Hard Habit to Break

Chapter 17

 "What the hell Tori?" Nancy paced across the floor, her arms flailing like one of the inflatable guys they put up at car lots. Tori couldn't stop staring at the absurdity of her. If this whole situation wasn't such a disaster, it would be rather comical. "I can't believe you actually slept with him!"

"Oh, I can totally believe you slept with him. I just can't believe you didn't tell us," Max stated, folding her arms over her chest, leaning her shoulder against the wall.

After calming her nervous system with some ocean air, Robin and her had entered the restaurant to a flurry of conversation. Everyone was talking over one another so it was hard to understand what they were even saying. But she'd caught enough words to figure out what had everybody so riled up. Eddie...Tori...sex...mistake...it didn't take a genius to deduce that Eddie had somehow managed to spill the beans on their night of stupidity in the five minutes she'd been outside.

Dinner had been over at that point, nobody really felt like sitting down for food and friendly conversation anymore. Eddie looked just as ready to escape as she did but some of them were not ready to let the subject rest. She could see it in the flare of Nancy's nostrils, looking like she wanted to claw Eddie's face off. She could see it in the way Dustin was bouncing on his heels, excited, mistakenly thinking this meant something more than it did. She could see it in the way Max's eyes zeroed in on her, like two lasers ready to incinerate her straight to the center, until they dug out all the information she wanted. Jeff and Matt simply looked dumbstruck. Steve stood, hands on his hips, shaking his head in disappointment.

She could not deal with any of them. Tori had quickly grabbed Robin and her sister's hands and jumped into Gareth's car before anyone could stop her, knowing she was safe with the few people who already knew. And while she didn't know for certain that Gareth knew, she was pretty damn positive as he sat there at the table, not looking surprised at this information in the least. No. He had simply looked...sad. Yeah, well join the club.

But the car ride had proven to be only a short respite for her, a chance to simply gather her thoughts, before Nancy, Max, and El had promptly followed her and then cornered her in the bedroom she was staying in, demanding answers to all of their questions. The biggest one clearly being how she could have kept this from them. They were hurt. She knew they were but she really didn't have the energy for all of this right now. Not after finding out that she was the skank who had just slept with some other girl's boyfriend. Not after realizing that was how little Eddie thought of her anymore.

Robin and Lacy sat on the bed quietly, eyes wide, moving back and forth like a pinball machine, watching as the other girls lost their respective minds over this breaking news.

El frowned, "Do you not trust us, Tor? Friends don't lie to each other."

"I didn't lie," Tori snapped, every muscle in her body pulled tight with anger, needing an outlet. Right now that outlet might just be Eddie's face. Of course he had to tell everyone. Him and his big mouth. "I never looked at any of you and said no, I didn't sleep with Eddie."

"Oh, come off it!" Nancy huffed, glaring. "You don't get to talk your way out of this. That's basically a lie. It's a lie of omission, which is just as bad."

"How did I omit?"

"We asked you what was wrong," Max answered. "We asked you, point blank, what was going on with you because we all knew it was more than your mom. You'd been grieving your mom for months and we had never seen you like that. You weren't even like that on the day of her funeral. The way you shut down, the way you were being so bitchy to everyone, the way you would only see Robin."

Nancy gasped suddenly, turning and pointing accusingly at Robin who instantly held her hands up in surrender, not even knowing what she was being accused of yet. Because Nancy could be that scary when she was mad. "You knew!"