel that way about you,” I tell her, not really knowing how to comfort her.