Stuck With Me - Melissa Brown Page 0,1
and a sigh.
“What’s his name?
“There’s no one else, I swear it.” She shook her head, finally looking me in the eye. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Sure you wouldn’t.” This time it was my turn to look away. Her gaze felt like fire on my skin.
“Come on, please look at me. I’m being honest with you; you just don’t want to hear it.”
“Whatever.” My eyes scanned the room. Happy people chatting over appetizers and glasses of wine, people toasting one another, and one couple was making out in their booth. I wanted to tell them all to go to hell. If I had to be this miserable, I wanted to take everyone down with me.
“Here’s the thing… We’ve been together for such a long time, and I accepted that this was it.”
That word was like a knife in my back. I held up one hand and repeated her word back to her with venom pouring from my mouth. “Accepted? You accepted this? Us? Are you fucking kidding me?”
She closed her eyes tight, continuing, “But then, I started thinking… What it if isn’t? We’re still in our twenties; there’s still time.”
“Time for what?” I demanded, my hands balled into fists, and the box I felt in my grasp only made my anger feel unbearable. I was going to explode.
“To be single, to date, to hook up, to do all the careless things I didn’t do before. You were my first, Dev. And we jumped into so many things. I missed out on a lot.”
“Wow. I’m so sorry that I kept you from all of that excitement you poor, sheltered little brat,” I sneered. She was turning the best six years of my life into nothing but regret and missed opportunities and I wasn’t having it.
She shook her head again, reaching for my hand. I pulled it away quickly from her grasp. “Maybe I’m not saying this right. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. What we had was really nice—”
“Nice?” I was incensed, raising my voice in disbelief. “Nice?”
“And it made me who I am today. It’s just that—”
“No, I get it. You wasted your time with a guy who loved you.” I slid the ring box back into my pocket, never wanting her to know I was going to offer her my life, offer her my future and everything that came with it. “And now you want casual sex and random hookups. Way to dream big, Trupti.”
“You were never a waste of time. But it’s been months, and you couldn’t even see how unhappy I was and I was right in front of your face. What does that say about you?”
“Why don’t you tell me? You seem to be the expert.”
She sighed before taking a sip of her water. “I’ve been unhappy for a very long time. You just didn’t want to see it. You couldn’t stand for your plans to be disrupted.”
“Bullshit.”
“You want the house, the kids, the annual trips to the Caribbean.”
“So? Who doesn’t?”
“Me.” Her eyes welled with tears. “At least not yet. I haven’t lived a life yet. I’m not ready to settle.”
“Well, by all means,” I said, rising to my feet and pushing in my chair. “Don’t let me keep you from living your life. But don’t come crawling back to me when some douchebag gives you an STD, all right? Because I’m done letting you waste my time.”
She reached across the table and grabbed my sleeve. One tear drifted down her reddened cheek as she pulled at the cotton fabric, which brushed harshly against my skin. “Don’t go, not like this.”
“Why not? Like you said, Trup, it’s over. So go live your goddamn life.”
“I don’t understand. You two were meant to be.” Mom’s hand shook as I reluctantly placed her mother’s ring in her palm.
“Apparently not, Mom.” I shook my head, fighting the emotions inside of me. It was the next morning, and with my tail between my legs, I’d landed on my parents’ doorstep to return my nani’s ring. I couldn’t stand to have it with me any longer. I had to give it back in order to close this chapter of my life and move on. Somehow. Without the ring, I thought I could have a fighting chance.
“But you got her parents’ permission, right? Why would she say no?”
“I never got to ask her, Mom. She dumped me before I even had the chance.”
Mom placed her hand on the back of my neck and pulled me in tight. “Oh pyaare bete,” my mom breathed