It All Started with a Lie

Chapter 28

There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.
~ Sarah Dessen

Chapter 28
Her POV
I lay sprawled across my couch while my step dad brings me a plate of fried okra, mashed potatoes, and Mac and cheese. It is a small dish, and he knows I will not eat it all, I never do.

After I cried to him about Klaus for an hour, he started cooking, knowing I'd been too distressed to do so for myself. It is the first meal I have eaten since breakfast yesterday and it is bittersweet. I love when he cooks for me, but today everything seems dull.

I peel the okra out of its fried shell and dip them in the cheese of the macaroni and the mashed potatoes. "I just can't believe how quickly I messed things up," I say through a full mouth.

My father sits on the end of the couch, giving me his full attention. He came running over when I called him crying at five in the morning, and has been here since. "I just wanted to finally fit in somewhere, and then they kept saying all these things about him and I didn't want to share him, not with them, and—" I have no excuse for what I said, telling them his secrets.

He brushes a strand of hair out of my face before it can fall into the potatoes. "Kidege, you are human, you made a mistake."

I nod. I really did. "I just wanted them to like me. I just wanted someone to like me."

"He does." He smiles. "Richard does. They like you."

And now I've lost them both. "The sorority isn't worth this." I whisper as tears well in my eyes. "I just didn't want to be the fat girl anymore."

My stepdad grows that stern look he always gets when I talk about being overweight. He doesn't understand how terrible the kids truly were, he wasn't there. My real father was the one who held me while I cried every night because kids would oink as I walked past. He was the one who took the tags off of all of the clothes my mother bought before she gave them to me. He was the one who held me through it all until he was gone. "You are beautiful, no matter what you weigh."

"Tell that to everyone else. No one loved me when I was fat."

"I did." He is so sure in what he says, like he cannot believe how I could ever think otherwise.

The words leave a bad after taste in my mouth because he is right, he did. And so did my father, and Ryder. And I know Richard would have too. I even think Klaus might have still fallen in love with me, even if I was several sizes larger.

I wanted to be a part of that sorority so badly I became one of them, knocking him down because of his insecurities. If I could take it all back I would in a heartbeat. "I know you did."

I was loved, even then, I was just looking for it in the wrong place. I reach over to where his phone is sitting, tapping on the screen to illuminate the little girl in glasses with braces, hoping that this time when I look at her I will find something beautiful. But it is not an old photo of me that I am greeted with. Instead it is one from just a few weeks ago. My dress floats, in the midst of being spun as I laugh, my hair blowing out of my face in the wind. My eyes almost sparkle. I remember this photo. I can still feel the ache in my cheeks from smiling so much. Klaus had taken it of me, as I laughed at something he said. We were arguing about a movie we had just seen. I thought her big gesture, standing in front of a huge crowd professing her love was embarrassing. He thought it was romantic.

I never noticed he took that photo, but I haven't seen it on my camera roll, so I check my albums and find it already placed in the locked album filled with photos of us that I refuse to delete. "You changed the photo."