Who We Could Be - Chelsea M. Cameron Page 0,13

he’d treated my best friend.

To pass the time, I started making a list of all the things we’d need to do, and people we’d need to call to cancel the wedding. Every now and then I kept glancing over at the piles of presents in the corner of the room. Yeah, those had to go. I hauled myself off the couch and took several trips down to my car and shoved the presents in the trunk. Monty could decide what to do with that shit later. We could build a bonfire in my parent’s backyard or sell that shit online if she wanted to.

That task completed, I didn’t have much else to do but sit on the couch and come up with all the worst ways to torture TJ.

A sound from the bedroom made me get up and stand outside the door to make sure I’d heard correctly.

I knocked softly. “Hey, Ford, you okay?”

Four

Monty

He’d done it. He’d really done that. I’d stared at the extremely graphic text for a long time before I realized what it said and what it meant. Then I had no choice but to see what else these two had been saying to each other, and then I wished I hadn’t looked at all.

My stomach rolled and heaved and I rushed to the sink, nearly tripping over a box on my way.

I’d heaved a few times and then heard the toilet flush and TJ came back out. I couldn’t remember much after that. I know I’d screamed a lot and he’d acted like I was the one who was in the wrong, and I was pretty sure I had threatened to kill him at least once and then I’d gotten in my car and drove home and called the only person I knew could help me: Tessa.

You would have thought that I’d cried myself out earlier, but here I was, awake in my room and crying again.

“Hey Ford, you okay?” Of course she’d heard me.

“No,” I said, pulling a tissue out of the box beside my bed. If I didn’t start drinking some water, I was going to get completely dehydrated and shrivel up like a raisin.

Tessa came in and sat on the bed.

“What do you need me to do?” she asked. That was Tessa, always asking me what I needed.

“Water,” I croaked, and she handed me the water bottle that I hadn’t seen on the nightstand. My hands trembled as I took a drink, slopping cold water all over myself.

“Hey, that’s my line,” Tessa said with a laugh. She mopped me up with tissues as best she could, and I took a few more sips without incident.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Do you need anything else? Do you need me to talk about shit?”

Nothing could make me feel better right now, but hearing Tessa go on about nonsense for a while might help my mind stop spinning for a little bit so I could let my exhausted body shut down for a little while.

Over and over, I thought of all the things that TJ had ruined. Our wedding, for one. Cancelling that was going to be a massive project. Then I had to tell my parents, which was going to be a nightmare. They loved TJ more than I did.

Then there was unloving him. I couldn’t unbreak my heart, and mending it was going to be a task in itself.

Not to mention dealing with everyone’s input about my relationship. I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without someone giving me a comment or a sad look or whispering behind my back. It was a wonder that people weren’t knocking down my door now, demanding for me to spill the tea. Those questions would come. It would all come, and I’d have to deal with that too.

One little wisp of a feeling that had started stretching and opening in my mind, and if I didn’t know what to call it, I might have said it was something like relief. There would be time to turn that over and figure it out. Later.

“Please talk about shit,” I said, and closed my eyes.

She launched into a recap of a terrible reality show, complete with voice impressions and I had to open my eyes and watch her because she got totally into it. Honestly, I’d rather listen to Tessa tell me about a show or movie than see the thing myself. Her retelling was usually better.

I found my face relaxing, my jaw unclenching, and my body heading toward something like sleep. Something