16. Silence Is A Girl’s Worst Friend

16

SILENCE IS A GIRL’S WORST FRIEND

LILA

W hen a good thing happens, people expect it to last. At least for a while. I expected the goodness to last, and I shouldn’t have let my piddling insecurities buoy so close to the surface. The good can’t exist without the bad. Both come and go in waves, and right now, it feels like all the bad is flooding my sinking ship as my hands frantically bail water. Drowning no longer skims the realm of impossibility; it’s probable. It always is if you risk treading water.

And I risked everything.

I haven’t heard from Bristol in a week. He’s gone radio silent. And after I exceeded my texting quota of five consecutive messages with no response, I gave up on trying to reach him. I didn’t want to humiliate myself further. You know the saying: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I wish I could say I’m not surprised. I wish I could say that this possibility didn’t cross my mind, but I was so blinded by the taste of life he gave me that I didn’t stop to question the authenticity of it. The way he pleasured me, the way he spoke to me, the way he held me that night until dawn cracked over the horizon—I thought I was finally out of the woods .

I don’t know what to do. The campaign is still happening. This whole “fake dating” scheme is still in play. He’ll have to talk to me eventually, and I’m afraid that I’ll forgive him the moment he apologizes. I’m afraid that I’ll reinforce this heartbreaking cycle. I blame myself for allowing this to happen again—for baring my soul to him and not expecting him to dig his fingers into it like a blackened bruise on the skin of an otherwise perfect peach.

I’ve been desperately waiting by my phone. I haven’t gone outside in days. It’s been a chore just to feed and shower myself. I feel like I’ve gone through the worst breakup of my life, and yet we were never together in the first place. The chocolate may have assisted my decision that night, but my heart was the ultimate sway vote. I trusted Bristol with my body. I trusted him with my soul. And now both remain tainted. He pursued me. He was the one begging for my forgiveness. He promised to fix things between us.

He has to be the evilest person on this fucking planet.

I push the straw of my drink around, watching as a mountain of ice cubes clink against the walls of the glass. Even though the sky is clear and sunlight warms the tops of my shoulders—which is rare for it being fall—I couldn’t be less enthused to be outside right now.

Aeris and I are situated on the patio of Deja Brew, shadowed by a trellis-like overhang ripe with vines of ivy that curl through weather-beaten boards. The seats of the chairs are crisscrossed with woven rope, while the metallic backs feature intricate whorls of stainless steel. The tables are small and unvarnished, lending to the rustic aesthetic of the local café, and some even have unsteady legs propped up with dog-eared books. Bushels of azalea periodically dot the perimeter, and strings of twinkle lights swoop low overhead, coiled around splintering supports and neighboring tree branches. The ground is layered in a medley of stones, all pieced together with rubble caulking and the occasional sprigs of grass.

Aeris wanted to treat me to lunch, and she wasn’t taking no for an answer. She got all scary on me and threatened to desecrate my red bottoms if I didn’t agree. So, I dragged myself out of bed in the most disgusting baggy sweatshirt and sweatpants combo, slathered on deodorant, and did absolutely nothing to the rat’s nest on my head. Rational Lila wouldn’t be caught dead wearing this outfit. Stains aren’t messy girl couture. It’s just…messy.

Aeris’ sympathetic gaze keeps loitering from behind her laminated menu, and she hastily works to fill the awkward silence escalating my pity party. She regales me with exciting stories about her job as a social media manager—which she was promoted to after some breakout vegan articles in partnership with the Riverside Reapers—and she’s careful not to mention her famed fiancé due to his…attachment to He Who Must Not Be Named.

I’m happy for her, I really am. She always believed she didn’t deserve to be loved, and that way of thinking had taken a toll on her before her hockey Prince Charming swept her off her feet. Now she’s the happiest I’ve seen her in the eight years I’ve known her.

“Do you want to split the garden sandwich?” she asks.

I haven’t even looked at the menu. “Not really hungry.”

Aeris folds her menu and sets it aside, a frown denting those rose-dusted cheeks of hers. “Li, you can’t keep beating yourself up over this. Brist— He Who Must Not Be Named —made his decision the moment he ghosted you. He was the one who fucked you over. He promised to change, and his actions didn’t reflect that.”

Nausea plugs my throat, exacerbated by the musty, half-baked smell of coffee beans and lukewarm BLTs. There’s nothing in my stomach except for acid, but it still manages to seethe like an incensed ocean. “I’m aware. I was there.”

She cringes. “Sorry. I just…I hate seeing you like this. I hate him for what he did to you. You didn’t deserve any of that. God, he had no right to treat you that way! He’s even worse than your textbook asshole. He’s…he’s…he’s a prolapsed anus with impressively good hair!” she half-shouts, and the mother seated a few feet away glowers at us while she covers her kid’s ears.

I can’t even bring myself to laugh. All I do is sigh, think back to the feeling of how soft his hair felt between my fingers, and nearly burst into tears. “He does have good hair,” I sniffle, shrinking into my seat and letting my oversized hoodie swallow me.

“No, Lila! No! I bet all his hair will fall out before he’s forty! You’ve always been out of his league. And there’s so many fish in the sea, you know? Your person is still out there waiting for you.”

My heart hurts. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to… exist . It feels like there’s an iron maiden clenched around my body, spearing rusty spikes into flesh and tendon, and jamming broken shards of my rib into the weakly pulsing organ in my chest.

“I just thought…” I try to squeeze the words from my trachea, but to little avail. They fight for freedom around my swollen tongue. “I just thought he was my person.”

“Oh, Li.” Aeris scoots her chair out from the table and comes over to bear-hug me, the comforting scent of lavender and strawberries embracing me as tightly as her arms. Her shoulder’s looking like cushy real estate to start crying on, but I’m in public, and I don’t need bloodshot eyes to go with my already disheveled appearance. I bury my face in her cable-knit sweater, trying to hide from the grief closing in on me, trying to run from a past that continues to follow me.

“I’m so sorry everything went down like this. But you have to know that it’s his loss, okay? Any guy would be lucky to know you, let alone have you in his life. You’re not just an incredible person, but you’re an incredible best friend, and you’re going to be an incredible wife one day. If some immature dickwad can’t see that, then he doesn’t deserve a second of your time.”

I squeeze fistfuls of the textured fabric between my fingers, as if the pressure will nullify the pain. “Why do I scare everyone away, Aeris? Why does everyone always leave?” I ask quietly, muzzling my lips when a long-buried wail flies up from the depths of my chest. My head immediately spins a self-deprecating web, the constant reminder of my dad’s absence clinging to me like spider silk swathing a helpless fly.

Aeris’ words splinter apart in her throat, sympathy a burden she carries on the flat plateaus of her shoulders. “You’re talking about your dad, aren’t you?”

“Fathers are supposed to love their daughters. What’s so wrong with me that my own flesh and blood disappeared off the face of the earth just to get away from me? Why…why am I not lovable? What did I do to drive him away?”

It’s your fault he left, Lila. Bristol knew that. It’s why he left too. Come on, we both know you were never cut out for love. You never loved any man you slept with in college. They never loved you back—not that that’s much of a surprise. You make up for your emotional immaturity by hypersexualizing yourself. And when guys realize how shallow you are, they take advantage of the only thing that you’re good for, which is sex.

“I pity your father, Li. I pity him because he’ll never get to know the wonderful, kind, selfless, ambitious woman you’ve become. It’s not your fault he disappeared. You didn’t do anything wrong. He ran at the first sign of hardship, and I hope he regrets it for the rest of his miserable life. He wasn’t ready to know you, and he will never deserve to know you.”

Aeris pets the back of my head in a way that reminds me so much of my mother. “I’m still here. I’ll always be here. ”

Loneliness is a curse. It curses me even when I have people in my life who’ve stayed by my side for years. So no, I’m not completely alone, but there’s a hole in my heart that yearns to be filled by romance, adventure, devotion…unconditional love. You could be on top of the world, rolling in fame and fortune, and still find loneliness waiting amongst dark corners.

I appreciate Aeris’ sentiment, I do, but it’s not the same. She’s found her soulmate. She’s found the person she wants to spend the rest of her life with—the person who’ll love her on her good days and love her even more on her bad ones.

I always dreamed of finding that for myself, but I was afraid it would never happen until Bristol showed me what I was missing. And once I’d been inducted into a world full of forehead kisses, discreet handholding, and longing stares, it was the only thing that mattered to me. But I don’t belong in that world. He reconfirmed that I never did.

When I pull back from Aeris, sadness wades in the brown of her irises, a gorge carved between her eyebrows. I hate seeing her upset. I hate dumping my problems on her. I wish I could skip the five stages of grief and just FastPass to overbearing numbness. I’m done feeling. I don’t want to feel anymore.

I don’t bother with wiping away the moisture waterlogging my eyes. “I’m always enough for sex, but never enough for love.”

“That’s not true,” she insists. “You’re more than enough. I know I’m not wise like you—nor am I great at talking half the time—but there’s so much of you to be loved. So much, and that scares people. Don’t try and dim your light because others are so used to living in the dark. Don’t think you’re worthy of anything less than love. I envy whoever gets to have you for the rest of their life, because just knowing you for a quarter of mine has already been the best gift I could’ve ever asked for.”

It's hard to accept yourself when you’ve been told your whole life that you’re too outspoken, too high maintenance, too domineering, too emotional. It gets so tiring, and in the end, it’s just easier to change yourself than live with the fact that you’re unlikeable. All I’ve ever wanted in life is validation—validation from the world, from men, from my dad. I’ve tried to be less opinionated. I’ve tried to be less career driven. I’ve tried to be less superficial. And every time I think I’ve gotten better, people give me a reason to doubt myself.

I hate myself. I hate who I’ve become. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to change, no matter how hard I try. I’m afraid that after my mom passes, I’ll be all alone. Maybe I deserve it.

If there’s one thing I like about modeling, it’s pretending.

Pretending to be a different person.

A person I don’t hate.

“Aeris…”

“No, Lila. I’m not going to sit here and listen to you blame yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. This is on Bristol and whatever the fuck is going on in his life. He should’ve figured his shit out before dragging you into this situation again,” she snaps, her tone rife with an iciness that preliminarily burns.

I don’t have anything to say. Rare, I know. My breath pinches, and when I inhale again, it feels like there’s a black miasma marinating in my bloodstream, waiting to seal my throat closed forever. I dissociate without realizing it. Everything around me blurs into indistinguishable blobs, and monotone cadences lull me into a numb, mindless state of catatonia. I’m surrounded by people, yet I’ve never felt more alone.

Everything just…stops. There are no telltale gasps for air or chest pains or gaping holes emerging in the pit of my stomach. And as bad as it is, in that moment of time when I’m brain-dead, I feel peace.

“Are we ready to order?” a cheery voice asks .

Aeris is still rubbing mollifying circles on my back. “Um, can we have a few more minutes please?”

I make eye contact with the barista for a split second—long enough for her to feel my pain—and she quickly apologizes before making herself scarce. I can’t believe this. Just last week I booked a gig to boost me to the top of the modeling world, and now, I’m breaking down in the back of Deja Brew. I wanted to be a front-page headline, but not like this. I’m a joke.

“I’m tired of feeling like I’m never good enough,” I hiccup, using Aeris’ sleeve as a makeshift tissue, the capillaries in my eyes close to bursting, and the heat in my head cloaking me like a weighted blanket.

“And I hate that you even feel that way,” she whispers. “I wish I could take all your pain away, Li. I wish you could see how truly amazing you are.”

While I unattractively blow my nose into my best friend’s super cute outfit, the clunk of—presumably fashionable—boots heads for our table, tailed by a clank of cutlery and dishware.

I peek from my safe haven to find the barista from earlier with a crumbly coffee cake in her hand, sporting a meek little smile that accentuates her pink, cherubic cheeks. “I figured you could use this. It’s, uh, it’s on the house,” she says, depositing the dish in front of me.

I un-Velcro myself from Aeris, pretend to fix my unsalvageable attire, and return a watery smile of my own. “Thank you.”

I didn’t get a good look at her before because, well, I was a bit preoccupied, but she can’t be more than five feet tall. She has long, silky, black hair that’s been thrown up into a messy bun, and her skin’s a beautiful light brown that glimmers in the midafternoon sun. Her name tag—crooked across her taupe apron—says SHILOH, complete with a tiny, hand-drawn smiley face .

“No problem. This coffee cake always cheers me up when I’m down. Maybe it can help you too.”

Before I can say anything else, she gets beckoned by another table, and she gives me and Aeris a small wave before wandering off in the opposite direction.

“See! It’s not all bad. You got a free coffee cake out of it.” Aeris—not bothering with any table manners—swipes a bit of cinnamon crumble from the top and sticks it in her mouth.

A win is a win, no matter the size, I guess. I offer to share it with her, sectioning the sweet bread down the middle with the side of my fork, but its trip to my mouth is cut short when Hayes comes barreling over to us.

“I need to talk to you,” he blurts out, gripping the ever-loving life out of our table.

Aeris fails to discreetly tilt her head at me. “Hayes, we’re kind of in the middle of something here.”

“Not you. I need to talk to Lila .”

I stuff a chunk of cake into my cheek because I’m going to need some carbs to sponge up the tears. “Why me?” I muffle around my food.

Hayes doesn’t bother to sit down, even though there’s a perfectly good chair right in front of him. “It’s about Bristol.”

Of course it is. Bristol probably sent him here to enact damage control.

Swallowing the delicious streusel—and now a mouthful of bile—I wave a dismissive hand, standing my ground even in my dirty, hole-filled shoes. “No thanks. I’d rather not spoil my appetite by talking about that limp-dick loser.”

“Atta girl!” Aeris exclaims loudly, turning her nose up at her fiancé in solidarity.

“No, I—” Hayes sighs, defeatedly taking a seat in the chair. “I don’t know what happened between you two last weekend, but I’m not trying to absolve him. He doesn’t even know I’m here right now. He’s been in a slump for a week. He won’t eat, he won’t shower, he won’t talk to us.”

So I should feel bad for him because he’s finally dealing with the consequences of his actions?

Anger’s copiloting the plane right now, and I don’t think Little Timmy next to us wants to hear the not-so-kid-friendly insults I have waiting for takeoff. The tears have dried, and I’m not against smashing my cake in Aeris’ fiancé’s face.

“No offense, Hayes, but being someone’s bitch is only a good look when that someone is your soon-to-be wife.”

Hayes opens his mouth, but I hold up my hand.

“Respectfully, I don’t care what you have to say. I applaud you for being a good friend, but I’m never going to trust Bristol after the way he treated me. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try and change my mind.”

Aeris gives me a supportive thumbs-up while she simultaneously pats Hayes on the shoulder.

“I’d never try and change your mind. One, because you scare me. And two, because accountability is kind of this new thing I’m endorsing.” He glances at his fiancée, and they share this lovey-dovey look that’s disgustingly adorable.

Hayes knows all about taking accountability. He confessed to the entire world how he broke Aeris’ heart and lied about reshaping his image. He groveled, of course, and things were amended, but the difference between Hayes and Bristol is that Hayes made a one-time mistake. Bristol keeps making mistakes.

Though I will admit an evil part of me preens at the fact that I’ve got Hayes by the balls in case Aeris ever needs backup. “Good. Then skedaddle along before I ask these overworked and understaffed employees to escort you out of here.”

I can tell he wants to argue, but all he does is stand up. “All I’m going to say is that you don’t know the full story. There are trust issues on both sides here, and you two will never reach an understanding if you aren’t completely honest with each other.”

You still have to work with him, Lila. The whole world’s been tricked into believing that Hollywood’s new “it” couple is nothing but perfect. As much as you hate him, you love your job even more, right?

“What story could you possibly be talking about?” I scoff, displaying a visage of nonchalance when on the inside, my heart begs for the truth that will finally end this near-constant pain.

Hayes extends an olive branch—or more appropriately, his car keys. “Maybe that’s something you should ask him.”