A clock in the hallway chimes midnight. I listen to it through the wall, trying to focus on the tinny sound of fake bells so I don’t have to think about what Anna just said. And I don’t have to think about why it makes me feel this way. So…
Hurt.
It hurts—it hurts everywhere. My brain tries to reason with me, reminds me that Jonas isn’t mine. We’ve never dated, never been together, never even suggested it to each other. But every fiber of me shouts something different—that Jonas is mine, somehow, in some strange way. Some way that means it isn’t okay that Anna slept with him, and it’s even less okay that he didn’t tell me. Something is burning in my chest, slowly eating away at me, something I can’t name.
“Shelby?” Anna says meekly.
“Huh? I…” I grasp for words.
“Sorry. Is that okay? I mean, that I slept with him?”
“Um… I just didn’t know. I didn’t know he’d had sex at all,” I mumble.
“He hadn’t before me,” she says. “It was just this thing. It was last year. We were hanging out after school while you were hanging out with some other guy, Danny or David or Daniel or something. And then he offered to give me a ride home and… I don’t know. I mean, I think he’s cute. And it just kind of happened.”
“I don’t understand—were you dating?” I ask, words finally coming a little easier. Now that the shock is passing, my mind is flooded with questions, things I don’t want to know but have to know at the same time.
“No.” Anna shrugs. “We talked about it. I mean, we’d been hanging out a little more often since you were with Daniel.”
Why did he keep it from me that long? Why didn’t I realize it on my own? Did he know I’d be mad?
Surely not. I didn’t even realize something like this would make me so mad.
“So just… just the once?”
“Yeah,” she says. “I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but he acted like it was. And then you and Daniel broke up, and he and I kinda stopped hanging out, for the most part.” She pauses, watching me carefully. When I take too long to sort the tangle of words in my head, she speaks again. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal, Shelby.”
“It… it isn’t,” I say, shaking my head. “It totally isn’t. We aren’t together.” I’m lying, I can tell, but I’m not sure about what.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. I mean, I wouldn’t have done it if you were,” she says.
“Yeah…” We aren’t together, why does it matter if he slept with someone? How is it any of my business who Jonas is in bed with? It’s not. It shouldn’t matter.
But then, why does it matter so, so much?
“I need to go,” I finally say. “I need to leave.”
“You sure?” Anna says with a small pout.
“Yes,” I say firmly. “I just… I need to go home.”
“I’ll take you. Let me go find my purse.”
I slide into Anna’s car, trying not to think about her and Jonas. About her naked, about him naked, about them kissing, together, touching in ways I can’t understand. She didn’t think it was a big deal—did that bother him? Why didn’t he talk to me? Why didn’t he tell me? I’m not sure what’s making me feel so betrayed—the sex or the secrets.
“Hey, Shelby?” Anna calls out twenty minutes later as I step out of her car into my darkened driveway. It’s the first we’ve spoken since leaving the party—I was too preoccupied with thoughts of Jonas to break the awkward silence that hung over the car.
“Yeah?” I answer faintly.
“Sorry things didn’t work out with Ben. There are more fish in the sea,” she says optimistically.
“Sure,” I answer, and turn to trudge away without saying good-bye. I hear Anna’s car backing out of the driveway and squealing down the street.
That’s right. Things didn’t work out with Ben. I’d almost forgotten—my head doesn’t have room for failed sex and the news that my best friend slept with Anna Clemens. My head doesn’t have room for anything else. I slip inside and hurry upstairs to my bedroom.
Relax. Calm down, Shelby.
What do I do? Do I call Jonas? Yell at him? Ask him to tell me the truth? Should I mention it at all? Should I forget it and focus on the LOVIN plan?
What do I do, Mom?
I squeeze my eyes shut and picture Mom the same way I always do, us in her bedroom, me lying across the bed while she casually folds laundry. Talk to me. Tell me what to do.
Mom smiles and pauses at pairing socks to stroke my hair, but she doesn’t answer.
And so I recite the Promises to myself, because they’re the only thing I know for certain anymore.