CHAPTER 50: RECONCILE?

Sophia.

All right, all right, all right. I don’t mean to sound like Matthew McCon…(how do you spell his name?)...McConaughey. But come on, what the hell is the world coming to now? Ever since we got to this cursed place, incredibly weird and incredibly horrible shit keeps happening. I mean really? What the hell?

I sat in the office I shared with Myla (who I’d thought was my best friend) and stared blankly at the darkened monitor in front of me. My mind was going about a million miles per hour. Work was out of the question but if anyone gave me shit over it, I was going to direct them straight to Fabian Ness himself. He was the one that came in here, stole Myla away, and has been gone for…

I glanced over at the clock on the wall.

Jesus, I thought to myself, it’s been almost three hours on the dot.

So the girl goes from a 23-year-old virgin to getting laid more than me. Again I say, what the hell was the world coming to? And oh…let’s not forget the fact that she had already BANGED the girl I was currently sleeping with before I even got the chance. I mean…damn. Just…damn. It seriously pissed me off. I could forgive all that, I really can, but it was the fact that she hadn’t come to me at all during all this. In fact, I was pretty much the last person to know and Grace was the one that told me. Grace! We barely even knew her.

The door suddenly opened, shaking me out of my thoughts. My whole body jerked at the unexpected noise too, which made me feel even dumber.

“Oh, hey.”

Myla was back, I saw. I also noticed that her clothes were a bit rumpled and out of place. She’d definitely been screwing then.

“Hey back, traitor,” I practically snarled. Whoops. Looks like there’s more bitterness and (if I’m being serious) a whole lot of pettiness lurking inside me. Maybe a bit of hurt too. Did being my friend mean so little to her?

“Sorry for…um…being gone so long.” She had this stupid, shy smile thing going on that only further irritated me. But I wondered, should I bother unleashing my full and righteous anger on her? Or was it all pointless?

“Starting to be the norm around here,” I replied.

Looks like bitchiness and pettiness will win out, apparently.

“I thought…” she replied. Her voice went quiet for a second and it practically cracked with her nervousness.

“Thought what?” I asked. “That we were good?”

I wanted to laugh derisively at her but dammit, just looking at her stupid and naive face made me hesitate. She just looked so…fucking innocent. Like a baby. And how can you be mad at a baby? That’s what it felt like. It made me think I was the one that was insane even though Myla was the one with all the damn problems.

“Uh…y…yes?” she said.

She stood there at the door for a little bit, just staring at me. Apparently, when I didn’t really say or do anything, she got more awkward-looking and then stiffly walked over to her desk. She sat down but didn’t turn on her computer or anything. Instead, she just stared at me with this goofy expectant look.

“What do you want from me?” I asked. “I’m not the one that’s been distant and keeping shit from the other. That’d be you, remember?”

“I know and I’m a real b…” She took in a breath and then tried again. Apparently she was still a prude when it came to cussing too. “Bitch.”

“Oh goody for you. Ms. Big-Girl-In-Her-Big-Girl-Pants said a grown-up word,” My voice was icy and dripping with sarcasm.

“Stop, Sophs. Please,” she said, her voice thick with desperation and neediness. “You know I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“Hurt my feelings? Seriously?” I leaned forward in my chair and glared at her. “I’m not hurt, Myla. I’m crushed. I thought I could get over this but we’ve been here for weeks and in all that time, you’ve secretly been dating our boss, who, I might add, I’ve been into since…I don’t know…forever. But he likes you so whatever. I can forgive that. But then you fuck the chick that I’m sort of, kinda, seeing right now too! And before I did. Did you come to me with that information? Fuck no!”

“I would have, I swear. But everything's been happening so fast, Sophs. And it’s not like I deliberately tried to keep that from you. I just haven’t had time. Fabian ended up finding us together and…”

I held up a hand and her voice cut off.

“Wait, what do you mean by that?” I asked. Okay, I was still angry, but come on…this was some good gossip. Fabian found her with someone else? And they’re still together? How the hell did she swing that? Fabian did not strike me as the type of guy to let infidelity slide.

“Well, I…uh…you know, we had just…”

“Oh my God, just spit it out Myla.”

“Wait, so are you still mad at me?” she asked, fear and concern tainting her voice.

“Yes, I am.” I let out a long sigh and then smiled faintly. “But, if I’m being honest, it’s not like I’ve been that great of a friend lately either. I’ve been shit-talking you behind your back with Grace. I didn’t tell you about Su. I’ve avoided you. All because I was pissed at you. What you did was worse, but like I said, I’m not an angel in this situation either.”

“You talked about me with Grace?” she asked.

“Hold on,” I told her. “We’ll get to that later. I want to know all the details about what happened with Su and Fabian. She hasn’t said anything to me about that but again, we just sort of started hooking up so that’s okay. So what happened?”

“You really want me to tell you this story?” she asked.

“I’m fine. For now anyway,” I told her, waving a hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. “We’ll fight, or rather, I’ll talk sternly at you, you’ll apologize, I’ll apologize, and then we’ll move on. We’ll both get over it.”

“We will?” she asked, unsure.

“Yeah. Of course we will. We’re practically sisters. It’ll take a lot more than all this to ruin our friendship. Right?”

“Uh…yeah,” she said, still unsure. I raised both my eyebrows at her. “I mean, yeah. Definitely.” She said again, her voice more sure of itself this time.

She actually started to smile then and seemed to visibly relax. That was good. I was still angry with her but it was hard to watch her squirm like that or watch her look so uncomfortable. She wasn’t a confrontational person by nature, not like I was. In fact, she pretty much wilted like a dying flower whenever anyone got angry with her. It was stupid (which I’ve told her about a thousand times before) but apparently that was too ingrained in her now for her to completely get rid of. That was a shame really. It must suck to be that way, always frightened of getting into a confrontation with someone or having someone be angry with you. Seems like a shitty way to live, if I’m being honest.

Like always, my thoughts on the matter only made me feel bad for the woman.

“So…” I pressed. “Tell me…” I looked her dead in the eyes. “Everything.”

I think we spent the next hour or so going over all the details of everything that happened with Myla since getting here and working at Roseforce. The longer she talked, the more my jaw started to drop. A mistaken, drunk text originally meant for me had started this whole thing?

“Let me get this straight,” I said, trying to wrap my mind around all this. “You thought you were texting me to send you up a MALE PROSTITUTE! but it went to our boss instead? And…” I closed my eyes and took a breath, still working on processing all this. “...he actually did come? And then the two of you had sex? You lost your virginity to…Fabian Ness?”

She nodded her head but didn’t say anything else.

“And then, after that, you two spent another night together?” I asked. I started getting angry again but not at Myla, just the entire situation. This was about the most entertaining bit of gossip I think I’ve ever heard.

“Yes, but that time, we didn’t have sex,” she said. “It was after…” She looked at me and gave a sort of shrug. “...well…all that stuff happened with George. When he tried to frame me.”

“I remember. I know he…” I drew a line across my throat. “...offed himself but a snake like that deserved what he got.”

“Don’t say that,” Myla said, a gasp of shock escaping her. “He’s dead, Sophs.”

“Yeah, well, after the shit he’s done, good riddance is what I say,” I told her. “But let’s skip past that. What did you two do if you didn’t fuck?”

“He just held me. Comforted me. And he didn’t try anything else either, before you ask.”

“What a gentleman,” I replied. That sounds like sarcasm but I actually did mean it. I still remembered the night George tried to frame Myla. The asshole. That had wrecked her and while we may have been fighting recently, that didn’t mean I didn’t care about her or her wellbeing. “Sounds like everything was going great. You had sex with him. Spooned. Then he did that whole thing with the contract. Kind of weird, but I sort of get it too. What made you toss all that aside like garbage and fuck Su?”

There was some heat to my words when I asked that question, but come on! I feel that is owed. It sounded like she and Fabian were headed down a really great road until she did that. It was a valid question.

“That…is…well, kind of hard to…”

“The truth makes you look like an irredeemable bitch, right?” I asked.

She didn’t answer but she didn’t need to either. I could see the truth in her eyes.

“It was that day I went to see Fabian in the hospital by myself. I finally worked up the courage to do it. But when I got there, Grace was there.” She looked emotional just retelling the story. Her eyes were even tearing up.

I perked up.

“What? Are you serious?” I asked. That one actually did take me by surprise. Grace never mentioned anything about seeing Fabian in the hospital and definitely didn’t mention anything about an interaction with Myla there. I feel stupid now. That bitch must have been using me to get at Myla.

Fuck, and I played right into her bitchy little hands.

“She was and she was NOT happy that I was there,” Myla said, a little hitch to her voice. Clearly, whatever happened between the two of them, she was not over it. “When she saw me there, she snapped at me. And got really mean. I…”

Her voice failed her yet again. She worked through the emotions inside her and I could see them crossing through her eyes and her face.

“I thought she was a friend, Sophs. But when she…she…” She gritted her teeth and forced herself to not cry. “It hurt and I felt betrayed. I admit, I didn’t handle things well after that. I thought…it doesn’t matter what I thought. I got emotional, got drunk, met Su at the bar, and then let all of that swirl into a really, really, really, bad decision.”

Her eyes grew impassioned and practically blazed at me.

“I know it was stupid and I swear to you, it meant nothing for either of us. Su was just…there. And she understood. Things just went kind of crazy from there.”

“I get it,” I said after a minute or two to digest everything she’d just told me. Especially where Grace was concerned. That still hit me hard. Like Myla, I thought she’d been a friend. With everything Myla just said, it was even more clear she’d just been using me to try and get at my friend. “Also, I’ve been there myself. I’ve made bad decisions just like that a dozen times or more. Don’t beat yourself up about it now. And I promise, I won’t either. I don’t like that it was Su you had sex with, but I’ll get over that.”

I gave her a small smirk.

“Eventually,” I added.