By the time I got home, it was dark. Rachel was already in the shower, prepping for Friday night.
Rubbing my eyes, I pulled a premade salad out of the fridge and headed for the couch, where I plopped down.
“Jess?” Rachel shouted my name from her bedroom. It almost sounded like a question, as if she wasn’t sure if I was home.
“I’m here,” I said, not wanting to move from my comfortable spot in the living room.
She came out of her bedroom, holding her cell phone, and stopped just outside her door. “So,” she said, then hesitated.
What the hell was wrong with her?
“So . . . what?” Taking another bite of my salad, I chewed as I gave her the side eye. She was acting weird.
“Do you know where Nick is?” she asked, her tone cautious.
“I have no idea. Why?” I shifted, her wariness making me uneasy as I placed my salad on top of the coffee table.
“Because—”
When she stopped and took a deep breath, I cocked my head to the side as I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.
“Oh my gosh,” I yelled. “Just spit it out, Rachel.”
“He’s out with Carla Crawford,” she spat out in a rush. She came toward me slowly, taking small steps as if I might jump out of my seat and attack her if she approached too quickly. “He’s out with her right now. My phone won’t stop blowing up.”
I shrugged, trying to play it off like it was no big deal, but the burn of humiliation mixed with shame swirled inside me, a nauseating combination.
Nick wasn’t my boyfriend, so technically he could date whoever he wanted, but for some reason I had stupidly assumed that he wasn’t. Or that he wouldn’t, especially not after what happened between us last night and this morning.
Jesus, was it just this morning that we’d walked to school hand in hand? Now it felt like forever ago.
“Jess, did you hear me?” Rachel’s voice broke through my inner turmoil, her eyes reflecting her concern.
“I heard you,” I all but whispered, training my eyes on a stained spot on the carpet.
“Are you okay?”
I swallowed, surprised that it was difficult, as if my throat was closing up.
“I don’t know. I guess I should have known better, right? You probably think I’m pretty stupid,” I said, projecting my own feelings onto her. I was the one who felt stupid. Idiotic, actually.
Rachel sat down next to me. “I don’t think you’re stupid. He’s an asshole.”
I sucked in a quick breath. “That’s the thing, Rach. He hasn’t been like that to me. He’s been anything but.”
She reached for my knee and gave it a light squeeze. “He’s good at this kind of thing. Nick could sell ice to an ice farmer, and we both know it.”
“An ice farmer?” I tried not to smile at her odd choice of words, but then they sank in and began rattling around in my brain. “Wait—you think that I was just some kind of game? Like he didn’t mean anything he said to me?”
“No, no, no,” she said quickly before throwing up her hands. “I just meant that Nick knows what he’s doing. He’s a great salesman. And if he didn’t want you to think he was an asshole, then you wouldn’t think it. Shit, does that make sense?” she mumbled under her breath as her phone beeped.
“Let me see it.”
I took the phone from her and opened up the newest text message. A picture appeared that showed Nick and Carla facing each other in a restaurant booth, his arm draped lazily around her shoulders. The slight smile that played on Nick’s lips made my stomach roll.
They looked comfortable together. Carla’s long dark hair accented her naturally bronzed skin. She was exotic and breathtaking to look at. I could never compete with a girl who looked like a Hawaiian Tropic model.
I handed the phone back to Rachel. “She’s really pretty.”
“Who cares how pretty she is? She’s a puta,” my roommate spat back.
Calling someone a bitch was satisfying, but it sounded even better calling them one in Spanish.
“You know her?”
Rachel propped her feet on the coffee table, narrowly missing my salad as she crossed her ankles. “I had a couple of classes with her last year. She walks around like she’s some sort of princess because her dad’s loaded and owns all those TV stations. I remember she was late to this one class almost every day. The professor stopped mid-lecture once to tell her that it was in poor taste to be habitually tardy, and that she should consider being more considerate to her classmates. That girl freaking said that she and her classmates paid his salary by attending school here, so she would arrive and leave whenever she saw fit. And then she stood up and walked out.”
My jaw hung open as I formulated a response that contained actual words instead of amazed grunt-like sounds. “Wow,” was all I seemed to muster.
“Right? And even if what she said was true in any way, which I don’t think it is, it was the way she said it. Her tone of voice.” Rachel crinkled her nose in disgust as she relived the memory. “Like Professor Santero was completely beneath her, and she was appalled he would even think to address her at all.”
And this was the type of person Nick liked? “I can’t believe Nick is out with someone with that.”
“Nick’s dated all kinds of girls, Jess. And they’re not always nice.”
“I know that,” I lied. Actually, I didn’t know that. “I guess I just thought he was different. He seemed different with me.”