Broken ✔

Chapter Eleven

Song: Forgive Them — Itz Tiffany

**Unedited** (I was tired lol)

"Really Michael?" I yelled, marching up to them.

Upon hearing my voice, they parted with smiles on their faces, neither of them looking at me.

Michael ran his fingers through her long dreadlocks and told her that she had beautiful hair, to which she giggled.

The girl finally decided to spare me a glance, smiling like everything was okay. "Hello, you're the fiancée right? Nice to meet you," she said extending a hand.

I looked at her hand disdainfully and turned to Michael for answers. "What is going on here?"

When he looked at me, his smile faded. "Don't be rude Ellie, take her hand."

I chuckled when the girl told him not to mind, retracting her hand. "Don't be rude? I find you here, locking lips with another girl who is not me, and you're telling me not to be rude?"

The girl looked at me, astonished. "Wherever did you get the idea that we were kissing?"

"I saw you," I said, deadpan. "Don't try to deny it."

Michael faced me squarely. "I'm not like you. I don't go round kissing people who I'm not engaged to. I gave her a harmless kiss on the cheek. Perhaps from the angle you observed us, it looked like we were kissing, or you're just trying to find an excuse to justify what you did yesterday."

Heat rushed to my cheeks when the girl looked at me with an ugly frown on her pretty face. "You cheated on him?" She turned to Michael. "Why're you still with her?"

He rubbed his forehead with his right hand. "It's a long story."

As if it wasn't mortifying enough that they were talking about me as if I wasn't there, the girl pulled Michael into a comforting hug, whispering sweet nothings into his ears and caressing his hair. Watching them made my blood boil to the extent that I felt a phantom pain all over my body.

"I know what I did yesterday was wrong," I initiated, making them both pull away to listen to me, "but if you want to get even with me, this isn't the way. Two wrongs don't make a right."

Michael stared at me bewilderedly. "I'm not trying to get back at you," he said, his eyes slowly widening as if he just remembered something. "I'm so sorry, this is Linda. She's been my best friend since... forever."

She laughed. "Fourth grade."

I offered her a tight smile and turned to Michael. He was looking at me, concern filling his gaze as if he wanted me to know that he'd never cheat.

Deep inside, I knew that he never would, but telling me that this Linda was his best friend did nothing to put my mind at ease. In fact, it made me feel more on guard because everyone knows that heterosexuals of the opposite gender could never be best friends. The continuous proximity is bound to cause them to develop romantic or sexual feelings towards each other.

"Ellie don't cry. I would never do something like this to you," he gently pushed the Linda girl away and pulled me into his arms, rubbing the small of my back.

"I'm not crying," I said, just as a tear slid down my face. "There's a lot of dust in the atmosphere. It's the harmattan."

Michael and the Linda girl laughed. "I promise, I wasn't kissing her. I don't know what you saw but it was an innocent kiss on the cheek, that's all."

I wiped my teary face against his button-down shirt. He was wearing one of those black three-quarter sleeve button down shirts that I loved, along with a pair of dark wash jeans. Three buttons of the shirt were undone to reveal his toned, dark-skinned chest. On his neck, he wore a catholic cross even though he wasn't Catholic.