Status: just posting this here to see what happens ~
Of the Night
Cheaters Never Prosper
Wednesday, 9:30 pm.
To: Rebekah :)
From: Caroline Forbes
bex? could you bring me back to the grill? i think i left my wallet wedged in the seat at our booth
To: Caroline
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
I literally just dropped you off. You have a car, go get it yourself.
To: Rebekah :)
From: Caroline Forbes
fine :( i hate you anyway
Wednesday, 9:45 pm.
To: Rebekah :)
From: Caroline Forbes
rebekah i need you to come to the grill right now. right fucking now.
To: Caroline
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
Did someone die? Is my presence absolutely necessary?
To: Rebekah :)
From: Caroline Forbes
considering i just caught matt practically fucking someone who is not elena in the grill parking lot, someone is about to.
To: Caroline
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
I’ll be there in two minutes.
To: Matt Donovan
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
YOUR ASS IS FUCKING GRASS
To: Oh Dearest Brother
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
I need you to come to the Grill right now. Bring Damon. Bring Alaric. I don’t fucking care, just show up and don’t ask any stupid questions before you get here.
_
Mondays were soul-sucking but Thursdays were infinitely worse. On a Monday, you knew you had the rest of the week stretching a million miles long before you. On a Thursday, the worst thing happened. You had a little hope.
It’s sort of like being Sisyphus and pushing that damn rock up the hill and almost getting there, almost, enough that you began to think of a future where pushing a rock up a hill would not be a part of it, until the rock fell down again. Waking up on a Thursday was pleasant for the three seconds you thought it was Friday.
I was mulling over this thought while I sat on the porch. First period began at 7:10 am and it was currently 6:55. Normally, Rebekah picked up Caroline at 6:30 and came by mine at 6:35. We usually made it to school at about 6:45 am, which was enough time to reach our lockers and maybe have a couple minutes of conversation before we got pulled in different directions for homeroom.
Today was different because Rebekah hadn’t shown up yet. Very rarely was I ever outside and waiting for her. Jeremy had peaced out about fifteen minutes ago with Anna and I wished I had the foresight to hitch a ride with them.
To: Fwbekah
From: Elena Gilbert
Did something tragic happen or did you body swap with Caroline and suddenly forget your anal-like ability for punctuality
I waited two minutes and received no reply. I chalked it up to Rebekah’s refusal to text and drive. 6:57 am.
To: Carocurve
From: Elena Gilbert
Careeeeeeeeeeeee did Rebekah pick you up? Are you guys on your way or will I have to make the trek to school all by my lonesome and maybe get kidnapped and killed at seven o’clock in the morning.
Another two minutes and still no reply from either of them. I wished I had bothered to get my license or that my parents were home so I wouldn’t be worrying if my two best friends got into a car accident. 6:59 am.
I decided to send a Hail Mary text to Matt, even though he was the worst texter in the history of texters and probably wouldn’t reply to my message until we were old and gray and cell phones had become sentient.
To: Matt Donovan
From: Elena Gilbert
Do you know where Rebekah and Caroline are?
I waited five minutes this time, pinching myself to keep from biting my nails out of nervous habit. 7:04 am. Absolute radio silence. I could almost hear the white noise in my head.
I had made the decision to walk to school and was halfway down my driveway when a black Camaro pulled over and stopped neatly in front of me. The driver’s side window rolled down and of course.
“Need a lift, Gilbert?” Damon Salvatore, in all his dark-haired blue-eyed glory, asked.
I wanted to be annoyed but I currently had six minutes to make the ten minute trip to school and anxiety and a little bit of fear was coursing through my veins because more than a little part of me wondered if Damon was here because he knew something tragic that I didn’t.
“Are my friends alive?” It was not the first thing either of us expected to come out of my mouth.
“Barbie and Bex? Yeah, they’re fine. They sent me over here because they had some last minute stuff to handle and were going to be late for school, so I’m taking you. They’ll meet you at lunch, or whatever.” There was something different in Damon’s voice and I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I frowned but got in the car anyway, because I currently had six minutes to make the ten-minute trip to school and I wasn’t exactly keen on walking into Mr. Duvall’s first period physics class late. The man was a pervert and I was skeeved out enough by him already. I didn’t put it past him to try to land me in after school detention just to play out some sick fantasy.
“What happened? Why didn’t they call me? Or at least text me back? We went out to the Grill last night with Matt and Tyler and everything seemed fine.” But aren’t things not always what they seem?
“You’re going to have to ask them that,” He replied, voice tight, and jaw locked. His hands were bruised and gripping the steering wheel tight enough that the black and blue of his knuckles seemed to be stripped of a few shades of color. I could see no immediate reason for his anger, which meant that it had something to with my friends. And possibly my boyfriend?
I stayed quiet and instead looked around the car. I’d only been in Damon’s car once before, and that was before it was ever “his”. We were little and semi-friends and played hide and seek in his house. The car was often kept in the garage beneath a tarp. I remember thinking that it was like a book dust jacket for cars and that it’d be a perfect place to hide. Everything had seemed big then, but it was relatively easy to knick the keys from the hook near the door and sneak into the garage to hide.
It took Damon so long to find me that I ended up falling asleep, waking up to a car door being thrown open hard enough that it hit the wall and a ton of yelling. My parents had been ready to call the National Guard and grounded me for a month.
“Is there still a dent on the door?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Damon relaxed a little bit. “Yeah. I fixed nearly everything else in the car that needed fixing, so I’m a little strapped for cash in the dent-repairing department.”
“Dents give it character. If someone asks you how it happened, you can tell them that a little girl fell asleep in your car and her parents nearly called the police in a panic to find her.”
Damon chuckled. Chuckling seemed like a very old person thing to do. “Somehow, I don’t think anyone will be impressed by that story. An Amber Alert is the last dedication I want.”
I shrugged, feigning disappointment. “Your loss.”
The radio hummed lightly, playing the Top 40 radio. The signal was surprisingly clear. That station was notorious for drifting in and out, sometimes residing in static like it was going to make a home there and procreate. I felt a little off, because Damon wasn’t being himself and we were most likely already late for school and he knew something that I didn’t.
There was a crumpled up pink neon paper wedged in the little compartment beneath all the knobs for the radio. I pulled it out, expecting the mall construction flier. I was not mistaken.
“What do you think about this?” I asked, smoothing it out on my lap before holding it up to him. Damon glanced at it for a few seconds before looking back to the road.
“The mall they’re building right on the outskirts of town?”
“That very one.”
“That it’s a terrible idea but having a place to go to other than the Grill would be fucking fantastic. On the other hand, the mall being there might make the Grill and everything else in this godforsaken town non-existent.”
“You’re very economically conscious.”
“Gilbert, you’d be lying straight to my face if that isn’t the first thing you thought when you saw the flier.”
I rolled my eyes. “Actually, the first thing I thought when I saw it was ‘Wow, that’s really a bright flier, I wonder what it says’ and then I thought ‘This is probably gonna end up like the time we almost got a McDonald’s.’” To my surprise, Damon actually laughed. I grew uneasy, because while it wasn’t a forced laugh, it wasn’t entirely natural either. Maybe he was picking up on how unusual the situation we were currently in actually was?
“My parents bitched for days when that happened. I’ve never seen the Founder’s Council rally together like that for something that wasn’t a gala or putting a historical plaque on a tree.”
I hummed my agreement and the conversation faded back into tense silence. I wondered when the drive to school got so long. I glanced at the dashboard clock. 7:11 am. So much for not walking into Duvall’s class late. I groaned out loud.
“Is this proximity too much for you, Gilbert? Because I’d gladly—”
“First of all, no. Hell no. Not even in your wildest dreams. Second of all, we’re already late and God knows how Duvall is going to react. The perv is probably going to stick me with detention and then I’ll end up on the five o’clock news—”
“Don’t joke around like that, Elena.” I was caught off-guard by 1) The sudden seriousness in his voice and 2) The fact that he used my first name. We never called each other by a first name. Not even at the galas our parents forced us to attend. It was like an unspoken rule (it seemed we had a lot of unspoken rules) and he just broke it.
“What do you know that I don’t, Salvatore?” The school was visible in the distance, an American flag waving from the top of the flag pole.
“If you really want to know the answer to that, you’ll be late to more than just physics.” He wasn’t looking at me and it was pissing me off.
“Answer the question.”
“I really don’t think I have to answer anything, actually.”
“Salvatore.”
“Gilbert.”
Static-y pop music filled the air between us, a love-torn song about giving up.
“Damon.”
“Elena.”
We were toe to toe in this battle and neither of us was going to back down. I didn’t even notice we had arrived at school until Damon took his keys out of the ignition, the steady hum of the engine falling silent.
“I’m not an idiot. Something is going on and I want to know what it is. Did something happen at the Grill last night after I left? How do you even know about it? Rebekah told me that you and Klaus were hanging out at Ric’s for the night.”
Damon got out of the car, backpack slung over his shoulder, and slammed the door shut. Before I even had a chance to comprehend what he just did, he had walked over to my side and opened the door for me. I scowled because it was a nice thing to do and I didn’t want to associate Damon Salvatore with nice things.
“After you, your Highness.” Damon held out his hand in a large gesture to the entire empty parking lot.
As I got out, he stood in front of me, sunglasses having miraculously appeared on his face. “Look, Bex threatened to castrate me if I told you what was going on before she and Barbie did. Normally that would mean that I’d tell you anyway, except the Mikaelson’s are a terrifying family and she would probably do it.” Damon’s jaw clenched. “Plus, I promised I wouldn’t hit anyone today.”
“What do you mean hit—?”
“Oh, look at the time. It’s 7:20. You’re already ten minutes late—don’t want to push it, do you?” It was as if being on school grounds brought out Damon’s inner douche. Like it was a stage, or something.
“I’m going to push you off the tightropes,” I muttered, stalking off toward the door. If Damon thought—if anyone thought, actually—that I was going to give up and accept defeat that easily, they had another thing coming. Rebekah and Caroline and even Damon could hold off my questioning, but if there was anything about Matt that I was sure I knew, it was that he was fantastically weak-willed under pressure.
In other news, Duvall gave me detention.
_
I found Matt on my way to lunch. It was perfect, because it seemed as if everyone else I considered a friend was either avoiding me or knew something that I didn’t. My skin felt itchy beneath the weighted gazes.
It was a stroke of luck that I saw him before he saw me.
“Matt!” His head snapped in my direction, his face wearing the same expression Jeremy’s did when he came home the night Caroline caught him making out with Anna. He was also sporting a hell of a black eye. At what point was a black eye no longer considered a black eye? Was it when the bruise had actually spread across half of your face?
I cupped his face, running a gentle thumb over the bruise. He nearly flinched out of my grip.
“What the hell happened? Who hit you?” Is this what they were hiding from me? Had someone tried to beat up Matt at the Grill last night? I was at an utter loss for words.
Matt seemed bewildered, a little bit like a deer stuck in headlights. “They didn’t tell you?”
“No one’s told me anything. It’s really annoying, actually, because somehow even Salva—” Wait. Matt has a black eye. Damon has bruised knuckles.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Did Salvatore do this to you?” I hissed, whirling around and heading for the cafeteria. I was on a rampage. I could kill a man. I would kill a man. I couldn’t believe Salvatore had the fucking gall to beat up my boyfriend and then drive me to school this morning like everything was all fucking sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. And that Rebekah and Caroline knew about it! And didn’t say anything to me at all!
“No no no no no, Elena, wait a second. I have to tell you something. The situation with Salvatore isn’t exactly what it seems—” Matt’s words were taking too long to spill from his mouth.
“What do you mean, it isn’t what it seems? You have a black eye, Salvatore has bruised knuckles, and you’re trying to tell me that it isn’t what it seems?” At some point, we had started to draw a crowd. I saw two blonde heads push towards the front but chose not to acknowledge them.
Matt’s eyes were darting all around the hallway. He couldn’t even look at me.
“I kind of deserved it,” he said lowly, examining the speckled floor tile like it was the Mona Lisa.
I stopped cold. Rage simmered in my veins. “Deserved it?”
“I…um…” Matt was falling into himself, staring up and down and all around. “Yesterday, after I dropped you home from the Grill…I went back. And I met someone else.”
“Someone else?” The people that had gathered around us were being forced away. I was grateful for it.
I was sure that my eyes were beginning to water with tears but I couldn’t move a muscle to test my hypothesis.
“Caroline caught me cheating on you with someone else, and I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, Lena, I just—” Matt Donovan didn’t get to finish because I slapped him hard across the face, hard enough to bruise, on the side that wasn’t already black and blue.
Then I promptly left the building.
To: Rebekah :)
From: Caroline Forbes
bex? could you bring me back to the grill? i think i left my wallet wedged in the seat at our booth
To: Caroline
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
I literally just dropped you off. You have a car, go get it yourself.
To: Rebekah :)
From: Caroline Forbes
fine :( i hate you anyway
Wednesday, 9:45 pm.
To: Rebekah :)
From: Caroline Forbes
rebekah i need you to come to the grill right now. right fucking now.
To: Caroline
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
Did someone die? Is my presence absolutely necessary?
To: Rebekah :)
From: Caroline Forbes
considering i just caught matt practically fucking someone who is not elena in the grill parking lot, someone is about to.
To: Caroline
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
I’ll be there in two minutes.
To: Matt Donovan
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
YOUR ASS IS FUCKING GRASS
To: Oh Dearest Brother
From: Rebekah Mikaelson
I need you to come to the Grill right now. Bring Damon. Bring Alaric. I don’t fucking care, just show up and don’t ask any stupid questions before you get here.
_
Mondays were soul-sucking but Thursdays were infinitely worse. On a Monday, you knew you had the rest of the week stretching a million miles long before you. On a Thursday, the worst thing happened. You had a little hope.
It’s sort of like being Sisyphus and pushing that damn rock up the hill and almost getting there, almost, enough that you began to think of a future where pushing a rock up a hill would not be a part of it, until the rock fell down again. Waking up on a Thursday was pleasant for the three seconds you thought it was Friday.
I was mulling over this thought while I sat on the porch. First period began at 7:10 am and it was currently 6:55. Normally, Rebekah picked up Caroline at 6:30 and came by mine at 6:35. We usually made it to school at about 6:45 am, which was enough time to reach our lockers and maybe have a couple minutes of conversation before we got pulled in different directions for homeroom.
Today was different because Rebekah hadn’t shown up yet. Very rarely was I ever outside and waiting for her. Jeremy had peaced out about fifteen minutes ago with Anna and I wished I had the foresight to hitch a ride with them.
To: Fwbekah
From: Elena Gilbert
Did something tragic happen or did you body swap with Caroline and suddenly forget your anal-like ability for punctuality
I waited two minutes and received no reply. I chalked it up to Rebekah’s refusal to text and drive. 6:57 am.
To: Carocurve
From: Elena Gilbert
Careeeeeeeeeeeee did Rebekah pick you up? Are you guys on your way or will I have to make the trek to school all by my lonesome and maybe get kidnapped and killed at seven o’clock in the morning.
Another two minutes and still no reply from either of them. I wished I had bothered to get my license or that my parents were home so I wouldn’t be worrying if my two best friends got into a car accident. 6:59 am.
I decided to send a Hail Mary text to Matt, even though he was the worst texter in the history of texters and probably wouldn’t reply to my message until we were old and gray and cell phones had become sentient.
To: Matt Donovan
From: Elena Gilbert
Do you know where Rebekah and Caroline are?
I waited five minutes this time, pinching myself to keep from biting my nails out of nervous habit. 7:04 am. Absolute radio silence. I could almost hear the white noise in my head.
I had made the decision to walk to school and was halfway down my driveway when a black Camaro pulled over and stopped neatly in front of me. The driver’s side window rolled down and of course.
“Need a lift, Gilbert?” Damon Salvatore, in all his dark-haired blue-eyed glory, asked.
I wanted to be annoyed but I currently had six minutes to make the ten minute trip to school and anxiety and a little bit of fear was coursing through my veins because more than a little part of me wondered if Damon was here because he knew something tragic that I didn’t.
“Are my friends alive?” It was not the first thing either of us expected to come out of my mouth.
“Barbie and Bex? Yeah, they’re fine. They sent me over here because they had some last minute stuff to handle and were going to be late for school, so I’m taking you. They’ll meet you at lunch, or whatever.” There was something different in Damon’s voice and I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I frowned but got in the car anyway, because I currently had six minutes to make the ten-minute trip to school and I wasn’t exactly keen on walking into Mr. Duvall’s first period physics class late. The man was a pervert and I was skeeved out enough by him already. I didn’t put it past him to try to land me in after school detention just to play out some sick fantasy.
“What happened? Why didn’t they call me? Or at least text me back? We went out to the Grill last night with Matt and Tyler and everything seemed fine.” But aren’t things not always what they seem?
“You’re going to have to ask them that,” He replied, voice tight, and jaw locked. His hands were bruised and gripping the steering wheel tight enough that the black and blue of his knuckles seemed to be stripped of a few shades of color. I could see no immediate reason for his anger, which meant that it had something to with my friends. And possibly my boyfriend?
I stayed quiet and instead looked around the car. I’d only been in Damon’s car once before, and that was before it was ever “his”. We were little and semi-friends and played hide and seek in his house. The car was often kept in the garage beneath a tarp. I remember thinking that it was like a book dust jacket for cars and that it’d be a perfect place to hide. Everything had seemed big then, but it was relatively easy to knick the keys from the hook near the door and sneak into the garage to hide.
It took Damon so long to find me that I ended up falling asleep, waking up to a car door being thrown open hard enough that it hit the wall and a ton of yelling. My parents had been ready to call the National Guard and grounded me for a month.
“Is there still a dent on the door?” I asked, genuinely curious.
Damon relaxed a little bit. “Yeah. I fixed nearly everything else in the car that needed fixing, so I’m a little strapped for cash in the dent-repairing department.”
“Dents give it character. If someone asks you how it happened, you can tell them that a little girl fell asleep in your car and her parents nearly called the police in a panic to find her.”
Damon chuckled. Chuckling seemed like a very old person thing to do. “Somehow, I don’t think anyone will be impressed by that story. An Amber Alert is the last dedication I want.”
I shrugged, feigning disappointment. “Your loss.”
The radio hummed lightly, playing the Top 40 radio. The signal was surprisingly clear. That station was notorious for drifting in and out, sometimes residing in static like it was going to make a home there and procreate. I felt a little off, because Damon wasn’t being himself and we were most likely already late for school and he knew something that I didn’t.
There was a crumpled up pink neon paper wedged in the little compartment beneath all the knobs for the radio. I pulled it out, expecting the mall construction flier. I was not mistaken.
“What do you think about this?” I asked, smoothing it out on my lap before holding it up to him. Damon glanced at it for a few seconds before looking back to the road.
“The mall they’re building right on the outskirts of town?”
“That very one.”
“That it’s a terrible idea but having a place to go to other than the Grill would be fucking fantastic. On the other hand, the mall being there might make the Grill and everything else in this godforsaken town non-existent.”
“You’re very economically conscious.”
“Gilbert, you’d be lying straight to my face if that isn’t the first thing you thought when you saw the flier.”
I rolled my eyes. “Actually, the first thing I thought when I saw it was ‘Wow, that’s really a bright flier, I wonder what it says’ and then I thought ‘This is probably gonna end up like the time we almost got a McDonald’s.’” To my surprise, Damon actually laughed. I grew uneasy, because while it wasn’t a forced laugh, it wasn’t entirely natural either. Maybe he was picking up on how unusual the situation we were currently in actually was?
“My parents bitched for days when that happened. I’ve never seen the Founder’s Council rally together like that for something that wasn’t a gala or putting a historical plaque on a tree.”
I hummed my agreement and the conversation faded back into tense silence. I wondered when the drive to school got so long. I glanced at the dashboard clock. 7:11 am. So much for not walking into Duvall’s class late. I groaned out loud.
“Is this proximity too much for you, Gilbert? Because I’d gladly—”
“First of all, no. Hell no. Not even in your wildest dreams. Second of all, we’re already late and God knows how Duvall is going to react. The perv is probably going to stick me with detention and then I’ll end up on the five o’clock news—”
“Don’t joke around like that, Elena.” I was caught off-guard by 1) The sudden seriousness in his voice and 2) The fact that he used my first name. We never called each other by a first name. Not even at the galas our parents forced us to attend. It was like an unspoken rule (it seemed we had a lot of unspoken rules) and he just broke it.
“What do you know that I don’t, Salvatore?” The school was visible in the distance, an American flag waving from the top of the flag pole.
“If you really want to know the answer to that, you’ll be late to more than just physics.” He wasn’t looking at me and it was pissing me off.
“Answer the question.”
“I really don’t think I have to answer anything, actually.”
“Salvatore.”
“Gilbert.”
Static-y pop music filled the air between us, a love-torn song about giving up.
“Damon.”
“Elena.”
We were toe to toe in this battle and neither of us was going to back down. I didn’t even notice we had arrived at school until Damon took his keys out of the ignition, the steady hum of the engine falling silent.
“I’m not an idiot. Something is going on and I want to know what it is. Did something happen at the Grill last night after I left? How do you even know about it? Rebekah told me that you and Klaus were hanging out at Ric’s for the night.”
Damon got out of the car, backpack slung over his shoulder, and slammed the door shut. Before I even had a chance to comprehend what he just did, he had walked over to my side and opened the door for me. I scowled because it was a nice thing to do and I didn’t want to associate Damon Salvatore with nice things.
“After you, your Highness.” Damon held out his hand in a large gesture to the entire empty parking lot.
As I got out, he stood in front of me, sunglasses having miraculously appeared on his face. “Look, Bex threatened to castrate me if I told you what was going on before she and Barbie did. Normally that would mean that I’d tell you anyway, except the Mikaelson’s are a terrifying family and she would probably do it.” Damon’s jaw clenched. “Plus, I promised I wouldn’t hit anyone today.”
“What do you mean hit—?”
“Oh, look at the time. It’s 7:20. You’re already ten minutes late—don’t want to push it, do you?” It was as if being on school grounds brought out Damon’s inner douche. Like it was a stage, or something.
“I’m going to push you off the tightropes,” I muttered, stalking off toward the door. If Damon thought—if anyone thought, actually—that I was going to give up and accept defeat that easily, they had another thing coming. Rebekah and Caroline and even Damon could hold off my questioning, but if there was anything about Matt that I was sure I knew, it was that he was fantastically weak-willed under pressure.
In other news, Duvall gave me detention.
_
I found Matt on my way to lunch. It was perfect, because it seemed as if everyone else I considered a friend was either avoiding me or knew something that I didn’t. My skin felt itchy beneath the weighted gazes.
It was a stroke of luck that I saw him before he saw me.
“Matt!” His head snapped in my direction, his face wearing the same expression Jeremy’s did when he came home the night Caroline caught him making out with Anna. He was also sporting a hell of a black eye. At what point was a black eye no longer considered a black eye? Was it when the bruise had actually spread across half of your face?
I cupped his face, running a gentle thumb over the bruise. He nearly flinched out of my grip.
“What the hell happened? Who hit you?” Is this what they were hiding from me? Had someone tried to beat up Matt at the Grill last night? I was at an utter loss for words.
Matt seemed bewildered, a little bit like a deer stuck in headlights. “They didn’t tell you?”
“No one’s told me anything. It’s really annoying, actually, because somehow even Salva—” Wait. Matt has a black eye. Damon has bruised knuckles.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Did Salvatore do this to you?” I hissed, whirling around and heading for the cafeteria. I was on a rampage. I could kill a man. I would kill a man. I couldn’t believe Salvatore had the fucking gall to beat up my boyfriend and then drive me to school this morning like everything was all fucking sunshine and rainbows and unicorns. And that Rebekah and Caroline knew about it! And didn’t say anything to me at all!
“No no no no no, Elena, wait a second. I have to tell you something. The situation with Salvatore isn’t exactly what it seems—” Matt’s words were taking too long to spill from his mouth.
“What do you mean, it isn’t what it seems? You have a black eye, Salvatore has bruised knuckles, and you’re trying to tell me that it isn’t what it seems?” At some point, we had started to draw a crowd. I saw two blonde heads push towards the front but chose not to acknowledge them.
Matt’s eyes were darting all around the hallway. He couldn’t even look at me.
“I kind of deserved it,” he said lowly, examining the speckled floor tile like it was the Mona Lisa.
I stopped cold. Rage simmered in my veins. “Deserved it?”
“I…um…” Matt was falling into himself, staring up and down and all around. “Yesterday, after I dropped you home from the Grill…I went back. And I met someone else.”
“Someone else?” The people that had gathered around us were being forced away. I was grateful for it.
I was sure that my eyes were beginning to water with tears but I couldn’t move a muscle to test my hypothesis.
“Caroline caught me cheating on you with someone else, and I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, Lena, I just—” Matt Donovan didn’t get to finish because I slapped him hard across the face, hard enough to bruise, on the side that wasn’t already black and blue.
Then I promptly left the building.
♠ ♠ ♠
:))))))))