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For Daphne sleepless nights would become a habit and every time she couldn't fall asleep, she'd call the same familiar number, a week later she knew it by heart. Every night the last thing she would hear would be Belly's voice.
One night in particular she fell asleep on the grass next to Conrad while on the phone, he had to carry her back to her dorm.
"It's Belly." she told him when she saw her phone ring, she rolled a few feet away but she could still feel him there. "Belly." she answered, she was slightly stoned. "Sorry, did I wake you?" Belly sounded apologetic but Daphne shook her head. "No, I'm just a little tired." she mumbled back.
"Want me to call back?"
"No, I want to talk to you."
"Well, I had a weird thought."
"Good weird or bad weird?"
"Not sure."
"Tell me."
"Well," Belly sighed, "I thought if my dad cheated on my mom, maybe she wouldn't have cared." that was in fact a weird thought.
"Was that harsh?"
"No but I don't think it was right either. Of course it would hurt, something like that happening takes a toll on you."
"You sound like you're talking from experience."
Daphne laughed at that, she was not talking from experience, but she also was in a way.
"It was my last year of high school and I was friends with this girl Finley," Daphne paused. "Sorry, is this weird to talk about?" she could feel Conrad laugh from next to her, she kicked him.
"No, it's fine. I'm actually intrigued, Daphne had crushes?"
"Ha ha, laugh it up." Daphne smiled to herself. "Okay, so Fin and I had been friends since the start of high school and we were super close. Like people thought we were together but I always liked someone else." she didn't have to say who that person was, Belly knew.
"But in our last year, I think I was ovulating or something because suddenly Finley was looking really hot." she could hear Belly laugh. To this day she was still convinced it was her head ovulation that made her like Finley.
"We hooked up in that week and then I found out that she hooked up with another girl in my group a while before that." God that hurt, even though she barely liked Finley.
"That's not exactly cheating."
"No which is why I kept having a thing with her, ignoring the fact that she was very touchy with all out other girl friends." she thought it was nothing at first.
"But one day me, her and this girl she was always with, who was sort of her biggest fan, we were at the mall together." she told the story to Conrad a million times before.
"And I really liked her by then and I was nothing if not completely obvious," she cringed at how she acted. "So her friend is about to leave and she tells Finley to give her a goodbye kiss." Daphne paused.
"Oh God."
"And she did, right in front of me."
"And she knew how you felt?"
"It wasn't hard to not know, I'm not a very subtle person." Thinking about it still gave Daphne a pain in her chest.
"I think what hurt the most was that we never talked about it. I used to be able to talk to her about everything but now when I see her, all I see is this asshole who made me feel like I deserved nothing." she was the reason Daphne was so scared of being left all the time, why she always left first because having someone know you the way Finely knew her, both physically and emotionally, and still not choosing you, made you wonder if you were even worth it?
"That's why you wanted to talk about what happened between us?" Belly asked, so softly that Daphne seemed to be lulled into nearly falling asleep. "I didn't want you to think I was just using you or that you didn't mean anything to me." Daphne looked up at the sky.
"For a while it felt like that."
"I'm sorry, no one should ever feel that way."
"Hey, can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
"How's Jere? I've texted him a few times, he hasn't answered."
"He's good, I think you just need to give him some time." Daphne yawned into her elbow. "You're right." there was a pause of silence.
"I learned something cool today." Belly spoke eventually.
"Tell me."
"Did you know that Venus is an evening star for two hundred and sixty five days out of the year?"
"No, Einstein." she learned that in Astronomy class three years ago.
"And then it disappears for fifty days before coming back as a morning star for the next two hundred and sixty five days."
"I did not know that. What is it today?"
"An evening star, it's really bright next to the moon." and then Daphne caught a glimpse of it, pointing it out to Conrad.
"I'm actually looking at it right now." Belly says, "It's probably against the rules to say this but I wish we were looking at it together."
