“You are so sweet. Thank you!” I exclaimed while unwrapping a straw. There was something comforting about drinking it, and I needed all the comfort I could get right about now.
“I got enough supplies to last us a couple days,” she said, pulling a bunch of my favorite junk food from the bags along with a big bottle of Three Olives vodka. “And if you get your appetite back, we can always order pizza, too.”
I glanced at the dresser and realized she’d left her phone here while she was out. “You didn’t bring your phone with you? That’s not safe, Aubrey! What if you’d had car trouble?”
“Oh please. I know everyone in town. If I’d had any problems, someone was bound to find me, or I could have walked to the closest house and called for help. It’s no biggie. Besides, I was only gone for like thirty minutes.”
I looked at the bags and back at Aubrey. “Thirty minutes? The store is only a couple blocks away, and Dairy Queen is right next door.”
She looked at me sheepishly. “Well, I wanted to run back to the dorm to grab a couple things, but I changed my mind when I got there.”
“Why?” I asked, confused by her answer. “What could have possibly made you decide not to run inside after driving back to campus?”
“I saw Drake’s truck sitting outside the dorm, so I didn’t pull into the parking lot. I didn’t want to run into him, and I certainly didn’t want him to see me because then he’d want to know where you were.”
“Drake was there?” I shrieked, stunned. Just hearing his name hurt.
“Yes. Parked right at the curb with the engine running.”
I sat back down on the bed and glanced at my phone. “That means he wants to talk to me.”
Aubrey picked up my phone, tossed it into her purse, and zipped it shut. “It won’t hurt him to wait for you. Maybe it will give him time to understand how badly he hurt you. And you need some time to decide what you want to say to him. I’m not giving you this back until Sunday morning. So don’t even try to convince me otherwise. I see that look on your face. No caving yet. If you guys stay together, you need to make sure he understands that you won’t put up with crap like this. You’ve heard my mom’s advice on relationships almost as often as I have.”
“Start as you mean to go on,” we said in unison, wagging our fingers at each other just like her mom did whenever she said the same thing.
“You’re right. I don’t even know what he could say that would make his accusations forgivable, but I can’t talk to him until I figure out what I want to do. God, Aubrey… He made me fall in love with him and then he crushed me. Shattered my heart into a million pieces. How are we ever going to move on from this?”
“I’m not sure, sweetie. Let’s just take it one day at a time, I guess. Tonight, don’t even think about it. Let’s just hang out, watch movies, and eat junk food. I even grabbed swimsuits so we can hang out in the hot tub. Don’t make any decisions you’ll regret until you’ve had time to process what happened. Okay?”
I nodded my head in agreement. “But make sure you hide that phone better because it’s killing me right now not to call him, knowing that he’s trying to find me.”
“Girl, please. You know you aren’t getting it away from me until Sunday. So don’t even bother trying. And none of your puppy-dog eyes later either. A day and a half isn’t going to kill you, especially after storming out the way you did. You’re too much of a softie, so leave it to me to be your backbone this time around.”
And she really was. We spent the rest of the night and all of the next day doing anything but talking about my relationship problems. We managed to polish off the bottle of vodka and then passed out to sleep it off. I tried a couple times to talk her into just checking my phone to see if he left any more messages, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t be able to resist calling him. Even while drunk, she insisted that a total communications blackout was the way to go, and she wouldn’t budge an inch.
chapter 15
Sunday morning finally rolled around, and I just lay in bed, staring at the ceiling for a while after I woke up. My stomach cramped when I realized that I was going to have to face everything today. I was glad that Aubrey had made me wait since I was a lot calmer than I had been on Friday. And stronger, too.
I rolled over to find Aubrey watching me from the other bed. She’d spent the whole weekend showing me exactly why we were best friends, dropping everything to help me through this mess. I was so lucky to have her in my life.