closed her eyes and pressed her gathered fingers against them.
“At least the ambulance got there fast. Maybe it was enough time,” Tennyson said, reaching over and pulling one of Melanie’s hands away. “Come on. Be positive.”
“Hilly’s not strong enough, Teeny. Her body just isn’t. It’s been through too many years of abuse. I’ve read everything there is to read about eating disorders. Cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death. They just deny and deny and deny their bodies nutrients, and then those bodies don’t work anymore. God, her body just doesn’t work.” Melanie wrapped her arms around her stomach and fell forward. Her face twisted in anguish, and bright blood appeared on her bottom lip. She’d chewed it until it bled.
Tennyson didn’t know what to do. Why had everyone left Melanie alone, assuming she could handle this situation by herself? Why did she have to be the one to talk to the doctor? Why did everyone else get a pass to deal with their own feelings but Melanie didn’t?
The thought pissed Tennyson off. Ever since she’d been back, she’d watched Melanie handle everything for everyone else.
Slowly, she began to rub Melanie’s back, the same way she’d done with Andrew when he’d been sick as a child. “It’s okay, Melly. It’s okay to be scared.”
Under her hand, Melanie stilled, her silent sobs abating. After a few more seconds, Melanie sat up and wiped her face. “Oh God. I am scared.”
Tennyson looked at her. “I am, too. All the time.”
“You’re not scared. You never have been.”
“Wrong. I . . . well, you know me, Melanie. I have to play it off. I have to put on a front.”
Melanie smiled at her then, a tremulous, wobbly smile. “You want to know a secret?”
She didn’t respond because she was fairly certain that secrets were the reason she and Melanie were no longer friends. That, and the fact that Tennyson had purposefully, albeit drunkenly, spilled the biggest secret of the Brevard family in front of hundreds of wedding guests. So that Melanie would offer up something using the word secret made her wary.
“I missed who I am with you,” Melanie whispered.
Tennyson felt something weird break apart in her chest at that confession. “Yeah? You miss getting detention and punished for sneaking out late?”
A tear slipped from Melanie’s brown eyes. “Yeah. We got in trouble a lot, but the thing is, I don’t like who I am much anymore. I’m older, fatter, and take more crap from people than I used to. I settle all the time and allow myself to be used, underappreciated, or whatever just so someone will pay attention to me. I am the doormat they walk across and wipe their crap on. I don’t have any true friends. Okay, a couple. But no one asks me to have cocktails or go on girls’ trips or be their ride or die. You know what I mean?”
“Ride or die? Or the doormat thing?”
Melanie made a confused face. “Both?”
Tennyson realized she didn’t have many friends, either. Oh sure, she’d had friends who invited her for cocktails and even took a few trips to her place in Colorado or the place husband number three had in Cabo, but she didn’t have ones who knew who she truly was. She had faux friends, people who looked the part, but never held her hand when she cried, never showed up with Oreos or ice cream when she had a crap day, never cared about the real Tennyson. None of them saw through her crap and held her accountable. No one told her no. That she was acting stupid. Or ridiculous. She hadn’t had a friend like that since . . . Melanie.
And Tennyson had thrown that friendship away over a damned man. Because she couldn’t accept Kit choosing Melanie over her, even when she didn’t truly want him anymore. She had always been jealous of what Melanie had—the big house, the fancy cars, the damned country club membership. She hadn’t wanted her to have Kit, too.
So she’d done what she thought she had to in order to steal Melanie’s “perfect” world. She was a shitty person.
“I know what you mean, but you don’t have to be everything to everybody, Melly. You know? You get to choose yourself sometimes,” she said, mostly because she couldn’t seem to admit that to herself, much less Melanie. Or maybe this was a new revelation—that she truly missed Melanie. How could she say she made the biggest mistakes of her life when