Broken Fairytales (49 page)

Five minutes later, I was still pacing my room, not able to sit
down
.
I was also
still
in the same
clothes
from the night before
, making me somewhat of a hypocrite
,
as I’d jus
t done the walk of shame myself, but
I told
myself that it was different. It was Zack.
I cared abo
ut him, and he cared about me.
It wasn’t a drunk hook-up.
It was real. W
hat Chase had done was much, much worse.

I was starting to wear a hole in the carpet when Rachel appea
red in the doorway to my room.
She’d gotten dressed and pulled her hair back into a ponytail which made her look younger and
much less menacing than usual.
In the hall
I heard
t
he water come in the shower. I
t ap
peared Chase had escaped to the bathroom
. 

I
turned to face Rachel
,
anger
still flashing across my face.
“I am so mad at him right now,” I
said, crossing the room to her.
“Are you okay?” I reached out an embraced my best friend, knowing that she probabl
y
felt like shit
.

“I’m fine, Em,” she said calmly, not returning my hug.

I released her and stepped back. “You are?”

She sighed.
“
Yeah.
Sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit,” I said, cr
ossing my arms in front of me.
“I’m too pissed to sit.”

“Fine, then I’ll sit,” she said, moving a
round me and sitting on
the bed, crossing her legs Indian style. 

I stood in front of her, not sure what else to do.

“The thing is,” she said, “I’m fine, because Chase didn’t do anything wrong.”

I shook
my head slightly. “He didn’t?
Are you kidding–”

She held her ha
nd up to stop me from talking.
I clamped my mouth shut and waited, hoping she had a good explanation.

“
Yes, I was drunk.
Yes, he walked
me home.
Yes, we slept together, but it wasn’t the first time, and that’s not all it is.”

My eyebrows shot up in surp
rise, but I didn’t say a word.
There were nine million questions I was dying to get out, but I couldn’t utter one word.

Finally, I gutted out, “Not the first time! You’ve slept with my brother before?! What the hell were you thinking?
And why am I just now finding out about this?!
”

“We’re actually together,” she explained, and
my eyebrows went even higher. “We’ve been seeing each other for a while now
.”

“You’re what?
What are you talking about?”

“He’s
my boyfriend
.”
she said, smili
ng and looking down at her lap
before looking
back up at me.

“
He’s
–
w
hat?”
I asked, thoroughly confused.
I couldn’t figure out what
s
he was talking about.
“
I thought your
boyfriend’s name was
Michael
.
”

Rachel bit her lip.

“You lied to me,” I said, realiz
ing that she’d been keeping her relationship
a secret
from me
. Every conversation we’d had about ‘Michael’ had been a lie.
“How long have you been together?”

“Since March,” she eeked out.

“March! I visited you in March. Are you telling me you were sleeping with my brother when I visited you
,
and you didn’t tell me
?
!”

I was essentially screaming at her, but I didn’t care. I was furious that she’d lied to me abo
ut something so huge
.

“I wasn’t dating him
then,” she insisted. “We ran into each other a few weeks after you left New York. We were both at The Met one afternoon. We kept running into each other at the same exhibits, so when we were leaving, Chase asked if I wanted to grab a beer. So I did, and that was kind of it.”

My jaw dropped. “You’re seriously dating Chase.”

She nodded,
and I could tell she felt awful not telling me.

“So, there never was a Michael.”
She shoo
k her head, then
I caught up.
“W
ait a minute, M
ichael is Chase’s middle name.
Is that where that came from?
”

She nodded

“And
Amy is your middle name.”

She nodded again.
“We thought it would be easier, since technically we weren’t lying.”

I gave her a look that said
her
logic was cl
early warped.
“You were ly
ing.
I cannot believe you kept this from
me!”

She looked down
and then met my gaze
again.
“Em, you hated Chas
e.
How could I tell you?
I had to lie.
I wanted to tell you how happy I was, so I made up a semi-fake guy, but I swear, all the
details I told you were true.
That was all Chase.
”

“So when ‘Michael’ surprised you, that was really Chase?”

She nodded. “He was never with Molly at the
music
festival. It was just a good excuse that would get him out of town for a few days, so he could come see me.”

“And he designed your tattoo?”

She nodded again.

I felt my eye
s start to well up with tears. “Rach, I’m your best friend.
How could you
keep this from me
? I would have understood.
Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have, but
that’s beside the point.
You still should have told me.”

She nodded, and we both looked up as
the water shut off in
the bathroom. “I should have.
I’m sorry, I didn’t, but I was so afraid you’d judge me or think less of me or something, because you couldn’t see what I saw
in him
.”

“Okay,
so what do you see?” I asked.
Even though Chase and I had become closer over t
he summer, he was still Chase.
I didn’t
necessarily
see the allure.

She smiled and looked toward the hallway where the
bathroom door had just opened.
We could hear
Chase padding toward his room.
She waited until he closed the door before saying anything.

“He’s smart and funny
,
and he’s
so nice to me.
I know
you guys have never really got along
, and he was a jerk to me growing up
too
, but I don’t know
,
I think he grew up or something.
We
talked
and laughed
for hours that first day we went out. It was
really
fun.
After that, I kept
hoping I’d
run into him
again
.
Finally I just called him and asked him out.
He was so different than any of the other guys
I’d been dating. He was original, and I loved that about him
.”

I swallowed hard, thinking tha
t it was ironic that she’d used pretty much
the same descriptio
n for Chase as I had for Zack.
The worst part was that I underst
ood where she was coming from.
All the guys we hung out with, including Ben, were cookie-
cutter versions of each other.
It was rare to find guy
who didn’t conform to the crowd
– who was potentially a bad boy, but a great guy at the same time
.

“For a while we just sort of hung out together, going to dinner and the the
ater and to museums
. It was honestly a little strange since I’d disliked him for so long, but in reality,
he was totally different than I’d
thought.”

I nodded, knowing exactly what she was talking about. I’d misjudged Chase too.

“I wasn’t really sure what we were doing until one day
in April when I realized how much I liked him, but I had no idea how he felt. W
e were walking back from Brooklyn Brewery
,
and we’d both had a decent amount to drink.”

I was riveted at that
point, and a little disturbed, as this was my brother we were talking about, but still, I was on the edge of my seat.

“I stumbled as we were walking across the bridge, and Chase caught my arm. When he pulled me up, we totally had one those movie moments where
we looked in each other’s
eyes for a few seconds, each wondering if the other would make the first move. Then he kissed me, an
d it was the best first kiss I’ve
ever had.”

“Aww, I mean eww, but really aww,” I said, thinking that that was one of the sweetest things I’d ever heard
, even if it was my brother she was talking about kissing
.

She smiled.
“I know, too cute, right.”

“So
what happened then?”

“
He
walked me back to my apartment
and asked if he could take me out to dinner that night, like on a
real
date. T
hen came over to pick me up
, and it was sort of awkward, because we
were both so nervous and
knew
we were going to cross a line.
I mean we’d had so
me seriously flirty conversation
s, but
they’d never gone any further than flirting. Now, he was standing inches from
my bed
, and we’d just kissed
that afternoon
, and it was so awkward, but in a really good, ‘I’m really into this new guy I met’ kind of way
.”

“Do I want to hear this?” I a
sked grimly, really not wanting to hear about their first time.

She stuck her tong
ue out at me.
“Yes,
you
’ll be fine.”

Tired of standing, I slunk down against the wall and pulled my knees to my chest waiting for her to continue.

“Because we both seemed so on edge, I poured us some drinks. Then we sat there in silence
, sippin
g
vodka and cranberry juice, since it was all I had, and feeling ten shades of awkward. Finally Chase turned to me and said,
‘I really want to kiss you
again
. Can I?’ So, of course I said yes
, and he did, and then we missed our reservation
.”

I stuck my finger down my throat and made gagging noises, playfully, as I could see how blissfully happy Rachel was in that moment.
She was fingering the ring on her thumb.

“That ring,” I said.
“Chase has the same one.”

She nodded and
grinned like an idiot. “Yeah, we
bought
them in SoH
o the weekend before we flew home to Charlotte
.
Chase said he wasn’t sure what the summer would bring, but he wanted something to remember the two best months of his life.
”

“Wow,” I said, never thinking my brother h
ad it in him to be so
romantic. How little I knew about him.
“Wait, you didn’t do all this for him
, did you?
” I gestured to her new look.

She shrugged.
“Not really. After a while, the person you’re
with sort of rubs off on you.
I was looking to do something different, and I knew he’d like it.”

“
H
e really design
ed
your tattoo?”

She nodded.
“Yeah, he’s pretty amazing.
He
designed all of his, some of Davis’
s
and some for
a few
guys he knows
from
NYU
.”