The Dare - Elle Kennedy Page 0,110

in peace. And to apologize.”

“It’s fine,” I reply, just to get rid of her. “You apologized. Bye.”

I try to close the door, but she pushes it open and slips her skinny ass in before I can slam her foot in the doorjamb.

“Abigail,” I huff, “I just want to be left alone.”

“Yeah…” Scrunching her face at my never-to-be-seen-by-another-human-person sweat ensemble, she says, “I can see that.”

“Why are you here, dammit?”

Being Abigail, she waltzes over to one of the stools at the tiny kitchen island and takes a seat. “I heard you broke up with Conor.”

“Seriously? You want to start with that?” Fucking unbelievable.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says quickly and takes a breath before starting over. “I mean, I think you made a mistake.”

Her pretenses drop. That air of permanent bitchiness. For the first time in a long time, she’s regarding me without a smirk of cruelty or sarcasm. It’s…sort of creepy.

Still not ready to trust her intentions, I stand against the opposite counter from her. “Why do you care?” Not that I give a shit what she thinks.

“Okay, look. I do this too.” There’s a chord of sympathy in her voice. “You’re upset and embarrassed and you want to push everyone away. Especially the people closest to you. That way they don’t see the pain you’re going through. They don’t see you the way you feel about yourself. I get it. I truly do.”

First Sasha, now Abigail? Why can’t everyone just leave me alone?

“What the hell do you know about anything?” I mutter. “You run through boys like makeup wipes.”

“I have issues, too,” she insists. “Just because you don’t see my insecurities doesn’t mean they aren’t there. We all have scars on the inside.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about your deep personal traumas, but you’re one of mine, so…”

If Abigail is feeling some remorse because her assheadedness blew up in my face, she’s going to have to turn elsewhere for absolution. She might have sympathy for me, but I have none for her.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” she says ruefully. “I was so insecure about you kissing a guy I was dating on a stupid dare that the only way I knew how to cope with that was to take my hurt out on you. After the kiss he wouldn’t shut up about oh her huge tits and have you ever thought about implants and all kinds of shit. Do you know how humiliating that is?”

A crease cuts into my forehead. I didn’t know that. I mean, sure, I knew she was pissed. But if a guy I was seeing kept going on about it, comparing us, I’d have lost my shit, too.

“In high school,” she confesses, drawing patterns on the countertop, “I was called pancakes. I didn’t even have enough to fill out a training bra. I know you probably think that’s a stupid thing to obsess about, but all I’ve wanted, for my entire life, was to feel good in my clothes, you know? To feel sexy. For guys to look at me the way they look at other girls.”

“But you’re gorgeous,” I say, exasperated. “You’ve got a perfect body and a beautiful face. You know the last time I wore a bikini? I was still sleeping with a nightlight.” I gesture to my chest. “These things are a fucking burden. They’re heavy. They don’t fit any apparatus known to man. I’ve got back problems like I’m seventy. Every guy I meet is staring at my boobs to distract him from the rest of me.”

Except Conor. Which sends another pang of loneliness stabbing through my gut.

“And yet, I never feel good enough. I never feel confident in who I am,” Abigail counters. “I make up for it with—”

“Being a bitch.”

She smiles, rolling her eyes. “Mostly, yeah. My point is, I’ve felt like shit and pushed people away, too. That’s what you’re doing with Conor and it sucks. I don’t know or care at what point you two stopped messing with me—and don’t bother denying it. I saw right through that bullshit. But at some point it changed and you made it official. Yeah, I noticed that too. He obviously loves you, and if your sudden change in attitude the last couple weeks is any indication, you loved him too. So what sense does it make to lose that because someone else did a shitty thing?”

“You don’t understand.” Because she can’t. And I don’t know what else to tell her that doesn’t sound like an excuse. Even the