"I forget how they met, but they dated for a year and she messed with his head the entire time. She'd string him along and tell him how much she loved him and then treat him like shit. I told him to leave her countless times, but eventually she left him and I thought he finally could see her for the bitch that she was.
“He hasn't seen her since the split, but I'm not surprised that she showed up tonight. She probably heard that he'd moved on and felt like she needed to sink her claws back into him. That’s the kind of manipulative cow she is."
Becca spooned a bite of ice cream into her mouth as she muttered, "Wow."
"But you shouldn't write him off, Becca. I've known the guy for years and he's not a cheater. He's a good friend and a good teammate. Give him time to get his shit figured out."
Becca narrowed her eyes. "She's like a grown-up version of me. His ex, I mean. Seriously, I look like Barbie's little sister compared to her."
"No!" I protested just as Liam sat forward.
"Fuck no. She has those duck lips."
I eyed him with an appreciative smile. For a 6'3'' soccer player that exuded testosterone and control at every moment, he was doing pretty well at girl's night. It was almost comical thinking of him beating up Josh the week before as he sat on my bed eating M&Ms and discussing relationship woes with us.
We all leaned back onto my pillows, talking about Penn and helping Becca feel better about the situation. Liam gave her some advice on how to best deal with Penn. It was similar to what I'd been thinking. He told her that Penn needed to come to her and she needed to back off for a few days and let him realize what an idiot he'd been. We kept talking until the three of us were starting to nod off. I'm not sure who eventually fell asleep first, but we ended up sleeping like that: Becca rolled to the side in her footed pajamas and me, still in my slinky dress, with Liam's arms wrapped around me. His cologne swirled through my dreams.
It’s strange how the little things end up illuminating your feelings for someone. Seeing Liam walk into my room with a bag of candy and alcohol for my best friend made me fall just a little more off the deep end for him.
Hopefully I was equipped with some floaties.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Liam was gone by the time Becca and I finally got out of bed the next morning, but I knew he had an early start. Apparently there was a press conference and some team photos before his game later. I was excited about the prospect of seeing him play.
I was in my bathroom brushing my teeth when Becca came in, eyed me wearily in the mirror, and handed me her phone.
“I don’t know how I feel about it yet, but here,” she warned. The image that greeted me felt like a punch to the gut. I leaned forward and spit out my toothpaste, wiped my mouth, and dried my hands with stoic precision, before turning and grabbing the phone out of her hand.
Sadly, in those few seconds the photo hadn’t disappeared. I zoomed in and tried to quell the anger threatening to surface.
The photo was from last night. Depicted in a tight frame there was Liam and Penn with Penn’s ex girlfriend and another girl that looked like an exotic-looking model. Penn was by his ex-girlfriend and Liam was standing beside the model. The caption below mentioned something about two LA Stars with “their dates” for the evening.
"I've already seen that photo on a few other sites," Becca explained, pulling the phone back from me and ducking out of my room without another word. I had no clue how she felt about it. For all I knew, it was the final nail in Penn’s coffin.
I leaned forward onto the sink and let my head fall. I'd been so concerned with the media pestering Liam and I that I hadn't considered how crappy it would feel if Liam was actually reported to be with another girl. I shouldn't have cared. What did it matter if people thought that Liam was dating this girl? But I did care. I was angry that he was with another girl after I'd left. Did they dance? What made the media think they were together? Or was it just this one photo misconstrued to sell magazines?
My initial instinct was to imagine the worst: he was cheating on me. I was just as foolish as Becca, and Liam was playing me. After all, experience had proved that when it came to relationships, my worst fears were usually correct.
I sat on the edge of my bed and I let myself scroll through the photos of him from the event on all of the tabloid websites. That one picture was the only one where he was standing with the girl. But, there were surprisingly quite a few of him and me. We were standing on the side of the red carpet, chatting in the ballroom, and wrapped around one another on the dance floor. All of the feelings from last night rushed back in like a crashing wave, and I knew I wouldn't hold that one photo against him.
I could either assume the worst or assume that Liam was watching out for me, that he was better than Trey and Josh. He'd done nothing but prove his trustworthiness, and I wasn't going to punish him for something he had no control over. I knew firsthand how quickly the media could spin a story, so I closed the web page and shutdown my laptop. When I glanced down at my phone, I saw a text from Liam.