Chapter 31: Fight Night

After supper, Haylee announced she was going upstairs to take a shower, but before she exited the room, she mouthed, “Ask her!”

I nodded and began clearing the table. My mother gave me a sidelong glance as I stood at the sink, scraping dishes while she loaded them into the garbage disposal.

“You never help me clean up after supper,” she finally said, “which means you are buttering me up.”

“Maybe I just want to help my mother,” I posed. “Is that so hard to believe?”

She sighed, turning her full attention to me. “What do you want, Dharma?” My mother was no fool and had no patience for anyone who treated her like one.

“Well, now that you mention it,” I began in a sugary tone, “Toby invited us to a concert tomorrow night, and Haylee really wants to go.”

“Is that what you’ve been ho-humming about?” My mother laughed and shook her head. “Of course, you can go to a concert with Toby.”

“Well, it’s not just the concert,” I continued. “Toby’s truck broke down, so we are in need of transportation, and I was wondering if I could borrow your car.”

“I don’t like the idea of loaning a bunch of teens my car,” she responded firmly. “It’s the only vehicle we have.”

“Well, I guess we could get an Uber, or perhaps we can invite Justin…” I paused to allow my mother to stew on this.

“You know I don’t trust ride services, and how is Justin expected to pack you all into that tiny little car?

“He has a Range Rover as well,” I informed her.

“Of course, he does…,” she muttered under her breath. “You can take my car, but you have to have it back by midnight.”

“Why by midnight? Is it going to turn into a pumpkin?”

“You girls don’t need to be out past midnight,” she asserted. “Nothing good happens after midnight.”

This did put a crimp in our plans, since the festivities didn’t start until ten, but I knew better than to press my luck.

“You are right, Mom,” I resolved, leaning over to peck her on the cheek. “We will have your car back by midnight.”

After we finished cleaning the kitchen, I raced upstairs to tell Haylee the news. I found her on my bed, sprawled out on her stomach, reading the diary she had taken from the gardening shed.

She was so immersed that she didn’t even bother to acknowledge me when I entered the room.

“Reading anything good?” I asked.

Her head snapped up. “It’s getting pretty hot.”

I couldn’t resist being curious as I squeezed in next to her, hoping to get a peek at the pages. “Who owns the journal?”

“It’s Rosie Johnson’s. I was just getting to a good part.” She cleared her voice and read, “~Jackson parted the folds of my labia and said, ‘I’ve found your rosebud, now let’s see if I can make it bloom.’ I was stunned as he lowered his lips, and I felt myself blossom~.”

“That’s pretty cheesy,” I complained, wrinkling my nose.

“But close your eyes and imagine hearing it in the moment,” Haylee prompted.

I did as instructed, and after a few moments of visualizing, I squirmed. “Ew, I wouldn’t like it.”

Haylee nodded in agreement. “Corn porn is the shit.”

“So, was it a diary or just Rosie’s sexy-time logbook?”

“No, there are plenty of entries where she talks about her siblings. From what I gathered, she practically raised them,” Haylee revealed.

“I think that happens a lot in big families,” I commented.

“If I ever have children, I’m not going to have more than I can handle,” Haylee sniffed as she began skimming through the pages. I could only assume she was searching for more sexy excerpts.

Tired of being ignored, I lumbered off the bed and began to change into my pajamas. Once I was dressed for bed, I rejoined Haylee.

“If you’ve found more smut, then you have to share.”

“It’s not smut,” Haylee said, crinkling her brow, “it’s abuse. Listen to this…”

I sat silently as she read out loud.

“~I’d had enough of Jackson’s humiliation, so I got up and began to dress. As I reached for my shirt, he attempted to pull it away from me. We engaged in tug-of-war for a moment, then suddenly Jackson got an evil smile on his face and released the shirt.~ ~I was sent tumbling into the dresser. Jackson walked over to me, and for a moment I thought it had been an accident and he would apologize, but instead he knelt and said, ‘This is what happens to girls who disobey.’~”

A chill ran down my spine. “Haylee, maybe you shouldn’t be reading this. It may be triggering for you.”

“Payton has never hit me,” she protested.

“Psychological abuse is just as bad,” I pointed out. “If you don’t do something soon, it may get physical.”

Haylee shook her head. “He doesn’t have it in him.”

“You can’t know that,” I argued. “You hardly even knew him. We spent the last two years lusting over him from a distance.”

When Haylee didn’t look convinced, I added, “You hardly hooked up with him, and suddenly he’s obsessed with you. You have to admit, that escalated quickly.”

Haylee sat up and closed the diary. “Dharma, there is something I have to tell you…” She paused as if she were searching for the right words.

“Did he hit you?” I sat up and balled my fist. “I will kill him.”

“He didn’t hit me,” Haylee insisted, placing her hand over mine and lowering my fist. “After you left was not the first time Payton and I hooked up. I’ve been in a relationship with him for nearly a year now.”

Her admission hit me like a ton of bricks.

“A year?” I whispered, recalling all the nights Haylee and I had spent stalking his social media and berating every girl we saw him converse with. She had allowed me to sit there acting so foolishly, knowing the entire time that my fantasies were her reality.

“Dharma?” Haylee reached up as if to cup my face, but I smacked her hands away and leapt from the bed.

“You let me gush about him in front of you!” I stood and pointed at her. “How could you do that? Did you get off on it, like some sick kink?”

“No, Dharma!” Haylee exclaimed with tears welling in her eyes. “It wasn’t like that.”

Her tears pulled at my heartstrings, so I bit my lip and averted my eyes. “Explain yourself,” I demanded.

“We hooked up after your father’s funeral.” She sniffed. “I thought it was just a one-time thing, so I kept it to myself because you were grieving, and it didn’t feel like the right time. But then it happened again, and next thing I knew, we were seeing each other regularly.”

Haylee dropped her head and was sobbing now, and my first instinct was to withdraw and allow her a moment to gather herself, but then something occurred to me, and I suddenly felt cold with rage.

“How did you convince Payton to keep it a secret?” I pressed her.

She looked up at me helplessly, hoping I would relent. Though I felt hot tears escape the corners of my eyes, I didn’t dare blink.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she blubbered.

“Is that what you told Payton?” I hissed. “You let him think I was some miserable, lovestruck ~freak~ you needed to protect.”

Suddenly, I was flooded with memories of this past year, incidents that I had misread. Each time Payton averted my gaze and his face would flush, I had misread his rage for blushing.

I recalled when Haylee would go above and beyond to please me; the actions I had mistaken for love had only been to assuage her own guilt.

Now that I was viewing the past year through a different lens, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t guessed. Perhaps I had allowed her to pull the wool over my eyes, only seeing what I’d wanted to see, but now I felt nothing but embarrassment and shame.

“What happened, Haylee?” I continued. “Did you grow bored with your relationship once I was no longer there to spice things up? Why didn’t you just find another gullible pawn that the two of you could laugh at together?”

“It wasn’t like that, Dharma, I swear!”

I felt my anger begin to wane, but I wasn’t quite ready to let Haylee off the hook. “Was Payton really harassing you, or did you make that up to justify dumping him?”

When I delivered the final blow, Haylee finally snapped. Suddenly, her pupils dilated, and her cheeks flushed. “I have made some mistakes, but I am not a monster.”

Emotionally exhausted from my outburst, my rage extinguished. I suddenly had no desire to make Haylee as miserable as I felt. I was only filled with sadness, knowing that how I viewed my best friend had forever been altered.

“I don’t think you made up that stuff about Payton,” I finally relented. “But I have to wonder what else you have omitted.”

“After you left, I no longer had an excuse to keep our relationship secret, so Payton insisted on making our status public,” Haylee began. “And at first I thought it was just the next logical step, but I didn’t realize that he and I had totally different ideologies about commitment.”

“How so?” I prompted her.

“He acted like we were married. The first time he saw me chatting with a male coworker, he went ballistic and demanded I quit my job. And if I went out with friends after work, he would text me relentlessly. It was as if he suddenly expected me to center my entire life around him.”

I couldn’t help feeling a pang of empathy. “That does sound grim.”

Haylee nodded. “It was maddening,” she asserted. “When I quit answering his calls, he began showing up at my work and sitting outside my house and would refuse to leave until I spoke to him.”

“Did you try talking to him?”

“Yeah, but it was like talking to a brick wall. He just kept reminding me of everything he had endured this last year with all the waiting and the secrecy…” She trailed off.

“I wish you had just been honest with me,” I said. “I may have even been happy for you.”

“Would you have been?” Haylee asked, raising a brow.

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “But we never will know now, because you deprived me of that chance.”

“I am truly sorry,” Haylee pleaded, standing so that we faced each other. “I will spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you.”

“I would have gotten over Payton,” I told her. “Even if I had been jealous, I would have gotten over it for you.”

Haylee’s bottom lip quivered. “I don’t want to lose you.”

Now it was my turn to break. Though I attempted to hold my gaze steady, my face crumbled, and before I could crumple onto the floor, Haylee caught me in her arms and held me tight.

“I can’t imagine life without you,” I confessed.