And Then There Was Vince

Chapter 24: You Know, He Might Be Onto Something

    "Hey," Vincent said as he pulled up a chair beside me in study hall.

    I didn't know if I wanted to yell, cry, or be relieved that he was speaking to me after all.

    "Hey," I replied, choosing none of the above.
   
      He took his spot and pulled out some work to fiddle with while I stuck my nose in a book and pretended not to be excited to see him. We continued on like this for several minutes before he broke the silence.

    "I'm sorry," He sighed. "I didn't mean to act like an asshole earlier. I thought all your little jokes in the stories were cute and funny, too."

    I smiled at him.

    "I tried really hard," I admitted.

    "I can tell," He said, returning the look. "But seriously..."

    My smile fell with that interjection.

    "Seriously what?" I snapped, looking back down at the story.

    He hesitated for a minute, tapping his pencil on the table.

    "Why are you forgiving her so easily?" He finally asked. "Are you really okay with them after all of that?"

    I slapped my book shut and looked up at him.

    "I already told you this," I said, staring daggers. "I accepted her apology, but I never told her that it was alright. We're going to slowly work up to that."

    "And inevitably, at some point down the road when you have completely reconciled, she's going to do this again. The only difference is that at that time, you'll have enabled it."

    I felt him and I switching places for who got to be angry that day.

    "I'm not enabling anything," I spat. "I'm going to keep my distance until she can prove that she's grown up a little bit, and then..."

    He cut me off with a frustrated remark.

    "She isn't going to change, and you know it."

    We sat in silence for the rest of the period. Deep down inside of me, I did know it. While this year's case had been the most extreme, Ashley had always found a reason to get angry and bully me over it. She did it to everyone who crossed her path, and she truly did believe it was one of her personality traits. If she had to describe herself, she'd probably use all sorts of fluffy terms with "brutally honest" tacked somewhere in between.

    I wasn't ready to admit that he was right, though.

    Sometimes we can't see things that are right in front of us, and other times we can. I could see his point clearly in front of me, but I wasn't ready to accept it.

    It's impossible to imagine investing 10 years of your life into someone only to realize they're rotten to the core.