Believing Lies (6 page)

I awoke with a pain shooting through my chest. Where was I? And what was wrong with me?
Oh, right
. I was at Sophie’s, and the pain was because my heart had been ripped out and thrown into a meat grinder. The sun was setting outside the window, indicating I must have been asleep for a few hours. As much as I wanted to stay holed up in this bed for the rest of my life, I owed it to Sophie to come out. She was probably worried sick. I knew I would be worried about her if the roles were reversed.

As soon as I opened the door, I could hear the sound of the TV. She quickly hit mute and patted the couch cushion, urging me to sit by her. Once I was on the couch, she pulled my head down to her lap and began to run her fingers through my hair. I knew she was silently waiting for me to talk, and I appreciated that she wasn’t bombarding me with questions.

After a couple of minutes, I sat up and turned to her. I pulled my legs up under my arms and began telling her exactly what had happened. I was proud of myself for not crying, but maybe there was a quota on tears per day, and I already met mine. It helped that Sophie didn’t interrupt or add her opinion. She just listened patiently and let me get it all off my chest.

“ . . . Now you know all of the gruesome details,” I finished on an exhale. Telling her what had happened was a mixture of both relief and renewed pain. “How could he do this to me?” I choked out.

After a small silence, she responded. “He’s a fool and an asshole.” She let out a heavy breath, and again I saw the same look of pity in her eyes as before. “I don’t have any great advice, Sienna. Even if I did, nothing I say will change anything or make it hurt any less. You have to heal in your own time. Will you please stay away from him for a few days to let yourself have time to process everything?”

“That won’t be a problem. I never want to see him again.” Bitterness and venom laced my words.

“I know you feel that way right now, but you will need to face him again.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off. “You need to at least work with him to get your stuff out of his apartment. You won’t have to do it alone. I’ll be there every step of the way.”

I gave a very small, compliant smile. “Okay, I guess I do need my things. You win.”

That earned me a smile in return. “I always do.” She abruptly stood up, pulling me with her. “Alright, I have a bottle of tequila and a blender. They say the best cure for a heartache is a margarita, right?”

“Huh? I’ve never heard that saying.”

“You have now, so shut up, and let’s get drunk.”

She grabbed my arm and led me to the kitchen before I could come up with any reason to not follow her. Through my entire life, Sophie had always hated to see me sad. I knew she’d always felt it her mission to make me happy, and tonight was going to be no different. The tough part was that this was a situation in which she couldn’t fix my happiness right away, so she went for the next best thing: to help me temporarily forget.

After our first margarita, we decided to put on
Pitch Perfect
because Sophie and I both absolutely loved that movie. We’d seen it over a dozen times and could more or less quote the whole thing. By the third margarita, we were singing along. By our fifth margarita, we were very poorly dancing along. When I finished my sixth margarita too fast, I got a nasty brain freeze, so we decided to forget about the margaritas and the movie and go into the kitchen, so we could shoot tequila shots.

We were laughing and having fun, which was something that I would’ve thought to be impossible tonight. I licked the salt from my wrist, swallowed my fourth shot and slammed the glass on the counter. We didn’t have limes, but we had one of those tiny lime-shaped bottles of lime juice, so I opened my mouth, and she squirted some of that on my tongue afterwards.
I frickin’ love Sophie, and I really, really love tequila!

I wasn’t sure if it was minutes or hours that passed before the tequila turned traitorous, but I learned that Sophie’s saying about margaritas being the best cure for a heartache was dead right. I no longer cared about my heartache at all. I was too busy worrying about how to make the world stop spinning long enough to stop the vomit. Sophie was asleep in the bathtub, with one leg hanging off the side. My head was lying on the toilet seat.
Classy
. In my mind, I vehemently renounced my previous declaration of loving tequila.

Something sparkly on the other side of the toilet seat caught my attention.
Why did Sophie bedazzle her toilet? I want to bedazzle something. I could bedazzle a tracksuit. Hell yeah! I’d look awesome in a bedazzled tracksuit. Wait a second . . . Bedazzled tracksuits are ugly. Why am I thinking about bedazzling anything . . . ? Right, Sophie bedazzled her toilet seat
. I rolled my eyes and giggled.
What a stupid thing to do
. My blurry vision cleared a bit, and I suddenly noticed it was my finger that was sparkly.
Hold the phone. That’s not a bedazzled toilet seat. That’s
. . . I stared at my beautiful engagement ring. Through my drunken stupor, the fog temporarily cleared enough for Trenton’s betrayal to hit me all over again like a sledgehammer to the gut. Fat teardrops rolled from my eyes into the toilet water.
He flushed our happiness down the toilet
. Cheesy? Yes. But the tequila thought it was fitting, and in homage, I dropped my engagement ring into the water and flushed. Feeling emotionally better after freeing my finger from what I drunkenly dubbed “The Ring of Lies,” I slid my body from the toilet and attempted to stand up. The stupid floor didn’t like that idea and began to wobble under my feet. The room started to resemble a Tilt-a-Whirl. Since escape was evidently going to be impossible, I curled up on the bathroom floor and passed out cold.

***

I opened my eyes to find my face on a teal bathroom rug, which smelled a tad funky. My legs were numb from lying on the cool tiled floor, and my mouth tasted as if something had crawled into it and died. I started to sit up, only to immediately lay back down when the vertigo hit. I closed my eyes and let out a long, low groan. Since the noise that came out of my throat sounded like it came from a zombie, then maybe that horrid taste in my mouth was brains.

God awful snoring was coming from somewhere near me. It took almost all of my strength to push myself off of the floor and stand up. After the bathroom stopped swaying, I full out began to laugh at the sight of Sophie in the bathtub. The night before started to come back to me little by little, and I remembered her getting into the tub and singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” while using her shampoo bottle as a pretend oar. At least we hadn’t been stupid enough to put any water in the tub in the state we were in.

I prayed Sophie had ibuprofen because my head was throbbing. I rummaged around in her cabinet and hit the jackpot. I put the pills in my mouth and drank water directly from the faucet to wash them down. My reflection in the mirror was a truly scary sight. I looked like death ran over twice. God only knew what was crusting pieces of my hair together, my mascara was everywhere but on my eyelashes, and I had small indentations all over my right cheek from the rug. I splashed some water on my face and grabbed a hand towel to dry myself.
Better
. I picked up the ibuprofen bottle again and put a couple pills in my hand for Sophie.

I bent down to the bathtub and started to gently shake her. “Wake up, hookerbot. Time to crawl into a real bed.” My throat felt extremely raw, and my voice was scratchy.

One of her eyes opened long enough to look at me before closing again. “Go away, or I’ll slice your ass with a razor blade,” she croaked out.
Gee, this should be fun
. I shook her again until she opened her eyes fully. “What do you want?”

I didn’t answer and just opened her hand and put the pills in her palm. I cringed when she swallowed them without any water. “You’re going to be really sore from sleeping in there. Come on. You’ll thank me later . . . Now, upsie-daisy.” I used what was left of my feeble strength to help pull her out of the tub. We stumbled together to her room, bumping into the wall a couple of times. We didn’t even bother changing our clothes before we both crashed face first onto her bed and fell back asleep.

Chapter Six

I hid away in the safety of my bed, burrowing in the blankets and only leaving when I absolutely had to. Even though five days had passed, I wasn’t strong enough to face the world yet. Most of my time was spent sleeping, but my body could only sleep for so many hours a day before I had no choice but to wake up. Then I would waste hours just staring out the window.

My phone was still off because I wanted to call Trenton so badly. It took everything in me to not dial his number and tell him that I forgave him, still loved him, and was coming home. The only reason I didn’t was because it would be a lie . . . Not the loving him part, because I still did, but I didn’t forgive him, and I was never going home to him. I wanted to hate him, but as much as I hated what he did, I couldn’t hate Trenton himself. I believed he still did love me, but I could never trust him again, so whether he loved me or not didn’t change a thing.

I closed my eyes and was trying to force myself back to sleep when Sophie stormed into my room. “Okay, ho-bag, enough is enough!” I quickly pulled the covers over my head and groaned just as Sophie landed next to me with a thud. “Get your ass out of bed and join the living again,” she scolded, ripping back the covers and giving my ponytail a sharp pull.

“What the fuck! That hurt!” I screamed, rubbing my tender scalp.

“Good,” she said smugly. “Glad to know you can still feel something besides self-pity.”

I glared at her in disbelief. “You have no idea what I feel,” I snapped back defensively.

“I know that I want my cousin back and not this shell of a person. I’m going to get you out of this funk by any means possible.”

My days of solitude were at an end because Tough Love Sophie was now on the scene, and that version of Sophie could be a real bitch. Previous experiences with her alter-ego told me to do as she commanded, so I begrudgingly sat up.

“Let me take a shower, and then you can get on with the little boot camp I know you have planned for me,” I whined, then slowly left the comfort and security of the bed and walked to the door. Before leaving the room, I turned back to her. “Go get something from your closet for me to wear.” She smiled triumphantly.

I was shaving my legs and enjoying my ridiculously long, scalding-hot shower in peace when the bathroom door flung open, and Sophie barged in.
So much for privacy, or knocking for that matter
.

“You’ve been in here for over thirty minutes, so wrap it up already,” she chided. “Clothes are on your bed.”

“I’m just finishing up. What’s on the schedule for today, Sergeant?” I asked from behind the shower curtain.

“Don’t give me that Sergeant crap.” I could imagine her eyes narrowing. “Five days in bed is a long enough pity-party.” She pulled back the curtain, and I was so startled that I nicked my leg with the razor. “We’re starting with an early lunch. I ordered a pizza, which should be here any minute, and then you and I are going to the beach.” Her eyes lowered to my bikini area, and she added, “Make sure to shave extra well.”

“Shut the curtain, creeper! I’ll be done in a minute.” I grabbed the handheld shower head and sprayed her directly in the face. She quickly closed the curtain, and I could hear her laughing as she left the bathroom.

Since we were going to the beach, I didn’t need to do my hair or makeup after I finished my shower. A cobalt blue string bikini and a short white cotton sundress were waiting for me on my bed. I was tying the biking strap around my neck when I heard Sophie yell that the pizza was here. I finished dressing and went to the kitchen. The pepperoni pizza on the counter looked absolutely delicious.

Sophie was dressed in a jean skirt and black cami, and I could tell by the straps around her neck that she had her white bikini with little cherries on under her clothes. We sat down and finished off the entire pizza within fifteen minutes. I cleaned up while she packed our beach bag. It was time for me to go to the beach, whether I was ready or not. Maybe this was a good idea after all. I had to admit she was right so far; it did feel nice to be showered, dressed, and full of food. I slipped on a pair of Sophie’s flip-flops, and we left the apartment.

We took the elevator down to the resident parking lot. I was caught off guard when I saw my car was next to Sophie’s white Jeep Wrangler. Since I had parked on the street five days ago, I couldn’t fathom how my car got down here. A resident tag was hanging from the rearview mirror, which meant she must have registered my vehicle with the complex. Just another reminder of how drastically my life had changed.

“How did you move my car? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it’s not on the street, but you don’t know how to drive it.”

She looked slightly guilty, which was never a good sign. “You remember Conner’s friend, Adam, right?”

Our lunch together came flashing back and brought a small smile to my lips. “Adam drove my car?”

“I was going to try to move it for you, but I thought I might ruin the clutch. Adam and Conner were hanging out with me, watching the Brewers game a few days ago, and I asked if one of them would mind doing it. Adam was pumped to drive it as soon as I told him what type of car to look for.” She hesitated. “He was gone for about twenty minutes, and Conner and I were worried something happened to him or your car, but he came back looking like the cat that caught the canary. He couldn’t resist a little joyride.” She rolled her eyes. “Boys.”

“He took my Mustang for a joyride? He’s lucky I don’t kill him!” I flexed my fingers and took a mental breath. Actually, it was nice of him to even offer to move it for me since I hadn’t been motivated enough to do it myself. I must’ve been sleeping when they were over because I hadn’t heard them at all. “On second thought, never mind. I’m just glad my car got underground in one piece. That’s all that matters.”

“Good. Let’s go swimming.”

I hopped into the passenger side of her Wrangler. The top and doors were off, so I quickly threw my hair into a ponytail to keep it from whipping in my face while we were driving. We pulled out, and Sophie blared the radio the whole way, singing along with every song. I even joined in on a few. Whenever the song turned slow or sad, she changed the channel. She was always thinking of me.