She's Kind of a Disaster

6- Not Good Enough

I get to Friday before Bella asks again what happened between Clayton and I. We're sitting in my living room watching reruns of Friends and eating a pasta dish that I made for dinner.

"So how are you doing with this whole Clayton thing?" She casually squeezes it into the conversation with a mouthful of pasta. I know I couldn't avoid the subject forever. I usually tell Bella everything going on in my life. It feels weird not telling her about this, and I know she feels it too. "I've never seen you this upset before."

"Falling apart," I admit to her, trying not to think about it too much. Whenever I think about it, I start crying and when I start crying, it takes me hours to get it to stop. My stomach still aches from my morning sobs and I didn't have the energy for another breakdown. "But I guess there's a silver lining, right? I don't have to listen to country music ever again."

"Am I allowed to know what happened? You've been together since high school, I can't even see you two apart like it just doesn't make sense to me," She says. 

"He cheated on me," I say, giving her as much of the truth as I can stomach saying out loud. "I caught him with somebody else at the party at my house. Once I saw them together, he told me that it's been going on for a while."

"No," She gasps. "There's no way."

"Apparently, there is."

"How long is a while?"

I close my eyes and open my mouth to say it but my throat closes up. It's humiliating to admit that he's been cheating on me for two years and I never picked up on it. I was just that stupid, blinded by my one-sided love that I just didn't notice. Humiliating that I am so easy to abandon that he had been lying to me and going behind my back for so long. "Since high school," I finally tell Bella.

"What?" She says loudly, her voice almost yelling.

I nod in confirmation and feel my sore stomach twist in knots. "Yeah."

"Who is the bitch? I'll kick her fucking teeth out," Bella threatens. "No, actually, I'm going to cut off her feet and then I'm going to use her feet to kick out Clayton's teeth. How could he do this to you? What. No. Clayton? Wren, I'm so sorry that I wasn't there for you that night, you must have been so heartbroken. I was hooking up with Timothy Wyatt in the backyard. No, that's not important right now. I'm so sorry."

"Yeah. Thanks." If I open my mouth to say anything else, I'll start crying into my uneaten pasta.

"What did Jesse do when you told him?"

"Jesse and I aren't talking right now. At least, I'm trying to avoid talking to him at all costs," I say without looking in her direction. I can't get the words out, the full truth. Getting cheated on for so long is humiliating enough, but that Jesse was a part of it... it's a whole different level. 

"First Clayton, now Jesse?" She wonders exasperatedly. "What did he do?"

"Just sibling stuff," I shrug off the question. "Bell, please don't tell anybody any of this, okay? It's already so embarrassing."

"For who? You? Honey, you should not feel embarrassed. You should feel full of rage. The rage of a thousand scorned queens coming back from the dead for vengeance. This is not on you," She assures me before putting her plate on the coffee table and then she wraps her arms around my shoulders. "This is in no way at all your fault. You have to believe that. Clayton is just a piece of shit, and the hell with Jesse too. You don't need them."

"Jesse is my brother," I remind her.

"Cain killed his brother," She adds.

It makes me laugh because that's the exact story that I had used against Jesse when he pulled the 'we're siblings' card.