Plagiarized (13 page)

“I guess.” She didn’t look convinced.

I huffed out a breath and decided to tell her the truth… well, what I could of it anyway.

“Okay, so I’m at the pivotal scene of my book, and it’s taking a lot out of me. I was up way too late last night trying to get it right. I just want it to be believable, you know? In the end, I wasn’t able to finish it and now I’m beyond exhausted.” I rested my cheek in my hand with my elbow on the table in front of me to add visual effect.

Her forehead creased as she studied me. “What scene is it? Have you asked anyone for help?”

“I guess I’m kind of asking you for help,” I said with a forced laugh.

Her face lit up like a damn Christmas tree. I only hoped it would stay that way once I finished. “Oh, Sage! I’m so honored!”

Yeah… they all say that. Makes me feel pretty darn good when people are honored to do things for me.

“Of course I’ll help! What do you need? Tell me about it.”

I took a deep breath and started. “Well, I don’t want to give it all away, but I’m at the murder scene. And that’s the part I’m stuck on.”

“So it’s like a mystery?”

“Eh… not really. I loved your idea for a book and kind of incorporated it. I hope you don’t mind.”

She was quiet for a moment before she smiled. “So… tell me about it.”

I didn’t really want to tell her about all of it, then she’d know I had taken more than just an idea from her. But in my state of exhaustion, I decided to give her a brief rundown. Worst thing that could happen was she’d tell me no and not help me on the scene I was stuck at. She couldn’t tell me to not write the book. She didn’t even have anything written on it. How would she ever prove I had stolen it from her?

“Okay… that kind of sounds exactly like my book.”

“Not really, though. If you think about it, the only thing that’s the same is she kills her boyfriend. My character is a quiet girl, sticks to herself and lives a very strict life due to her religious upbringing. In your book, she was fucking her teacher. In my book, she already graduated and was dating him—engaged to him.” I hoped that would calm her down some.

A twinkle hit her eye and a smile rose to her lips. “You’re right. Totally different. So, how are you seeing this whole murder go down?”

“Well, she catches him cheating. So I think she sneaks into his place and kills him.”

She shook her head swiftly. “No. Your readers will hate her if she does that. You should do it like this…” And she went on to tell me exactly how to write my scene. Giving me such vivid details, I could see it neatly unfold in my head. I couldn’t wait to get home and type it all out.

I couldn’t believe he would do something like that to me. In our bed. How heartless could he be? It made me feel as if I didn’t know him at all. Like he was a stranger to me, and our whole relationship had been built on a lie.

I had spent the entire day driving around. I didn’t know where I was going; I just knew I needed time to think. I had to plan what I would say, get my thoughts in order. At the moment, they were all jumbled and I was unable to think clearly. I was so angry. But more than angry, I was destroyed. How was I going to deal with this mess? Should I just forget about it and do nothing? Should I confront him? Would I let him explain? Would I throw his ring at him? What would I do? As I went through the thoughts in my head one by one, the only thing I knew for sure was that I was definitely going to confront him.

Just as the sun started going down, I pulled back in to the parking lot of what was supposed to be our apartment complex. I spent another fifteen minutes in the car, calming my nerves and drying my tears. Was this really the end of us? I didn’t want to be the weak girl that took him back, but at the same time, I couldn’t imagine my life without him. I didn’t want to imagine my life without him. Now that I was faced with this, I understood why women took the cheater back. I was so distraught I found myself wanting to do anything to fix it. But could I put aside my morals and values that I had grown up with? Those same morals and values that had pretty much covered our relationship in doom from the very beginning?

My courage came once the sun had finally fallen behind the trees. All of a sudden, I was ready. Ready to face Ben no matter what the outcome.

I knocked on the door, much louder than the last time I stood there. And this time, he didn’t make me walk in the apartment on my own. I was thankful for that. I didn’t think I would have been able to do that twice. I still felt violently ill thinking about the visions I saw when I opened his door. I couldn’t do that again, not knowing what I would walk in to.

Ben stood there, staring at me in shock. His eyes were wide on his face, making the fact that they were bloodshot obvious. Once the shock seemed to wear off, sadness seemed to overtake him. His shoulders hunched and his eyes closed. I heard him suck in a deep breath before looking at me again.

I wasn’t sure if my face was still tear stained. I had cried so much that my cheeks felt stiff from all of the salt that had settled during the day. I was sure the makeup Marissa put on my face that morning was long gone. Thinking back to that very morning and then to where I ended up made it hard to believe things had changed so drastically.

“Sarah.” He said my name like it pained him. Like my name was some kind of horrible thing that literally hurt him to say. “What are you doing here?”

I cleared my throat, still standing in the hallway. He hadn’t even invited me in. “I actually came to get married. I brought a dress and everything. I even got you a new tie. I thought we could go to the courthouse and get married here. I figured we could use spring break as our honeymoon.”

In one swoop, he pulled me inside by my wrist. He slammed the door behind me and then pushed me against it, burying his head in my neck. His breathing was ragged and choked. It was then that I realized why his eyes were so red. I could smell the alcohol literally coming off him like puffs of smoke.

“I love you so much, Sarah. Please know that. Trust me when I tell you that. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life. I’ve never known a love like ours before.” Was he about to confess? Was he about to tell me what I had witnessed before? No. I couldn’t allow him that. I wouldn’t allow him to be the better person, looking as if he came clean first.

My arms hung loosely by my sides as he held on to me. I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to run my hands up and down his back, wrap them around him while we held each other lovingly, and then tell him everything would be okay. That would mean everything could go back to the way it was. I wanted everything to be okay, but it wasn’t. Now that I knew the truth, I couldn’t. The betrayal cut me so deeply it had felt like a hot knife going straight into my heart. The hope and dreams he let me believe had already run out of me like blood, leaving me cold and lifeless in his arms.

“Ben,” I croaked through the tightness in my throat.

I started to push him off me, but he was putting up a fight, not wanting to let go of me.

“Ben,” I repeated, stronger that time. “I was here… earlier. I saw… everything.”

I had wanted to sound strong. But I ended up sounding depressed and empty. I sounded like a girl that had given up. And in a way, I had. The man that was supposed to love and take care of me forever had just killed me. He had just taken everything from me. I would never be the same; my innocence was lost.

“Let me explain,” he began.

I shook my head. No matter how much I wanted to hear his explanation, I knew it would be nothing but excuses. “No, Ben. I don’t need to hear it. You broke my heart,” I sobbed, letting my true emotions pour out of me. There was no sense in keeping them in any longer.

“But you said you came to get married.”

“I did. I was going to surprise you. Instead, you surprised me.” A foreign laugh escaped my lips and I hadn’t the faintest idea where it had come from. “You gave me the surprise of my life as I watched you fuck some girl. As I watched you throw away everything you’ve ever promised me.”

I ran to his room, blocking his arms as he tried to stop me. Things that were hanging on the walls fell as I brushed past them, not caring what destruction I caused. Cups from the bar that separated the kitchen from the hall crashed to the floor, leaving the sound of broken glass in the air.

I didn’t want to be in there, in the room where he had ruined everything, but I had to.

“Sarah, please, just hear me out. No one is sorrier than I am.”

I could hear in his voice that he was crying, but I couldn’t look him in the eyes to confirm it. I was feeling strong, like I had made my decision and was following through with it. If I looked at him, looked in his eyes, I might’ve caved.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen. She came by to drop off a paper and one thing led to another. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I swear it. I’ve been beating myself up for it all day.” He followed me around the small room, spilling excuse after pathetic excuse at me. “Please, Sarah, what are you doing?”

“I’m getting all of my things I’ve left here and I’m taking it all with me back home. I don’t want anything left here. I want nothing here, and I want nothing left to remind me of you,” I spoke through broken sobs as I pulled the items from his drawers. I had only been there two weekends, so I didn’t have much. It wasn’t so much as needing those items, I wouldn’t have missed them if I had left them, but I didn’t want him to have any more of me than I had already given him. I was tearing through his room, throwing things around as if I were looking for more items of mine, even though I knew there wasn’t anything else. It was as if I just wanted to destroy something of his, the way he destroyed me.

He wrapped his arms around my waist and curled his body around mine. I was hunched over under his weight, and then crumpled to the floor. He never let go of me, keeping me in his arms as he fell to the ground with me. I cried, letting it all out. Letting him hold me for what I recognized as the last time.

“Sarah. I love you. Please don’t leave me. I’m begging you. I’m so sorry. I will live the rest of my life proving to you how sorry I am. Don’t leave me, please. I love you,” he repeated, over and over again.

My heart hurt. Physically hurt. It was unlike any pain I had ever felt before. I silently wondered if you could die from heartache alone. I never would have thought it possible, but I thought it could’ve been at that moment.

“I can’t, Ben. You did this. You brought a girl into our bed. You were inside of her. I saw it. And I know you weren’t wearing a condom. Did you even think of me? Did you even worry about what kind of effect that could have on me? Huh? Did you once realize that you could catch something from her and then give it to me? You betrayed me on so many levels. You hurt me in so many ways.” I spun in his arms and pushed him back some so that he could look me in my eyes. “Did you think about me at all?”

“I did, but by that time, it was too late.”

I shoved at him, knocking him on his ass. I stood up and towered over him.

“How dare you!” I screamed, moving on to another emotion—anger.

He stood up and followed me out to the living room. “Sarah, can you please calm down? No one is more pissed off or upset than I am right now. I’ve been beating myself up all day because of it. I regretted it the moment it happened.”

“You didn’t sound so upset when you were telling her to hurry because you were about to come.”

He put his head in his hands and then looked back at me. “I’ve been so stressed out all week. I came in to this class in the middle of the semester and have been behind ever since. I’ve been trying to get caught up while getting ready for finals, and still make time for you. You! The one that won’t even tell her family that she’s seeing someone. You won’t tell them that I exist. You won’t tell them that we’re getting married or that you are even in love with me. How do you think that makes me feel?” His voice was beginning to elevate to an irritated level. “I can’t even tell anyone that I’m engaged because you don’t want your family finding out. How the fuck do you think that makes me feel?”

“Are you kidding me right now? You’re going to blame this on me? You stick your dick in another girl and it’s my fault because I have a difficult family? I love them, and I knew that by telling them, I would lose them. I didn’t want that. But even knowing that, I still planned on marrying you this weekend. I still planned on going behind their backs and moving here with you. I chose you! I chose you over my own fucking family, and you chose to fuck some whore over me!” I yelled, shoving at his chest to punctuate every sentence.

Ben grabbed me by my wrists and held on to me. “Let me make this right,” he begged.

I wrangled my hands free and screamed, “FUCK YOU!” as I pushed him one last time. I threw my whole body behind that shove, all the anger, hurt, devastation; I put everything I had into it.

It all happened in slow motion, like the replay of the winning touchdown for the Super Bowl. I heard my loud words pound in my ears, I felt the momentum of my body as I pushed it into his, and then I watched his foot twist as he tripped over the rug. His body didn’t land on the ground immediately. No. Instead, his head hit the corner of his TV stand. The sound his head made when it hit the table was something I’d never forget. I watched in horror as his head bobbed back and forth a few times before landing on the floor. I felt the stillness in the air and then concentrated on the blood that seeped slowly out of the back of his skull, turning the beige colored carpet a deep burgundy. Even that happened in slow motion. I looked into his eyes, searching for a sign that he was okay; instead, I watched the life in his eyes fade away, slower and more memorable than anything else I had ever witnessed.

“NO-O-O-O!” I cried hoarsely as I fell to the ground next to him and wept. I bawled and howled until I realized that I needed to get out of there before someone found us. I looked around me; his apartment that had been a symbol of what we were supposed to be was trashed from our fight. The small space was littered with broken glass and random things thrown about. And blood covered the carpet.

It looked like a crime scene, even though it wasn’t. It was a tragedy. A horrible, freak accident.

I grabbed my things and headed down to my car in the cover of the night.

Once I was behind the steering wheel, it dawned on me. My fingerprints were all over his place. I quickly and quietly ran back upstairs and cleaned anything that would have implemented me. I didn’t kill him, but no one would believe me. And I certainly didn’t want my family ever finding out. They thought I was on a church retreat; they would condemn me to hell with the devil himself if they knew where I really was, why I was there, and what had ultimately happened to Ben.

On my way out of the parking lot, I called 911 from my disposable phone and reported a death. Then I turned off the phone, wiped my fingerprints from it, threw it out the car window, and cried the entire way home.