Chapter 29
A/N: I posted Chapter 28 a few hours ago, so if you missed it, make sure you go back and read that one first!!
I can't wait to see your comments on this one!!! ♥♥
Seeing Maddy sitting in front of me, brings it all back. Despite the fact her hair is much shorter, I feel like I'm watching that video all over again, she's sitting that close to me. Too close. I try not to look her in the eyes, shifting myself sideways to stretch my legs out and rest my weight on my hands behind me, looking up at the stars.
"I knew I had to come talk to you," she says, after a long silence. "It's the only reason I actually came to this party. When Niall told Kate you were here, and she should come, I knew I had to, too, just to come see you."
"Why?" I ask, finally looking at her. "So, you could make me miserable all over again? So you could rub Harry in my face?"
"No, I actually," she says quickly, shaking her head before she lets out a long breath. "I want to apologize to you."
To this, I actually laugh. She must be delusional if she actually thinks I would forgive her for anything she's done to me. Because there's no way in hell she could say anything that would change my mind about her.
"I never slept with Harry," flies out of her mouth so quickly, I'm not sure I heard her right.
"What?"
"I never slept with Harry" she says again.
"Well, you're going to have explain this one a little better to me," I quip. "Because I saw that video with my very own eyes, and there's no way that's true. So, why even bother trying, Maddy? Who put you up to this? Niall? Kate? Was it Harry? It was Harry, wasn't it?"
"No one put me up to it," she says, rolling her eyes at me. "Yeah, I got a couple ear fulls on people's opinions of me, but it was my own decision to tell you the truth. And the truth is, he never wanted me."
"You're right, he didn't," I quip. "Except that one night."
Maddy lets out a long drawn out breath as if she's annoyed with me, which is just funny, because now she knows how I usually feel. "I can see you're not going to make this easy for me," she huffs. "Let me explain this to you, so you'll actually know I'm telling the truth." She pauses for a second to make sure I'm listening. And even though I am, I refuse to look at her at this particular moment. "Harry hurt me so many times," she finally continues. "He bruised my ego more than once, embarrassed me and played me. I hated what he did to me, and so I wanted to get him back for it all. Plus, I wanted to make you jealous of me. I didn't even know why, but I do now."
"And why's that?"
"Because I knew Harry loved you," she sighs. "I knew it all along. I knew he had a thing for you long before I even started liking him. I saw the way he looked at you and that was probably the reason I wanted him as much as I did. When you like someone, you watch them closely. And you do crazy things to figure them out. Like hack into their computer."
"You're not serious?" I'm looking at her now, with wide eyes. Because really, she can't be serious.
"He has an entire folder on his computer called Jayde," she continues, making my jaw drop. "There's a ton of song lyrics, a few recorded songs and pictures you guys took together in there."
"I can't believe you!" I scream. "Why would you do that? How?"
"I paid a computer nerd to do it for me," she laughs, making me roll my eyes. "Anyways, I hated you for it. Because you had what I wanted so badly. And I don't just mean you had Harry. You had the relationship that I wanted. The perfect kind that every girl wants. I can't even imagine someone writing songs like that about me. And those pictures, you both looked so happy in them. So cute and cuddly, it was kind of disgusting. But who wouldn't want that?"
"I don't know what you think you know about me and Harry," I say. "But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows like you're making it out to seem. I can't even believe all of this. You really are delusional! I underestimated how crazy you really are."
"And you don't even know half of it yet." Her eyes fall in front of her, where she plays with the sand. "I used one of the pictures against him. At prom."
Hearing the word prom come from her mouth, makes me pay a great deal of attention to her. I knew she had said something to Harry that night and I finally get to know what it is. Come on, I'm ready! Lets hear it!
"I was tired of seeing how happy you guys were together," she goes on. "It was ruining my night. So, I told him that if you didn't leave right then, I'd send a certain picture of you around school."
"What picture?" I can't for the life of me figure out what she's talking about. Harry and I didn't take many pictures together. Just a few here and there. Selfies, mostly in bed. But nothing too risque, I don't think. Enough to out our secret though.
"Does the musical ring a bell to you? Grease?" she asks, clearly seeing on my face I needed help figuring it out. The picture of us, in the mirror, on the vanity. It makes my eyes widen. It terrifies me to think that someone else has seen that picture of us. My jaw drops letting her know I know what particular picture she's talking about. "I knew he would do anything to protect you and whatever it is that you had, because you guys left, just like I wanted."
I feel like I just got slapped in the face. Harry told me she was just trying to get a rise out of me, but really, he didn't want me to know that picture was in someone else's hands. Especially in those of Maddy's. He allowed for us to argue and to not talk and be ourselves because of this one particular lie he told, just so I wouldn't know this fact. I can see why he did it. At the time, it would have torn me apart.
"When did you find out?" I ask, finally. "About me and Harry?"
"Just before prom," she answers. "I decided not to out your secret because he left prom so quickly that I knew there was something more there than I knew about at the time and I wanted to figure out more before I did anything else irrational."
"At least you admit you were being irrational," I mumble.
"You made me do those irrational things," she rants. I can't help by raise my eyebrows and shake my head at her, because once again, she's making no sense. I did absolutely nothing to her that could have possibly made her do any of the things she's just told me. How dare she blame this on me? "I was always jealous of you, and the way you fit in effortlessly. You didn't even have to try and everyone liked you."
"Not true," I laugh.
"It is true," she argues. "You were always friends with the boys, like they gravitated towards you. You got Harry, you were friends with Niall. Carter was even your best friend after you broke up with him. I just never understood it, because I had to try so hard to have the friends I had and they still didn't like me."
"I wonder why," I say, rolling my eyes again. "Maybe try not being a bitch. That might've helped you."
I can't for the life of me understand why I'm having this conversation. Why I heard her out even just a little bit. Maybe it was the forlorn look in her eyes the second she sat down. Maybe it was the fact that there was a part of me that hoped she really meant that she was sorry. Either way, what she's told me so far has been nothing but unbelievable. As shocked as I seem to be with it all, I don't know why I am. All of it sounds exactly like the person she is. And yet, here I sit with her, as if I want her to continue telling me about all the flaky things she's done.
"You're right," she confesses. "I was a bitch. And I wanted to tell you all of this because I feel bad for everything. All of it. I never should have done what I did."
"So why apologize now?"
It takes her a while to answer, as if she's trying to think of the right words to say before she actually speaks. I calmly wait for her to reply. Maybe I see that she's changed. I feel it in the words that she speaks, that she actually does feel bad for all that she's done. And maybe this is the way we can get passed all of this, not to become friends again, but to grow as individuals.
"Because what I did made you leave town," she answers. "It broke Harry in a way I didn't think would happen. I always thought he would be better off without you, but he was never the same after you saw that video."
"Ah, we're back to the video," I groan. I stand up and walk a few feet away from her so I can breathe a little easier. I run my hands through my hair and close my eyes and let the light wind ease the tension in me. Sure, Maddy already said she didn't sleep with Harry, but the video--the video showed me the truth, and I don't think I could ever for a second, believe a word this girl now standing next to me has to say about it. Nothing could change my mind, because I saw the truth with my own eyes. It's been burned into my brain and played like a broken record too many times for me to count.
"Please listen to me," she says breaking the silence. "We never slept together. There's no way he ever would, even when he was as drunk as he was."
"But he said you looked better before you fucked," I retort. "Those were his exact words. He already fucked you before you even turned on the camera."
"He actually didn't."
"Why are you even trying to make me think otherwise, Maddy?" I ask loudly. "And for the record, I didn't leave town because of Harry. I left because that's always what I wanted to do."
"You can say that all you want," she says. "But I know that if none of this happened, you would have went to Columbia with him instead of ended up in California."
The sad thing is, I know she's right. I would have. But that's not what happened and I can't start wondering about all the what if's in life. I left to get passed all of this, to move forward. Thinking about what could have happened, is taking a bigger step back than I want to.
"Just listen to what I have to say," she huffs again. " I need you to believe me. Stop trying to change the subject. You're going to hear me out, you're going to know I'm telling the truth. I'm not ending this conversation with you until you just listen to me."
"Fine, explain."
"Harry was literally in the worst mood that night," she starts. "He took shot after shot, drank way too much. It was a pretty awful sight, I'd never seen him like that before. I made him eat something and have a shower so maybe he'd sober up a bit. That's why he wasn't wearing a shirt in that video. He just got out of the shower."
I find myself listening very intently to her story. I don't know if it's because I just want to be done with this conversation or if it's because I really want to know what happened that night. Of course I want her to be telling me the truth. I want to believe that in some sick world, this was all just a nightmare and none of it was true. I have thought about that night so many times, curious as to how it all happened in the first place, and finally, if Maddy isn't lying through her teeth, I'll know the full story.
"I made him lay in bed with me," she goes on. "Of course he didn't want to, but he was tired and so drunk, so he did, eventually. I talked. A lot. He listened. And this is when you're going to think I'm pathetic."
"I already do, so what does it matter?" I interject, glaring at her.
She sighs and looks to the ground again, like so many times she's done since starting this conversation with me. "I thought there was a chance he was sleeping, so I started talking about how we had just had sex and how great it was. Kind of like talking up some kind of fantasy in my head, out loud to him."
I stifle a laugh, interrupting her. She was right. Pathetic.
"He wasn't sleeping like I thought he was," she continues. "He actually argued with me about how we didn't have sex and that he never would. And because I was embarrassed, I disagreed with him, saying things he did to me that I actually wanted him to, making up everything as I went along, asking him if he remembered."
I'm having a hard time believing she's telling me all of this. I don't think my eyebrows can go any farther up on my forehead, because I'm literally in awe with the words she's saying. I'm embarrassed for her, because this is humiliating. If I had done something like this, I would never speak a word of it. Ever. Then again, I'd never do it in the first place.
"He eventually starting muttering that it was as good as I said it was, and that's when I turned on the camera," she sighs heavily. "By then he had put his arm around me and gotten more comfortable. I made him believe that all words I said were true. I made him think we had sex. He was so drunk, it was almost easy. And well, you saw the video. You saw how it played out."
"And that's why he said what he did?" I ask. "You made him think he had sex with you? But he actually kissed you?"
"I was so surprised," she states. "But it didn't last long. The second he opened his eyes and saw that I wasn't you, he got off me faster than I thought drunk people could move, as if touching me was the worst possibly thing he had ever done."
"Well, it was."
She rolls her eyes at me, but still looks at me with desperation. "I don't need any more blows to my ego, Jayde."
"Sorry." But am I? Not really.
"He left my room after that and went to drink some more," she says, not hesitating to continue on with her story. "By then almost everyone had crashed, or left. It was just me and him in my kitchen. And because I was so embarrassed by what I made him think, if there was a chance he would remember how pathetic I was, I had to make sure he still believed that we had sex. And he did. And he was so mad. So upset. Kept going on about how he couldn't believe that he did that to you and how you would never forgive him for it. He begged me not to tell you. He said he would do anything, until I said that he needed to end things with you and take me out on a real date. He said he'd never leave you because he loved you."
I can't keep my eyes off of her. I still can't believe the words coming out of her mouth. Is this really what happened? Is all of this the reason everything is the way it is? Because of this pitiful story of a girl who didn't want her ego to shatter anymore than it had? This is low. So much lower than I ever thought of her.
"He went home after that," she says. "And our text conversation the next day wasn't exactly what I would call the greatest conversation we ever had. He was even more pissed off when he was sober, than he was drunk, and so I decided to upload that video and make it seem like everything was true."
"But how did you even know anyone would see it?" I blurt. "I thought your blog was meant to be a secret."
"Oh, it was," she answers. "I never thought anyone did read it. Until I got that computer nerd to find out who did at the same time he hacked into Harry's computer. I was curious if anyone I knew actually read it. He found IP addresses and who they belonged to, and there you were, on that list. And so was Kate. So, I knew it would get to you at some point."
My eyes find their way to the dark ocean in front of me, my lungs feeling clogged as if there's no oxygen getting to them. After all this time, the truth is laid out before me. And it's a strange thing, believing Maddy, of all people. But the fact is, I know her. And there's no way she would tell me what she did, the way she told it, if it weren't true.
I wish I knew what I was thinking. Or feeling. I'm just trying to focus on my breathing, because surely I'd die if I didn't remind myself to breathe in and breathe out again. This is more fucked up than I ever could've anticipated.
How do people like her exist? How could she do this? How could she somehow make all of this up and come out thinking this was one brilliant plan? One that allowed herself to ruin everything in someone else's life? Everything she said, how bad she made me know she felt for it all, could never justify why it had to happen. I could never accept her apology. I could never forgive her for this. I don't care how bad she feels. She ruined everything.
"So, do you believe me that we never slept together now?" Maddy asks, taking me from my thoughts and making me look at her. I want to wipe that sad look off her face. I want to scratch her eyes out. To make her feel the pain I have suffered because of her. If there was a way I could rip her heart out and stomp on it, I would, just so she could see how I've felt.
But I know nothing I could do right now would make her feel anything like I have. As much as she came here to apologize to me, it's clear that she has a hollow chest with no heart to break. If she did, she never would have done anything she just spoke of to begin with.
"Yeah, I believe you," I mumble. To this, she smiles, and for that smile, my fist collides with the side of her face. So hard, it hurts my hand. But there's no time to think of the pain right now as I listen to her groan with her hand pressed to her face.
"Jayde!" I hear in the distance. "Jayde! What the hell?"
"Go fuck yourself, Maddy."
I start to walk away, Carter reaching me and looking back and forth between us. "Did you just punch her?" he laughs.
I can only hope that through all of this, she has learned a lesson. No, that punch wasn't all she deserved, but I will let karma do the rest. Surely, it will do the dirty work for me.
A/N: I know this is a chapter you have been waiting a very long time to read, and I'm so happy it's out there now! The truth is out!!
Thoughts?
Anyone going to #Wattcon2018 in New York City in October?? For the 3rd year in a row, I'll be there! And I'd love to meet you!!
Much Love,
amberlove
xo
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: Truyen247.Pro