“Fuck you. Get out of my way. Where is she?”
Ryan halted her with a stiff palm. “Whoa. Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m taking my friend out of here.”
“Oh, is that so? She said she doesn’t want to talk to you, so why on earth do you think she would go with you?”
“What do you call this,” Alex said, pointing to the indentation in the wall. “And that?” she finished, pointing to the bloodstains.
“Yeah, she is an animal,” he answered, and held out his hand to show her his palm, and a fresh cut. “She attacked me as I opened the door,” he laughed. “Couldn’t get me undressed fast enough.”
Nice try, Alex thought. Probably self-inflicted. “You expect me to believe that? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? If you don’t let me in I’m calling the cops.”
“And tell them what? That you’re paranoid? That your best friend doesn’t want to see you? Go right ahead. When that doesn’t work, what are you going to do?”
“Anything I have to do!” she screamed, clenching her fists again.
“Oh yeah? I don’t care what sort of friends you’ve got at T. You tell him I have got more. He’s outnumbered.”
Even as furious and scared as she was, this made Alex pause. What the hell was that supposed to mean? She had not mentioned Dante or T at any point.
She was about to risk kicking the door as hard as she could when it opened a bit more and Lauren peeked out over Ryan’s shoulder.
“Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
Alex embraced Lauren frantically. “There you are. Don’t worry about a thing. Let’s go.”
“No,” Lauren said, “I’m staying here.”
“What? What about your message?”
Matt grabbed Alex by the arm, thrusting his phone in his pocket at the same time. “Come on. Let her go, for fuck’s sake. You were obviously imagining things.”
Alex wrenched her arm free and kept her focus on Lauren. She stared hard at her friend’s expressionless face. She knew Lauren, and even if she didn’t, the puffy eyes were evidence enough of recent crying. “Loz, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to stay here with him. He’s hurting you. I know it. Just come with us, please!”
Lauren got a strange look in her eye then. “Would I do this with someone who hurts me?” She grabbed Ryan by the back of the neck and brought him in to kiss her.
When she let go, Lauren faced Alex. Alex waited, silent and confused. Lauren took a step forward and slowly leaned in. Lauren placed a delicate kiss on her lips and touched her forehead to Alex’s.
After a second, she closed her eyes and whispered, “I love you,” with a heaviness Alex had never heard from her before. When Lauren’s eyes opened again, they were full of something else, something colder. “Do yourself a favour. For once, stop trying to tell me what’s best for me. Have a look at your own love life and fix that, why don’t you?”
With that, she shut the door in Alex’s face.
*
“I tried to tell you,” Matt said as they neared his car.
Alex hated it when he got this snotty, superior attitude. “Don’t give me that. You didn’t even try and help me. Hope your conversation was worth it.” Her voice went quiet as she turned back towards the window of Ryan’s apartment.
“I told you I was waiting on a call,” Matt replied quickly. “Anyway, look, I know it’s hard for you to hear, but Lauren is more trouble than she is worth. You have been worried sick about her and look how she talks to you. Some best friend.”
“You don’t know her like I do, ok? I’m really afraid for her.”
“God, why can’t you see her for what she is? She is trouble. She doesn’t want your help. The more you try, the more she pushes away. Trust me, I know the feeling.”
“How is this now about you?”
“I did the nice boyfriend thing by coming with you, even though I thought it was stupid. I thought it was even more stupid when you said Dante was the one who told you to keep Lauren away from Ryan. But now, after seeing that disaster play out exactly as I thought it would, I’m going to say it: you’re an idiot for trusting a guy you barely know, especially over me. But then again, why wouldn’t you trust him, as perfect as he is?”
“Shut up, Matt. Just shut up.”
“Why do you have to keep on kissing him?”
“Excuse me?”
“Every time you say hello or goodbye, you wrap your arms around him and kiss him. Not on the cheek, on the fucking lips. Every single time!”
“We’re just friends. I do the same thing to Lauren. It happened not two minutes ago. I didn’t hear you complaining then.”
“That’s different. She’s your best friend.”
“What you mean is, you’re fine with it because she’s a chick, right? But just because Dante is a guy, you’re going ape shit.”
“Yeah, I am. Excuse me if I hate the fact some euro-trash dude gets to lock lips with my supposed girlfriend.”
“It lasts a second. What’s the big deal?”
“What would you say if I did it to my chick friends?”
“I wouldn’t care.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, I wouldn’t, because I am not a hypocrite who believes in double standards. I say hello and goodbye to him, I sleep with you. I give you everything I have! Now you’re saying it’s not enough and you want more. And you want me to stop being who I am.”
“What I want is to know why you don’t just stop kissing him. If it’s no big deal it should be easy to give up right? Admit that you like it.”
“You are
