Love Songs

Chapter Twenty Two

A/N: Short chapter, and kind of super cliff-hangy. Whooooops. :)
Thanks for all the votes and comments guys! This is getting better than I thought. Love you!
Xoxoxoxoxo
- Railene 

Shay - Wednesday, 12:30pm.

That day I didn't bother going to lunch. I wasn't in the mood to socialize, and definitely not in the mood to see Jessica. I knew I was going to confront her eventually, but I didn't know how. I didn't want to sell my sister out; after all, she'd told me not to tell. 

And still, the pain was too fresh. I was trying to cope with being cheated on for the first time in my life, and I was not handling it well. I liked to pride myself on being a person who could handle anything, but apparently I wasn't as strong as I thought I was.

I began to think up scenarios in my head in which I ran into Jessica and had the perfect line planned. I must have gone over thousands of them in my head, trying to think of the bitchiest remark I could possibly utter to make her feel like crap. I had quite the arsenal of affronts stored in my mind, but when finally I saw her, they all went out of my head.

It happened in the hall, exactly when I was trying to avoid her. At first, I wasn't even sure it was her. The same hair, the same frame, the same blue eyes, but this girl was crying. Sobbing. Forgetting completely about what she'd done to me, I panicked. I dropped all my angry insults as if they'd never existed. I ran to her, who had hurt me so badly. She was looking at the floor and didn't even see me through the screen of tears. I got in her way, grabbed her by the shoulders, and asked, "Jessica, what happened?"

What happened next was not what I'd expected. Looking up and seeing me, she took her hands from by her sides and placed them on my chest, shoving me off of her.

"Get away from me!" she screamed, looking disturbed and furious.

"What? Why?"

"You know why!" she cried, staring at me incredulously. "You made me fall for you, and then you cheated on me! You can never change, can you? You told me I was different but it was a lie!"

"Hold on," I ordered, unable to fully fathom what she was saying. "You cheated on me."

"What?" she almost whispered, sounding hurt and terribly confused.

Now I was confused. "Um, Matthew?"

She covered her face in both hands. "Oh, my God!" she said, raising her voice again. "Shay, you are such an idiot!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I told Allie that I hooked up with Matthew, because she saw this," she explained, pulling her hair off of her neck, "and wanted an explanation."

I couldn't even breathe. I felt about two feet tall. How could I have been so stupid?

"Which you would have known," she continued, "If you bothered to text me back yesterday, instead of  trying to get even over a stupid lie by having sex with Rihannon."

"Jessica," I exhaled, almost pleading, having no idea what to do.

"Don't," she said, no longer crying, just looking damaged. "Don't bother. Now we know."

"Know what?"

"That you really couldn't change. You actually convinced me, but I guess I was stupid to think you could."

"Jessica, I did change, I--"

"Really?" she challenged, cutting me off. "Because what you did last night, is what you would have done a month ago. It's what you would have done a year ago. It's what you always do."

"I was hurt!" I protested. "And I was drunk out of my mind, Jessica, I didn't mean to hurt you."

That was a lie. I knew full well that I'd wanted Jessica to be hurt the way she'd hurt me. Only hers was never intentional. In fact, it had been to save us.

"Remember, when we first even got together, what you made me say?"

"Jessica, don't do this."

"Do you remember?"

I sighed, deeply. "Yes, I remember."

"You made me tell you I trusted you," she said, though I already knew. "You made me swear to you, that I put all my trust in you. And I did. Why did I do that?"

I looked sheepishly down at the ground. "Because you trusted me," I said quietly.

She gave me one more hate-filled stare before walking past me to leave, saying, "Biggest mistake of my life."

 __________

Allie - Wednesday, 12:30pm.

For whatever reason, Rihannon had detained Jessica once again after ballet, and Shay was nowhere to be found. With no Shay, her partner in crime wasn't there to follow her around, and so at lunch, I was left alone with Matthew.

"Looks like it's just you and me," he said quietly, smiling awkwardly.

"Looks that way," I agreed. "How was theater?"

"Good," he said, and it actually sounded like he meant it. "We're writing monologues on our lives."

"You're writing what?"

"Monologues," he repeated. My blank expression was telling. He smiled. "Long paragraphs where one person talks for a while."

"Oh," I said. "Why?"

"We're telling our stories, I guess."

For some reason, I was interested. "What's your story?"

He twisted his mouth to the side before answering, "It's about being crazy for a girl who has no idea."

"Really?" I asked. "Who is she?"

His face fell. "That's exactly what I mean."

I didn't understand. "What's exactly what I mean?"

He looked long and hard at me. "Allie, how can you not know how I feel about you?"

His words made me choke on air, and I needed to catch my breath before demanding, "How you feel about me?"

He shrugged. "I thought it was so obvious. I mean, it was obvious. To everyone except you."

"Are you saying that you, like...like me or something?"

He nodded, sighing. "Yeah, I guess I am."

I blinked several times, trying to look at him right, before finally setting on, "Wow. Okay."

I didn't know what to think. I'd never thought of Matthew in that way, and yet now, sitting there right in his face, I wondered what I had to lose. He was a good friend. He'd sat up with me half the night when Darius had broken my heart. When I was sick, he almost refused to leave me. And, according to Jessica, he was "the best kisser she'd ever been with."

What else was I waiting for?

"So..." he said, awkwardly, obviously waiting for some sort of reply.

I shrugged, taking his hand. "Let's get out of here," I said.