“Okay.” But what I really meant was give me a minute to process. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Did something happen?” Had she seen me in the hall with Reeve after all?
“What happened is you’re in the way and I need you gone. You being here has ruined everything.” The intensity of her voice increased abruptly. Hints of accusation became full-out blame so quickly it was obvious that she’d been holding these feelings for quite some time.
Well, I had feelings I’d been holding on to for a while as well. “You’re the one who talked me into coming!”
“You know why I did that,” she seethed, her eyes narrow. “And I shouldn’t have. I should have realized that nothing’s changed, that you’ll always come between me and whoever I love.”
“Wait… what? When have I ever…?” The only other man who’d been an issue had been the one who’d raped me. “You said that you knew I didn’t go after Bridge.”
She shook her head dramatically. “It doesn’t matter if you went after them or not,” she said, heading into my closet. “They always wanted you more. You were always the prize.”
I followed after her. “What the hell are you talking about? That was you. Which one of any of the men that we’ve been with didn’t want you the more?”
She spun toward me. “Oh, let’s see. Bridge, Rob, Liam, Bryan.” She ticked the names on her fingers as she named them. “Reeve.” She turned back to her task, jerking sundresses off hangers and piling them over her arm.
I was flabbergasted. “Bridge was a sick asshole. Rob was your boyfriend. Bryan – Bryan proposed! To you!”
“Bryan only wanted me if you were part of the package. Liam liked playing house with me, but he wanted you. And Rob? Are you serious?” She paused to read my reaction. “Rob was the whole reason I found you in the first place.” Then she trekked back out to dump the clothes she’d gathered into my suitcase.
I hesitated for a second before trailing after her. “What are you talking about?” Her last statement, as incomprehensible as it was, also resonated with potential. Like, discovering a connection that had always existed but had never been fully realized.
Her jaw tensed, and I suspected she regretted bringing it up.
But it was too late to take it back now. “Tell me what you’re talking about, Amber. What do you mean Rob was the reason you found me in the first place?”
She folded a dress into a square, the same dress she’d just folded. “Did you think it was my idea to bring someone else into my relationship with him?” she asked, quietly.
“You wanted to share him with me. Because we were friends.” It was what I’d believed for so long, but saying it out loud, it felt hollow.
“You’re as naïve now as you were then.”
I leaned against the foot of the bed, my head spinning. “That night we first hung out…” The questions she’d asked – would I go for an older man, had I kissed a girl, wanting to see my breasts. “What was that? A screening?”
“Ding, ding, ding!”
“That night was everything to me. It changed my life.” I sounded like a kid who’d just discovered the truth about Santa Claus. I felt like one, too – stunned, disappointed, betrayed. “And that was just for him?”
“Yes,” she snapped.
She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “No. That’s not true.” Her voice was softer. She dropped her hand and met my eyes. “I mean. He wanted me to find someone to join us. But I found you because I needed to find you. And I didn’t take you to him at first because I wanted you to myself. Then I wanted you with me everywhere.”
My legs felt weak, so weak. I sunk to the ground, my back pushed against the footboard for support. Our friendship, the one relationship I’d built my entire life around, and it was based on a lie.
Amber dropped to the floor beside me. “That night meant everything to me, too, Emily. It wasn’t just for him. I didn’t mean that. I meant that I wasn’t looking for friends back then. And he forced me to go out and it ended up being the best thing because I found you.”
I hugged my knees to my chest, as if, by curling up into a ball, I could somehow close the wound she’d opened.
“Please believe me, Em.” She scooted closer, her expression sincere. “If it had been just for him, would I have kept you around for all those years after?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I retorted, my throat tight. “Maybe you kept me around to get the men since they ‘always wanted me more’.”
“You still don’t see it, do you?” Her tone was gentle, affectionate. “This isn’t something I made up to make you mad. Think about it. Really look back and think about it.”
I didn’t need to think about it. I remembered everything. Our past lived in my head with startling clarity. I could recall it at any time without any prodding.
Still, I found myself looking at it again now. Because she’d challenged it and because I suddenly didn’t trust anything, including my memory.
But try as I might, I didn’t see what she wanted me to see. “I was always the third wheel. You were captivating and dynamic. You were the main girlfriend. I always had the spare room.”
“You always chose the spare room.”
I twisted to look at her. “Because I thought that’s what you wanted!”
“It was!” She smiled, and I could see it was a tactic to fight tears. “It just wasn’t what any of them wanted.”