it. Mari went against my wishes and did what I specifically told her not to. There’s no way I feel the same way about it now.
She won’t understand. Many won’t. It takes blood, mental anguish and sweat to write something that people might want to read, to produce words that some might remember, if only for a few moments, once they have finished reading it.
She didn’t just taint it, she tainted us. I misread her. Had her down for a warm and wonderful woman, sexy as hell, and caring, too. Someone who helped me to heal. What I didn’t expect was for her to be conniving, devious and deceptive.
People change, people lie, they deceive. I expected her to be different but she disappointed me. I can’t trust her.
And yet. And yet another part of my head, or maybe it’s my heart, tells me that Mari isn’t like my step dad. She didn’t read my words out aloud and laugh her head off, nor did she say they were rubbish. She didn’t demean me. She said my writing sucked her in. Said it hooked her so completely that she couldn’t put it down.
That’s a good thing.
But the betrayal is deep, and the deed is done. I need to move on. Rob is waiting for this, but I can’t send this to him. For me, this manuscript has been ruined.
True to form I slip back into my earlier state. I eat all the junk I can find and I slouch on the sofa, watching mindnumbingly crass TV. This is what I have to do to take my mind off the whole sorry saga.
The doorbells rings, and rings, and rings. It takes me a while to rouse myself to get up off the couch. The noise is so loud, and I’d only just made myself comfortable. The disruption pisses me off and I’m even more annoyed by the time I open the door.
I blink at Jamie. I’m in no mood for a workout. I search his face for signs of unease, something to confirm my suspicions that Mari went running to him. I was so convinced that she had, and that she had told him everything, that I hadn’t expected him to show up here ever again.
“Hey,” he says, in that annoyingly upbeat voice of his. He stares at me a little more intently than usual.
“She went to you, did she?” There’s no way she’s gone to him and not told him what happened.
“And what if she did?”
I leave the door open and go back inside, returning to the couch. Jamie follows me. “What’s going on?”
It’s only when I see his gaze flicker over the floor, that I see the floor properly for the first time myself. Cans and wrappers from chocolate bars and potato chips bags litter the floor along with a box of half-eaten donuts.
“What did she tell you?” I ask as I start clearing the trash from the floor because now I’m embarrassed by it. I wish I hadn’t let him in. I should have turned him away from the door, but he holds the key to Mari, and it’s her I want to know about.
He folds his arms. “Let’s cut the crap,” he says. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“I’m sure she’s filled you in.”
“She didn’t mean to read your book,” he snaps. “She got curious.”
That snags my attention. “Curious?”
He explains, saying something about how the two of them had had a disagreement and how Mari had wanted to make it up to him. He says he’d asked her once for a sneak peak at my book because he loved my writing, but she had refused.
This pisses me off tenfold—the fact that she made such a colossal mistake all for this loser. That’s why she was taking pictures. For him. It still doesn’t make sense. She knew how protective and paranoid I am about my manuscripts. She knew this, and yet she still went ahead and did what she did.
“She was going to take pictures for me,” “But she—”
“I don’t need you to make excuses for her.” I throw him a hateful look. If he’s trying to make her look good, I’m not interested. I continue picking up stuff from the floor. I’m shocked by it, now that I’m the one who has to clear up. I really binged out like a madman. I’m in danger of falling back into a rut again, and this time I won’t have anyone to pull me back out.
“What happened to