Page 55 of Forked (Frenched 2)
Gooseflesh broke out on my skin. The night we broke up? What the hell was he talking about? “About what?”
“About cheating on you. The last time.”
I pulled back from him. Looked him in the eye. “What do you mean, you lied?”
“I didn’t do it. I never slept with anyone else that spring.”
The water, which had been pleasantly chilly before, suddenly felt icy. “What? Why did you tell me you did?”
“So that you’d break up with me. But I’m tired of being called a cheater. Being thought of that way. I didn’t do it.”
I unwrapped my legs from around his waist, and my feet floated down to the bottom. “I don’t understand. Why did you want me to break up with you?”
“After Mia told me you’d been accepted to that program in Paris, I thought about it a lot. I didn’t want you to leave, but I realized how important it was for you to go.”
I took my arms from around his neck and stared at him, waiting for him to go on.
He ran a hand over his hair. “I went to your apartment to tell you to go, but you refused. So I made up the lie about sleeping with someone else so you’d do it.”
My heart was thundering so hard it sounded like canons in my head. “I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true,” he said, his expression sincere. “And it worked. You threw me out. You threw everything out.”
“Because I was fucking mad!” I yelled, smacking the water. “You deserved it! And I’m not even sorry, because that was a shitty thing to do to me, even if it was a lie. You destroyed me that night. You watched me fall apart.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shook my head, tiny little movements that mimicked the drill of my pulse. “No. No. I don’t believe you. You fucked some random girl just like you told me you did. You did it because you were mad that I lied to you. You’d done it before, and you did it again.”
“I was mad that you lied, but I hadn’t cheated on you in over a year, Coco, I swear.” He held up his palms. “And I’m only telling you now because I want to move forward with a clean slate. And I thought it would help you to know that I wasn’t unfaithful to you that year.”
“Help me?” I stared at him, my stomach churning. “My God, do you know what I went through that night? The agony of thinking you betrayed me after we’d been so close that year? Of thinking you fucked someone else?” I put my hands to my head. The world was spinning.
“I went through it too. I hated hurting you. It killed me, knowing it was all a lie.”
I ducked under the water, exhaling so I’d sink to the bottom. I couldn’t hear another word. Was he telling the truth? He hadn’t slept with someone else? That lie had changed everything. It set things in motion that brought us to the end. The morning after we broke up I’d called my mother to say I’d changed my mind and had decided to go to Paris after all. She’d been so thrilled, she’d booked a flight and paid my deposit within hours, probably because she was scared I’d try to back out. But I’d assured her things between Nick and me had ended, and I couldn’t wait to get away from everything that would remind me of him. Now he was telling me my decision had been based on a lie? Goddamn him!
With my lungs about to burst, I surfaced again.
“Jesus Christ, Nick,” I said, gulping air. “I can’t wrap my brain around this. I don’t know whether to be glad you didn’t cheat or furious you told me you did. That lie was the start of everything.”
“I know, but I thought I was doing the right thing, especially when Mia told me you’d decided to go. You had a ticket by the next day.”
“Well, you weren’t doing the right thing, manipulating me that way. That wasn’t your decision to make. And damn Mia for telling you that.”
He reached for my arm, but I wrenched it away. “Don’t blame her. I called her and begged her to tell me if you were going. I didn’t want to think I’d wrecked everything for no reason. And she didn’t know I’d lied about cheating.”
I gave him a cold stare. “She couldn’t have. She would have told me the truth long before now, because she knew what it did to me, thinking you’d been unfaithful. Christ, Nick. What a shit thing to do.”
Nick pressed his lips together for a second. “I was twenty-two, Coco. I didn’t reason through it the right way. I just knew your family wanted you to go and knew they’d blame me if you didn’t. No matter what you say,” he went on, holding up his hand when I opened my mouth to argue, “they never thought I was right for you, good enough for you.”
“They didn’t think anybody was good enough for me! I’m the youngest and the only girl, Nick. For fuck’s sake, I wasn’t even allowed to date until I was sixteen. And they never liked anyone I brought home—they still don’t!” I couldn’t believe we were back to this again. Was he really trying to pin our problems on my family? He was the asshole here
“They wanted someone with money,” he said, his jaw set. “Just admit it. Someone who drove a nice car like yours and majored in poli sci and took his junior year abroad and played tennis at the club and owned his own golf shoes.”
“Are you crazy?” I stared at him. “Where are you getting all this?”
He closed his eyes and took a breath. “Maybe it’s crazy now, but it’s how I felt at the time. My truck wasn’t good enough for you, my clothes weren’t expensive, I couldn’t take you out to nice places—and if I did, you always insisted on paying the bill.”
