The Girls I've Been(13)
So I told myself that the girls I’d been before didn’t matter.
I learned the hard way that I was wrong.
— 14 —
9:59 a.m. (47 minutes captive)
1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors
Plan: Almost there
“Hey, you two.” Iris snaps her fingers behind us, and we both whirl. She’s staring intently, her hands on her hips, her skirt swaying in annoyance because she’s tapping her foot. “Why are you arguing?”
“We’re not,” Wes says immediately.
“You’re mad at us,” Iris says. “Are we seriously going to do this now?”
“I’m trying not to,” Wes grits out.
But Iris steps closer, so Casey can’t hear. “What is with you?” she hisses in a low voice to him. “You told me you were completely over Nora. I would’ve never tried anything if . . . You were going to ask Amanda out! I had a first-date outfit planned for you. So either you changed your mind or you’ve gone insane and gotten all bigoted on me, and I swear to God, Wes . . .”
He goes white. “Fuck, no. It’s not— I am over Nora.” He looks at me. “I am completely over you,” he says, and it’s not vicious and it doesn’t have any hurt buried under it. It’s just . . . a statement. A fact. Something we both know. It still makes me vaguely sad, in that faded way, like a scar you press too hard on and the damaged tissue remembers the wound fresh, but just for a second, and then it’s gone.
“And if we get the hell out of here alive, I am going to ask Amanda out,” Wes declares. “I’m not mad about that.”
“If you’re just mad we kept it from you, I don’t owe you a beat-by-beat account of my love life,” Iris says. “You know I’m not out to my mom yet. I have my reasons for keeping stuff under the radar.”
“I’m not mad at you, Iris,” Wes says. “You’re right, your reasons are yours. I’m sorry I was a jerk. I shouldn’t have been. You don’t deserve that.” He takes a deep breath, his chest rising. “But I get to be mad at her,” he continues. “For my sake and your sake. Not just because she lied to my face when I told her I thought you liked her.” He glares at me and I turn red, because I had been a total ass when he’d suggested it. “I get to be mad for you because she’s put you in the same place I was once.” His voice cracks as he stares at me, practically drilling a hole in my head with his eyes.
Iris frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“How much have you told her?” Wes asks me. “You said you’d never—”
“I said next time, I’d work my way up to it,” I snap, my temper flaring red-hot in my chest, part anger, part guilt. “Excuse me if I didn’t realize I was required to throw all my secrets out there three months into a new relationship. I don’t owe you anything, Wes.”
His eyes flare with that deep kind of hurt. “You owed it to me to not outright lie to me.”
“I—” I snap my mouth shut, because I can’t defend myself. I had. He’d told me last month: I think she has a crush on you, and he’d nudged me with his elbow in an entirely new, almost teasing way. Wes playing matchmaker when the match was already made was bordering on rom-com territory, and I had been kissing Iris for a while at that point. It’d taken everything I had in me not to turn bright red before I shook my head and said, You know, just because we both like girls doesn’t mean we’re gonna like each other in such a bored voice he’d been the one flushing and apologizing.
I’ve felt like an asshole for weeks about it.
“And you owe Iris,” he continues, because of course he’s going to side with Iris instead of me. He used to be where she is right now: on the precarious verge of finding out the truth.
“Okay, one of you needs to stop being intense and vague right now, or I’m gonna freak out more than I already am. And we’re already hostages in a bank robbery while I’m on my period, so my anxiety and desire for chocolate and revenge is kind of high right now,” Iris declares with a lot more harried foot-tapping.
Both Wes and I zoom in on her like we’re one person.
“Do you need to sit down?” Wes asks just as I say, “Did you take your meds? I can make them give you back your purse so you can take them.”
“My meds will make me fuzzy. I’m fine. My uterus is cramping bad enough to crush a Coke can and my menstrual cup’s about to overflow, but I can deal. As long as you two start speaking like regular people instead of talking in riddles only you two understand!” She takes a deep breath, and with a jolt, I realize how pale she is. She really should sit down. She already pushed herself yesterday for the fundraiser, and now here we are, stuck in this, when she should be resting.
I should’ve told her she could stay home this morning, that I had it handled. But she made me promise to not tiptoe around her endometriosis and how sometimes her pain changes our plans, so I try not to fuss when she insists she’s okay. I just make sure to pack a barf bag and crackers and that extra-strong, extra-gross ginger ale she likes. And I hadn’t wanted to deprive any of us of getting to deposit the money we’d raised. The photo booth at the festival with the cuddlier of the shelter animals was her and Wes’s idea. They were the ones who volunteered there. I’d just been along for the ride because being with them is where I like to be most. It’d been fun. I’d been proud of how much money we’d made.