The Heartbreak

Chapter 9

I just couldn’t get over it. My mom had, at some point, cheated on my dad. And yes, it could have been before they got married and my father had forgiven her, but how could I? I knew how much it hurt and I sympathized with Dad.

Giving the cold shoulder to my mother was something unavoidable, but she seemed to understand and left it alone. Jack, on the other hand, was just giving me weird looks, but I was mad at him for not doing anything to stop Reina from hitting Mason, so I didn’t care. Summarizing, things weren't all that great at home.

That morning Skye picked me up to go to school and told me all about Reina’s punishment. She had been suspended for a couple of days and her dad had taken away her car keys. Apparently the fallout was bad enough for Rei to have no say on whether or not she would visit her mom in Arizona during winter break.

“I thought about visiting her, but I understand if you don’t want to come,” Skye told me in a sheepish voice as she parked.

“I don’t care.” I hadn’t told her about my mom and dad, and how I felt about learning my parents were far from being the perfect couple I had always seen like my ideal.

“Okay.”

“Sorry.” I just had to get away from this and everything. I was tired of thinking about mistakes and problems and whether I had to forgive them or not. My mother’s mistake was not mine to forgive, but it was hard to process. Reina and Mason were more than enough to deal with.

When I reached my locker, I was feeling like running the few miles home and sneaking under the bed. I just couldn’t stand the looks, the new whispering about the fight and how I was in the center of it all.

On top of my things, there was a handful of flowers tied together with a string. Daisies with a note in a messy scrawl that simply said sorry. There was no name, no clue to point out what they were sorry for.

There was only one person who knew my combination and he knew it only because he had lost his. Mason did not had enough things to use an entire locker, so we shared for a couple of months. Now everything was gone and in place he left flowers.

Sorry was a small word for all the big things that was trying to cover.

I got angrier at him for that. He had no right to do this. No right to mess me up even more. Thing was I knew I would not find him unless I caught him off guard or he wanted to see me. He was sneaky like that.

During Mister Cortes’ class I tried to forget everything about the damn flowers and how angry I was with Rei and Jack. I tried to put in the back of my mind the shocking secret my mother had revealed and how I was supposed to deal with it with Dad around. Considering math was not my forte, it was almost impossible to juggle with everything. It was bad enough so I couldn’t even laugh at Mister Cortes’ lame attempts to make jokes about rational numbers.

“There’s a party this Friday,” was the first thing Skye told me when we met near her locker. “It’s at Danielle’s, so you know it’ll be fun.”

Danielle was this rich girl with issues that forced her to do everything she could to call her parents’ attention. Impressively, her parents had been married for over thirty years. Even so, they did not care about their children and gave them everything they wanted, which included money and resources to throw parties every other weekend. Danielle was also dating Jack’s teammate and goalie, Ryan who had been labeled as a stud… by himself and a gaggle of girls who swooned each time he accidentally glanced their way.

Ryan also happened to be one of Mason’s friends.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on,” Skye whined. “You know what a sucky week I’ve had?”

I laughed. She was so ridiculous when she wanted, almost like a baby. But I understood.

“Everyone is mad at everyone. Mason made a mess of your life. You just decided to finally put makeup on and jeans – thank you, by the way. You’re too pretty to hide.”

“Skye-“

“And I feel like crap for being happy and in a relationship! Am I guilty for being okay? I don’t think so. I just want to… to… spread the happiness around like peanut butter on toasts.”

“Peanut butter?” I arched an eyebrow.

She shrugged her shoulders and beamed. “I think I was a fairy in my past life. Pixie dust everywhere and PB and jam sandwiches for lunch.”

The laughter was impossible to avoid.

She was a fairy back when we were seven and she dumped glitter on top of Reina and me. Two weeks later we still had glitter stuck in our hair.

“I’ll keep Mason away,” she promised. “And, you know there’s going to be tons of people, so it’s likely that you won’t even see him.”

Heaving a sigh, I just stared at her. Sometimes I despised how perky she could be all day long, every day and without copious amounts of coffee. I had to drink a mug of dark coffee every morning only so my eyes could stay open; fortunately for me, since my father was a foodie and an addict to fresh brewed coffee, he had allowed us to drink coffee since we turned fifteen, as long as we respected the process of a drink properly made.

“You’re not allowed to do any physical harm to anyone.”

She grinned. “Nope. No physical harm unless you give the order.”

I scoffed. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to go.”

“I already told Ollie I’d go with you, and he trusts you won’t get me in trouble. Besides he’s going out with some new friends, but is the designated driver, so he’s not having that much fun. We both are babysitting.”

“What?” I shrieked, only provoking laughter in my so-called best friend.

“Sorry. Am I not?”

I shoved her and she cracked up. Apparently she was babysitting, and it felt strange. I was usually the one taking care of them, but at this point I was unreliable and unstable. Not counting the crying and moping I had made, I was out of it because my brain was thinking too hard about everything.

About the flowers I had found in my locker, I told her nothing. I had no desire of listening to Skye defending Mason. For some reason, Skye had always liked him for me, unlike Reina. Besides, being the hopeless romantic she was, Skye would probably tell me that perhaps nothing more had happened after the moment the video ended, and that Mason was sorry for what he had done.

And yes, Mason was stubborn and haughty. Perhaps he couldn’t really say sorry to my face and really elaborate in an apology. But if that wasn’t the case, it would be too painful.

In the back of my mind, I did want to think everything had been a mistake. Then I thought about my brother, about Wes Limburg using Reina to get back at his ex, and about my mom. People were cheaters, and breaking hearts was a hobby for many. It was enough to wonder what amazing qualities a human had to possess in order to be enough for another.

For the rest of the day I tried to find a moment in which go to my locker and take the flowers to throw them away, but by the time I had to go home with Skye, I took my flowers and saved them in my backpack.

Mason knew daises were my favorites. It seemed unfair it was so easy for him to mess with my head, but I had allowed him to get close and he knew me. Well, at least I thought he did, because even if he could remember my favorite things, he had seemed to forget I was his girlfriend when he decided to put his hands and mouth all over some other girl.