I liked my coffee with pumpkin creamer and a single sugar. Damen liked it the same way, but Louise preferred it black with no sugar, proving how cold and dark she really was, despite her sunny personality.
The way you made your coffee spoke volumes about the sort of person you were.
Take her dad for instance, he was a strong masculine man, supposedly, so you can imagine my surprise at finding out that he liked pumpkin spice lattes with three sugars, and young virginial girls who came to his daughter’s sleepovers.
I walked to Louise’s bedroom and knocked on her door. When she didn’t answer I pushed down on the handle and walked inside. The curtains were still closed, and I could see the outline of her in the bed.
“Are you awake?” I asked, quietly, because if she was asleep, then I’d leave her that way. She obviously needed the rest after the wild night she’d had. I wondered with a cruel smirk if she’d even got to come with Adam.
“Hey? Louise?” I put the coffees down on the drawers and headed over to the bed, before perching myself on the edge of it. “I’m just checking if you’re okay. I know last night was crazy, but I really do think it was for the best.”
Silence.
I rolled my eyes and sighed in the darkness.
“Look, if you want to talk, you know where I am.” I stood up and headed back across the room.
“I hate you,” she said from the bed and I turned back.
“So you are awake,” I replied, ignoring the comment. She didn’t hate me. She couldn’t ever hate me—I was her best friend!
“I wish I’d never met you, Anna.”
I pouted into the darkness, tears springing to my eyes. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I hate you and I wish you were dead,” she said and then began to cry.
“You say that now—,”
‘You’re fucking mad, do you even realize how mad you are?” she said, her voice piercing the darkness like a floodlight.
“Mad!” I gasped.
Did she just call me mad? I wasn’t fucking mad.
Mad as a hatter. Mad as the Queen…off with her head. I wasn’t mad at all. I was just tired of waiting for Damen to do the right thing so we could be together and forget this charade.
“He asked me to move in with him,” she said, her gaze finding mine. “But I said no because you were my best friend and I couldn’t leave you.” She sobbed louder now, holding the duvet around her body as she cried into her hands.
Moving in with him… I wanted to slap her. I wanted to spit in her face. Liar, liar pants on fire. He wouldn’t possibly have asked her to move in with him when he was about to leave her for me. Was she back taking those fancy pills she got addicted to after her daddy left? Because that was the only thing that made sense right now.
My heart felt like it was racing in my chest, the world throbbing and pulsing around me. And in the centre of it all was Louise’s perfectly symmetrical face. Pretty as a fucking picture. Innocence in her eyes, her full pink lips turned up at the corners in a timid smile.
They say that’s what makes someone beautiful, symmetry. The equalness of features. The lines and grooves on skin. And I hated that I felt so unsymmetrical. That every part of me felt like a jumble of mismatched shapes, crammed together in a tiny box.
“You’re disgusting, Anna, and I don’t want you in my life anymore,” she said and lay back down in the bed.
“You don’t mean that,” I said confidently. “We’re two peas in a pod. We’re bread and butter, salt and pepper. We’re—,”
“Just get out!” she yelled, her voice breaking on a sob.
I turned and left with a scowl.
Chapter Seven
A knock came at the door and I turned from my reflection in the mirror with a frown, wondering who it could be at this time of night. It had been two days since the drama with Louise and Damen. Louise had left while I’d been out at work the next day and I hadn’t seen anything from her since. Damen, on the other hand, had been texting Louise non-stop, his messages becoming more and more frantic with each hour. I still had her phone and as far as I was aware, she hadn’t tried to replace it yet, so I was guessing that right now she just didn’t care. And that was fine by me.
A little space would probably do her the world of good. Give her time to reflect on what a mess she’s made of her life. I may have set up the night with Adam, but it would have happened sooner or later on its own. I only hurried things along. Louise slept around; it was just what she did, and as the saying goes, a leopard can’t change its spots.
Damen, on the other hand, flipped from concerned to angry and back again in his texts, and I felt a little guilty at putting him through all of this, but it really was in his best interest. He’d see soon enough how perfect we were for each other and then all of this would be behind us. Louise would come back, and she’d see how happy we were together, and it would all be fine. It would be. Fine, and perfect.
The knocking at the door
