Girlfriend's Best Friend

Chapter 21

            As soon as Brooke was out of sight, that’s when the feeling hit me that I was wrong. I knew Brooke was doing the same thing I was doing, but at least I wasn’t trying to hide it from her. I didn’t know her boyfriend, but he didn’t deserve that. He was a lucky guy and if I was lucky enough to call Brooke mine, I wouldn’t want her whoring around with other guys.

            Every day after that for the next two weeks I spent trying to convince Kelli and my friends to invite Brooke along. At first they were resistant to it, but after two days they agreed that they missed her and that it was boring without her. Kelli texted her to hang out, but Brooke blew us off every time to hang out with her boyfriend.

            I was starting to think that Brooke had moved on from me, from Kelli, from all of us. She was lonely, even though she was always surrounded by people who loved her. Maybe we just weren’t the right people for her. I bet her boyfriend has been treating her better—treating her how she deserved—than we ever did. Better than I ever could.

            I had to get her back before I lost her forever. I couldn’t leave her with this many unsaid things and unanswered questions. I texted her around eight to see if she wanted to hang out. I figured she was with her boyfriend and would just ignore me, but my heart jolted when my phone vibrated with her name on the screen.

            Brooke: I don’t know, am I wanted there? Or will I be asked to go home again as soon as I get there?

            I knew she was angry. She had every right to be. But maybe this would fix things.

            Cody: I was thinking it would just be you and me.

            Fifteen minutes later, Brooke was in my car. “Hey,” I said nervously. She just looked at me and then looked away. We stayed quiet the whole car ride back to my house. The first thing she actually said to me was an insult when we were finally in my room.

            “It only took about five months but I guess you finally got to use those,” she checked out the opened condom box on my dresser.

            I was just happy she was even talking to me. “I think it’s weird that she made you think we had sex three months ago,” I tried to make a joke, but she wasn’t amused. “It was three weeks ago. Before she even went to Florida.” She still wasn’t pleased. “I don’t know why she’d lie about it.”

            Her unreadable expression became very clear very quick. “Shut up, you’re trying to make it seem like you think it was weird for Kelli to do that. You know that she did it to try to upset me by thinking she had sex before me. But no matter what you’re still on her side—you’ll always be and I should have known that.”

            “You shouldn’t be upset about something like your friend having sex before you. Carter had sex with some girl before any of us and we were all happy for him,” I said, realizing she was unfamiliar with the idea of being happy for someone other than herself. “Why are you never happy for Kelli?”

            “Because she’s making me miserable!” she screamed. Now I was pissed off. I was just trying to get her to realize this whole entire thing was one giant mistake, and now she was yelling at me and getting upset for the same old reasons.

            “You’re jealous of her the same way she’s jealous of you. But you can’t be jealous of that, especially since you have a boyfriend of your own to fuck around with. So why the fuck would you not tell anyone about him and then hook up with me?” I yelled back.

            “What?? What boyfriend??” she asked.

            “The one you thought I wouldn’t find out about.”

            “I don’t have a boyfriend?” she said defensively. “Who told you that?”

            “Who do you think?”

            “Kelli,” she rolled her eyes. “You just said it yourself—she’s jealous of me! She’s telling you guys I have a boyfriend so that you don’t talk to me!”

            “She’s making it up? So for the past two weeks when we had her text you to hang out you said no because you had plans with no one?”

            She denied it and I completely lost any patience I had left for her. “Brooke!” I yelled at her. “Stop playing stupid! It’s not cute, or believable, or anything! It’s aggravating as fuck, you know exactly what I’m talking about. She texted you multiple times to hang out and you told her no because you were with him!”

            The next thing I knew, Brooke’s phone was hurling towards me, hitting me straight in the chest. “Check my messages!” she yelled at me. “See if my boyfriend texted me! See if Kelli asked me to hang out! Check every single message—you’re not going to find anything!”

            As soon as she said that, I had a pretty good idea that I was wrong. She wouldn’t have me check her messages if there was something there, because she knew I wouldn’t think she was bluffing and that I actually would check. The last text she got from Kelli was two weeks ago. She didn’t know that I knew about this ‘boyfriend’ so she wouldn’t have thought to delete the messages.

            “I’m sorry,” I said quietly and handed the phone back.

            “So that’s why you invited me here?” she scoffed. “To yell at me for ‘having a boyfriend and cheating on him with you?’ Sounds pretty fucking hypocritical if you ask me.”

            She started to push past me but I couldn’t let her leave until this was all sorted out. “I invited you here to apologize, and try to convince you to not bother with me anymore.”

            Her eyes widened and her face dropped. “Not bother with you? What do you mean?”

            “Don’t hook up with me anymore. Do you know how guilty I feel looking at Kel and seeing how happy I make her when I know I’m cheating on her? Your ‘boyfriend’ would’ve been crushed if he knew about me. Graham already knows and he yelled at me for it and made you cry. Like, I really like you Brooke, but this isn’t going to work out. Not while I’m still dating Kel,” I tried to let her down easy.

            “So I guess you’re going to have to pick one of us then.”

            “I’m not doing that. I like both of you. I know you don’t understand how I could like Kelli, but you’re not there when it’s just me and her. That’s when I like her the most. But I can’t see you if I don’t see Kel. If I break up with her, you can’t hang out with me because I’m her ex-boyfriend. If you stop being friends with Kel, I can’t hang out with you because you’re my girlfriend’s ex-best friend. If we lose Kel, we lose each other.”