Until Harry - L.A. Casey Page 0,64
the day.
“I can see that you’re sorry,” I commented.
“I am,” she sniffled. “I swear it.”
I sighed deeply. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Ally. I can’t just switch off the dislike I have for you. You were a part of making growing up as a teenager more difficult than it needed to be.”
“I’d take it all back if I could,” she vowed.
I raised an eyebrow. “Why now?”
“Huh?” she hiccupped.
“Why are you saying all this to me now?” I clarified.
Ally shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve wanted to apologise to you for years, but you’ve been in the States, and I didn’t want to find you on Facebook and send you everything I had to say in a text message,” she explained. “Anything short of the apology I’m giving you now wouldn’t have cut it, not to me.”
That surprised me.
“You’ve changed since I last saw you,” I commented after a moment of silence.
I didn’t mean her appearance, and Ally knew that.
“I have,” she said, nodding. “I’ve grown up, and I’ll have to live with the things I have done and said, but all I can do now is offer my apology and prove that I’m a better person.”
My gut told me that she was being sincere.
“I . . . I can’t believe I’m saying this, and meaning it, but I forgive you, Ally,” I said after a pregnant pause. “We won’t be friends anytime soon, but I do believe that you’re sorry for what you did, and I accept your apology. We don’t have to talk about it again; it’s in the past where it belongs.”
Ally’s crying amplified until she was sobbing so much she couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to do for her, so I stood motionless before her and stared. I cringed as I put myself in her shoes.
Is that what I looked like when I cried? I wondered. Did others feel as helpless as I did?
“What’s going on in here?” Lochlan’s voice suddenly boomed from my right.
I looked at him at the same time he locked his eyes on a still blubbering Ally, and I resisted rolling my eyes when Lochlan’s hardened gaze switched to mine. If looks could kill, I would have been dead and buried with the glare my brother shot my way.
“What. Did. You. Do?” he growled.
Here we go.
“What are you talking about?” I quizzed. “I didn’t do anything.”
He lifted his hand and gestured towards Ally. “Explain her state then!”
I looked to Ally, who was trying to speak but was now hiccupping and couldn’t get any words out.
“I didn’t make her cry – she did that herself.”
Lochlan growled. “I’ve never seen her cry like that, and all of a sudden she is alone with you for a few minutes and she’s a mess of tears.”
Why does he care so much?
“You better close your mouth, turn around and walk off before you say something you regret,” I warned him. “I am not at fault here. She is apologising for the shit she did to me when we were teenagers. She is crying because she feels bad about what she did. We’re talking it out. That’s it.”
Some of the tension from Lochlan’s body disappeared.
He looked to Ally and asked, “Is that true?”
It pissed me off that he didn’t take what I said as truth.
Ally sniffled and nodded her head to Lochlan.
“Oh,” he said, then cleared his throat. “I didn’t know.”
“How could you know?” I questioned. “You never gave me a chance to explain. You came in here pointing your stupid fat finger and jumped to your own conclusion. Typical Lochlan.”
The tension that had left Lochlan’s body came back tenfold.
“I know you, Lane, and you have a way of starting trouble out of nothing,” he sneered.
He might as well have kicked me in the face. It would have hurt less.
“You’re wrong, dear brother,” I mocked. “You don’t know me; you haven’t known me for a long time.”
“And whose fucking fault is that?” he suddenly bellowed.
Ally jumped, but I didn’t. Lochlan didn’t scare me. I was used to his outbursts.
“I’m sorry, Ally,” Lochlan murmured, his voice incredibly soft towards her. “Can you give me a minute with my sister?”
He said the word “sister” like one would say “cancer”.
Ally nodded to both of us, tenderly touched Lochlan’s arm, then scurried out of the room, closing the door behind her. I blinked at the closed door, then looked to Lochlan, and my face lit up when I put two and two together.
“I’m so stupid,” I said, laughing. “No wonder