Page 34 of Not My Friend
My stomach roiled as I asked myself the question I never wanted to ask – was Gina cheating on me?
Then I reminded myself about how Gina had gone off the handle and accused me of cheating when she saw me with someone she didn’t know. It had felt shitty. More than that, the cheating accusations that led to our break-up almost killed me. Besides, she wouldn’t cheat on me. I knew it in my bones. There had to be another explanation. I pulled out my phone and texted her.
Kim:Hey, what are you up to tonight?
I watched as Gina looked down at her phone. She held up one finger to stop the person she was with from talking, then tapped out a quick reply before turning her attention back to the man she was with.
Gina:I’m at a work meeting. I’ll text you later.
“What did she say?” Tammy asked.
I turned my phone so she could read the screen.
“That lying bitch! That is no work meeting. I should go in there and give her a piece of my mind,” she said hotly.
I grabbed her arm. “Please don’t make a scene. There’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.”
Tammy’s eyebrows rose almost to her hairline, telling me she didn’t believe that at all.
“An explanation for why she kissed and hugged a good looking guy in an ice cream shop, then told you it was a work meeting?” she asked incredulously. “I’ve had a lot of jobs, and none of my coworkers ever slipped me the tongue.”
“It was a closed mouth kiss,” I reminded her. “And brief. It’s not like they were making out.”
“Yeah, well explain why they’re holding hands now then,” Tammy demanded.
Gina was leaning across the table, her hand wrapped in the man’s as they seemed to talk about something serious.
Suddenly, I’d had enough spying on my girlfriend. It didn’t feel right.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m not hungry for ice cream anymore.”
“Well I am.”
When she started walking towards the shop I tugged her arm to stop her.
“Please Tammy, let me handle this myself.”
“What are you going to do?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’ll figure out what’s going on, then deal with it.”
I didn’t hear from Gina that night, which was weird. We almost always texted each other in the evening to check in on our days or wish each other good night. I sat on my couch with Vader in my lap, staring sightlessly at the TV while I tried to figure out what was going on. What happened was so out of character for Gina that it didn’t compute.
“I need to talk to her, right?” I asked Vader. “Act like an adult?”
My cat yawned but didn’t respond.
“Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like. In fact, it probably wasn’t. First of all, Gina told me she hasn’t been with a guy since college. And secondly, she wouldn’t do something like that to me. She’s not a cheater. Tammy’s wrong.”
I knew that in my heart, but my brain kept replaying how cozy she’d seemed to be with the mystery guy. Vader stood up, pawed my legs a few times, then turned once before settling back in my lap.
“But she lied to me. I saw it with my own eyes. That was no work thing. It was clearly personal. Why would she lie? Lying’s almost as bad as cheating.”
I shook my head, no ideas coming to me, but when I didn’t hear from Gina until the next morning, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going on with her. Something bad.
Gina
Something was wrong with Kimberly. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but she’d been really quiet. She hadn’t initiated any conversation all week, which was out of character for her. Her answers to my texts were terse, and when I invited her to come over and watch a movie Wednesday night she just said she couldn’t, with no other explanation.
