Stop Pretending That You're Sorry

“What happened last night?” I was expecting this question to come up at some point, I just wasn’t prepared to be asked at 10 in the morning.

My ass was parked in a seat across from John’s desk. We were the only two in the room. It was his break period, my English period. Fuck it.

“You got drunk,” I explained, throwing my hands out like that was the obvious answer. Well it was. And I knew it wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

“I just got drunk? So how come I woke up in Katie Monroe’s living room this morning?”

“She’s a friend, we can trust her-“

“Oh? Does she know about that then too?” He asked his finger swirling circles in the air in the direction of my abdomen.

“Fuck off.”

“I’m taking that as a yes.”

“Look,” I slammed my hands on his desk and lifted my butt out of my chair. “You and Max got in a fight last night. I couldn’t take you to my place, so I took you to Katie’s. I didn’t want you going back home because you were drunk and I didn’t want you to hit Max.” It wasn’t a lie, I was just leaving out some crucial details.

“What did we fight about?” Fuck, I was hoping he wouldn’t ask that. As if, Regan, as if.

“I don’t know, he didn’t tell me. He just asked me to find you.” Okay, so now I was lying. What was I supposed to say? Oh he had an affair with your girlfriend and now she’s dead. Yeah. That would go over well. “Look,” I sighed, sitting down again. “I should go. Write me a pass, please?”

“Yeah sure thing.” He wasn’t happy.

English passed slowly, I couldn’t keep images of Cayleigh’s bloody face from creeping into my head. When the bell finally rang I rushed out to my locker. That was when he found me.

“Regan, what the fuck?” Tucci demanded, loud enough that some people turned to stare at us.

“Can we not talk about this now?” I was choking up. Great.

“You can’t just fucking leave someone like that!”

Pieces of hair dangled in front of my eyes as I shook my head. “I’m not like you. I can’t do what you did. I got scared.”

“What you did was low and pathetic.” And then he stormed off, leaving me in a sea of onlookers.

Before I even had a chance to collect myself someone’s arm thrust around mine and tugged me in the direction of the girls’ room. Julia. Katie was right behind.

“What was that about?” Julia asked, turning to look me in the eye.

“Nothing.”

“Look, that was obviously not about nothing. You need to spill what’s been going on with you lately!”

“What?”

“We’re your best friends,” Julia motioned between herself and Katie who looked like she wanted to be there no more than myself. “You have to spill what the hell’s been going on, and don’t give me that ‘nothing’ crap, because I know there is shit going on with you.”

Now she’d gone from pissing me off to crossing the line.

“I’m allowed to have secrets, Julia. You don’t own me.”

After that I stormed off leaving her with her jaw hanging open and a nervous looking Katie shuffling behind her.

Everything was going to shit and I was stuck right in the middle of it. Tucci had fucked off. Julia had fucked off, or at least I’d fucked off from her. John would fuck off as soon as he found out about Cayleigh. All I had left was Katie, and it wouldn’t be too long before I messed up and she would fuck off too.