Gaslighter

36

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

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2022

          Once again, like the incredibly non-confrontational person that I was, I casually emptied my stomach's entire contents into a toilet. At least my body had given me the grace of holding on until I'd stormed into a campus bathroom, saving me from the mortal humiliation of publicly vomiting before lunch, but being this nauseous over one stressful conversation didn't strike me as a good omen of things to come.

          I knew I'd gone too far. Regardless of whether I'd hurt Savannah's feelings or not—I suspected I had, though she'd had no qualms about hurting mine—I'd taken things to a level I shouldn't have, and the odds of having screwed myself over and ruined Chase's life and career rose the longer I allowed myself to ruminate over it.

          Being mean to Savannah had never done me any good, guilt aside, yet I couldn't comprehend why my brain simply refused to learn its lesson. It would always come back to haunt me in some way, not necessarily identical in all of its iterations, but the common factor was always present. This time, it involved someone else, the one person I'd been trying to protect for the past three and a half years, and I wondered how deserving of forgiveness I'd be then.

          Most of the time, whenever Savannah and I argued, I could justify my actions by turning them into reactions, like she had somehow provoked me, like I was doing something right. The frat party had been a perfect example of that, with her refusing to do anything to help me or Ingrid and making it all about herself, with her trying to make me feel like I was losing my mind when I was certain I'd seen the guys on campus weeks later. In my head, I'd had every right to be angry at her, to want her to feel some remorse for how she'd made me feel, and it had always been about the two of us, sometimes Ingrid. We'd kept it inside the privacy of the four walls encasing our apartment.

          Scorching hot fury flared within me and all I wanted to do was scream, the same emotion I'd been feeling ever since I'd gotten unceremoniously dumped, but that was the only thing left inside me. It wasn't just because of the unwavering nausea, but I was feeling so achingly, unbearingly empty that I found it hard to care about anything else. I knew I had to do something else with my time and mental energy else I'd lose whatever little sanity I had left in me, though I was so stuck in my ways I couldn't sail away without fearing I'd drown.

          I'd screwed up. 

          No layers of powdered sugar or heartfelt apologies would fix a damn thing—not with Savannah, and certainly not with Chase. I'd been so exhilarated, so proud of myself for being chosen for once in my life, for feeling deserving of love, for being seen by someone who could have anyone they wanted and had still reached out a warm hand towards me. I'd had everything I ever wanted and had found a way of spoiling it.

          I'd made plenty of big, sometimes even heartbreaking mistakes in my life whenever I allowed my emotions to get the better of me, and I was supposed to reel it in when it came to other people's lives. I couldn't take anything back now and assuming Savannah would either forget about it or simply let it go was pathetic wishful thinking, so I had to put on my big girl panties and face the consequences of every word that had poured out of my stupid mouth. I was worse than a child with no self-control, as I was way past the age of not doing stuff like that.

          A storm was rolling outside, the sky growing darker by the minute, and the incandescent white lights in the bathroom only made me look sicker than I felt. It showcased how truly rotten to the core I was, and my external appearance was finally catching up to the state of my insides—I was all moldy and decomposing, with muscles that barely held me up and bones that couldn't withstand the harshest upstate winters. My skin was flaky, frost clinging to the tips of my nails and the ends of my eyelashes, and not in the delicate morning dew kissed the surface of the leaves.