“What?”
“Hudson must’ve taken it,” Dylan says. His face drains of all color. I stare at him.
“Why would he want your phone? He has his own.”
“Because his has Peyton’s number on it,” Juliet says quietly.
Oh, no, I think. I shake my head.
“Hudson wouldn’t do that,” I say slowly.
“Of course he would,” Dylan says. “He’s really pissed at us.”
“Do you know her number?” Juliet asks. “You can use my phone.”
Dylan walks around, trying to remember. No, he shakes his head.
“I used to know her old one, but she recently got a new one with a New Haven number,” he says.
“Wait, I called her a few weekends back. I think I can find it. What’s the area code?”
“203,” Dylan says.
Juliet scrolls through her phone. Eventually she finds it and hands Dylan her phone. He’s about to dial it, but then hesitates.
“I can’t,” he says, shaking his head.
“You have to know,” Juliet says.
“How will I know? Do I just ask her?” he asks.
“You won’t have to,” Juliet says. “If he called her and told her…you’ll know right when she answers.”
Dylan breathes in deeply. I look at Juliet. We both seem to hold our breath.
“Peyton?” Dylan says after she finally picks up. “Hey.”
His face simply grows white. All blood drains from his cheeks and his lips turn almost blue. Dylan’s shoulders slouch and he drops down to the couch as if his legs can’t hold him up anymore. Without saying a word, he looks down at the phone.
“She hung up,” he says, even though no explanations are needed. Juliet and I both know that Peyton knows.
A week passes. My eye manages to heal somewhat, not look so black and blue. I can see out of it again. Unfortunately, my life is a little harder to heal. Hudson doesn’t return any of my calls or texts and he refuses to talk to me. One day we ride the elevator down together. No matter how hard I try, he ignores me. I’m not even a stranger to him anymore. I’m worse. I’m a ghost. He doesn’t even acknowledge my existence.
The worst part? I know that I deserve it. I should’ve just told him the truth right away. I shouldn’t have led him on and acted like everything was fine when he made up with me. I shouldn’t have done a million things, but if I were to do it again, I would. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to be with him. If only one last time. Looking back now, I wonder if I knew that it was going to be our last time together. Maybe that’s why I went along with it. Seized the day, so to speak.
I made an unusual discovery this week. I didn’t know how difficult it was to explain why I had a black eye and make someone believe that it was an accident. For some reason, I came up with a ridiculous story—that I fell into a corner of a bookshelf. It seemed so reasonable, but when I ran it by a few people who asked me with a concerned look on their face what had happened, I could tell right away that, though they nodded and said they were sorry, none of them believed me. Luckily, my eye started to heal and fewer and fewer people asked me about it as time passed.
Outside of my roommates, the only people who know the truth about what had happened are Tea and Dr. Greyson. They were the only ones with whom I actually talked about all this in detail and told the truth. When I talked to Tea about it, she acted like a good friend. She didn’t make judgements and she didn’t give me advice. I messed up so much that I’m beyond advice. I don’t want to hear it. I can’t take any of it in. I just want to run away screaming whenever someone (like Juliet) offers it up. Dr. Greyson, on the other hand, isn’t much of an advice giver. When I talked to her, I got the impression that she actually thinks that I secretly want my whole life to fall apart. Like I’m on some sort of mission to destroy my life and I’m not. Not really. At least I hope not.
Honestly, talking about it doesn’t help much. Instead, it makes me feel like I’m dwelling on something that I can never get over or change and that makes me feel like crap. So recently, I’ve come to a decision. I’m not going to talk about it anymore. I’m not even going to think about it. If Hudson doesn’t want to talk about it, then why should I? What’s done is done. It’s over. It was a terrible mistake. All I can do now is try to move on. If only the legal system understood the urgency with which I wanted to move on…
24
The legal system moves at its own pace and it cannot be rushed no matter how hard you try. Dealing with it is an exercise in patience. What I find out from Dylan and later confirm on my own by researching the topic online is that an annulment is incredibly difficult to get in the state of New York.
I’ve heard the word “annulment” many times before, but I didn’t actually know what it meant. Apparently, an annulment is a finding by a court that a marriage is invalid or void and this finding allows the court to make it as if the marriage never occurred. This is what both Dylan and I want, but it doesn’t look like it’s something that can happen.
“I can’t believe that we can’t get an annulment,” I say. Dylan is sitting on the couch texting someone.
“We’ve been over this already,” he says without looking up.
“I know,” I sigh. “But what if…”
“Look, here, let me read it to you,” he says, cutting me off.
He already told me this and I read a lot about it already online, but I still feel
