Page 70 of Dirty Chorus

“Okay...”

The second I close my eyes, it lights out. I know at some point I wrapped my arms around Charlie like a cocoon, and she hasn’t budged. She clenched her fingers around my palms as if her life depended on it. I know I’m barely catching four hours of sleep, and I’m going to be dragging my feet on the carpet the second I have to work, but when orange light spills through the blinds, my brain doesn’t feel clouded with exhaustion. It talks to me, poking me with a stick to get up.

I unwrap myself from Charlie, who’s dead asleep, her hair wild on the pillowcase, and there's a small puddle of drool. Isn’t that cute? I clean the sand out of my eyes as I sit on the edge of the bed. A low buzz vibrates on the floor. It’s in Charlie’s purse, and I use two fingers to take a peek.

It’s her phone. I wouldn’t bother paying attention, but it buzzes again, and two seconds pass, and it continues to vibrate. It’s six thirty in the morning, and there's an influx of notifications pouring in. I pull her cell out, my blood running thin with his name running across the screen. Brody.

Brody: Who the fuck are you with?

Brody: Is it that faggot from the movie theater again?

Brody: You really set your standards high on this one. He’s a fucking loser.

Brody: Come on, baby. You know I love you. Write back. We can make things work. You can’t stay mad at me forever.

Why the fuck does he keep sliding into her messages like this? I slide my thumb up, but the phone wants a password. Fuck. This is something you don’t do. It’s Charlie’s phone. This violates trust, and I’m sweating thinking about what’s beyond the password.

My heart is brittle, and it’s begging for some assurance she isn’t telling him she still cares. I carefully put the phone to Charlie’s face, pressing a few buttons until it gives me the checkmark and unlocks the device.

My consciousness screams at me to stop. What the hell am I doing? This is some shit I only see online. I should put the phone back in her purse, but I scroll until I find her text messages and open them. There are over twenty text messages from Brody, all from last night. There are more messages from him than a single response from her. When I do come across a response, it’s just her asking him to leave her alone. The little three dots appear at the bottom of the screen as he's typing again.

Brody: So you’re gonna keep leaving me on read? Answer me!

I’ll fucking answer you. I flip on the camera, making sure he gets a good visual of me flipping the bird, and a blurry background image of Charlie sleeping. She’s in my bed. Not yours. I’m the one making her come, all her moans are from me, and all of her is mine. I don’t type out a message. I just send him the picture and watch as the little read receipt pops up in the right-hand corner. Then nothing. Her phone goes silent, and I think he’s got the hint.

Chapter 30

Charlie

Noah convinced me to go home. I parked on the curbside by my house, and I don’t know how I even got here. Somewhere on the highway my brain zoned out, and I’m questioning whether I ran any red lights, if I somehow made another car crash into a ditch.

I grab my phone hanging out in one of my cup holders that’s caked in layers of sticky leftover soda. Swiping up, I go onto my Instagram, using a thumb to death scroll through my personal page and all the pictures I once took of Brody and I.

Payton’s right. I’m pathetic for not deleting any of these. They still sit untouched with memories I really need to delete from existence, and the longer they stay on my feed the longer I’ll be holding onto broken pieces of myself.

When I click on a picture, I can pull apart all the tiny bits of that day before the picture was snapped. If he was being rotten towards me, if we actually had a good day, if he was drunk, or if we got into a heated argument. All of it meshing together. I know what skeletons all the pictures hide. At some point, I think I was trying to convince myself I was happy with him. I start to click on each one of them, deleting them and hating the notification that I could restore them if I wanted to. I want everything wiped off my phone, as if we had never met in the first place.

I do one more thing I should've done... I follow Noah on Instagram along with several thousand gothic girls who are all obsessed with him. It takes barely three seconds before the little notification that he followed me back pops up, and I’m doing that weird thing where you want to hysterically cry but laugh at the same time. When another notification beeps, he’s commenting on a picture Payton captured of me trying to be cute with my pom-poms. He leaves me several red hearts, and it makes mine pump faster.

The best part is that out of all his followers, he’s barely following ten people, and one of them is me.

Headlights flash across my windshield, and I spot Brody’s white Camaro parking in front of my car. I debated for several long seconds. Either I stay in the car with the doors locked or I meet him face to face. I gather my purse and swing open the car door with a foot. The damp air washes over me, and the road glimmers from the storm that rolled through earlier this morning.

Broody’s car door slams, and he’s cracking his knuckles. A pure sign he’s ticked off. I already feel the walls around me caving in. He’s a blurry figure in the distance, as he straightens out his jersey jacket with both hands.

Even from here, his face appears hard as granite, and his eyes slice through the distance between us. He walks over with cool, collected steps, but I already know he’s manipulating me. His mouth is pressed in a thin line, but his jaw twitches. I’m super-glued to the sidewalk when he’s feet away.

“Hey...” Brody uses a thumb to wipe his bottom lip before dipping his hands into his jean pockets. “We need to talk.”

“About what?” I ask.

“About your little boy toy you keep flaunting in my face.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not flaunting him.”

“Oh, you don’t know?” He lifts an eyebrow. I dig my fingers into my purse.

“No, I don’t,” I shake my head, glaring at the ground.