She banged on the door and shrieked, “It matters to me!”
When it was clear that Neal wasn’t going to answer the door or Trihn’s question, she screamed in frustration and turned away from the house. As she walked back to her car, her hands were shaking. She dropped the car keys twice before she got them the door unlocked.
Once she finally got inside, she sank into the driver’s side. Tears washed down her cheeks like rain. Hiccupping deep breaths racked her body.
She hadn’t cried like this in a long time. Sure, she and Neal had argued. Tears had been involved, but they had always worked it out. He wanted her to be just the artsy type, and she wanted to have fun and party with her girlfriends. No harm had come from it.
The only time she had ever thought about hooking up with someone else had been last night, and she had felt so guilty about it that she left the club entirely. Maybe Neal knew about that somehow. Maybe that was what this was about.
Maybe she wasn’t good enough for him.
“Fuck!” She banged her hands against the steering wheel.
How can a guy make me feel this stupid?
She was all for feminist ideals—until this shit happened to her. Then, she’d curl into a ball and let the man win all over again.
She hated thinking that she wasn’t good enough for anyone. She was strong and beautiful and smart. Maybe one day, she would even be a brilliant designer going somewhere—rather than a designer who had turned down NYU because of a guy, rather than a girl who had tucked tail and run instead of facing her issues, rather than a girlfriend who had let her boyfriend walk all over her instead of facing the facts.
The drive back to her apartment was seen through a veil of tears. She wasn’t even entirely sure how she’d made it there. It was a blur.
Did I stop at that stop sign?
She truly couldn’t remember. Autopilot had gotten her home in one piece, up the elevator, and back into her apartment.
She stripped out of her jacket and jeans and trudged down the hallway to Bryna’s room. She opened the door and peeked inside. Half the time, Bryna’s boyfriend, Eric, would stay the night, or she’d crash at his place. But since it had been a girls’ night last night, she was all alone.
Trihn sniffed and then crawled under Bryna’s silky sheets.
Bryna shifted in her sleep and then jumped up. “Fuck, Trihn!” she cried. Her hand flew to her chest. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Neal broke up with me,” she whispered.
Bryna frowned and sighed. “Oh, Trihn, come here.” She wrapped her arms around Trihn and pulled her close. “What happened?”
Trihn wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “At least I didn’t waste my mascara on him,” she said to avoid the question.
“That’s good because that shit is expensive.”
“Really fucking expensive.”
Trihn burst into tears again. She rolled onto her side and cried into Bryna’s pillow.
Everything hurt, and her mind was moving a million miles a minute. She didn’t know if there was a way that she could have avoided this or fixed it. If I had stayed in with him last night, would it all have been okay? Had he been planning this all along? Every possible scenario ran through her mind, but she couldn’t find one situation where she could have made this right.
Bryna ran her fingers through Trihn’s long black-to-blonde hair and waited until her tears subsided before speaking, “Tell me what happened.”
“He said we weren’t compatible and that it was over. He said that he didn’t miss me when we weren’t together,” she groaned. Another sob escaped her. “Then, I asked him if there was someone else…if he had a girl with him right now, but he refused to answer me.”
“Bastard!” Bryna cried. “Do you think he was really cheating on you?”
Trihn looked up into Bryna’s blue eyes and felt like crying all over again. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Ugh! I’m sorry, Trihn.”
“He said that it didn’t matter whether I thought he was with someone else because he didn’t want to be with me. How could he say those things, Bri? We’d been together for so long. We were so good together.”
“Well, I think it matters whether or not he cheated,” Bryna said.
“I know. That’s what I tried to yell at him, but he slammed the door in my face.”
Bryna clenched her jaw. “You’re making it really hard for me not to call Eric and have him send half of the football team over to Neal’s house to beat the shit out of him.”
Trihn’s laugh turned into a moan of despair. “Don’t do that. I still love him.”
“I won’t send them, but you know Eric has your back. The whole team would go to the ends of the earth for any of us.”
“I know.”