“I was in love!” I said. “For fucking real, Lizzie, not some crappy thing that doesn’t mean anything. For real.” My breath hissed and caught. “I would have called! I did call! I called all the next week, to make it up, and you weren’t there, you didn’t want to know! And you had Scottie! You said it was going well! You said you were into him!”
She moved away from me, and there was something wrong, something really wrong. It made me roll to her, even though I was screaming inside. She faced away from me, just crying, her head in her hands, her shoulders hiccupping with the pain.
“I didn’t… Scottie didn’t…” She gulped a breath. “Scottie doesn’t want me, Helen… he never wanted me…”
“But you said…”
“I lied. I’ve only ever been with Scottie once, when he was drunk. He didn’t want me after. Didn’t even want to know me.” Her words were so quiet, so sad. “I lied to sound cool. I wanted to sound cool, ok?”
“But why?! You never needed to sound cool, Lizzie! I’d have loved you anyway, no matter what!”
“But you don’t…” she cried. “You don’t love me like I love you, Helen. You don’t feel the way I feel.”
I felt sick, sick on top of sickness. “I do love you, Lizzie… You’re my best friend…”
“No.” She shook her head. “You don’t love me. Not like that.” She got to her feet, walked to the window and swung it wide. She lit up a cigarette, and I watched her smoke it through teary eyes. She didn’t look like the Lizzie I knew, she looked lost, like a tiny little girl, and she was so sad.
“What’s really going on, Lizzie? What’s going on with you?”
“I’m in love with you,” she said. And I laughed, not out of malice, just because it was so absurd, the icing on the cake of absolute crapness. “Laugh if you want,” she said. “But I do. I wanted you to feel the same, but you never did… you just thought it was silly…”
“You don’t love me, Lizzie, not like that. That’s just…”
“Just what?! Weird? Silly? Funny?”
“No…” I blinked away tears. “Just… I didn’t think… I thought there was Scottie… and it’s just… me… I’m not anyone…”
She laughed, but it was a horrible one. “You’re everything, Hels. You’re cute and you’re funny, and sweet. And you’re weird, in a cool way, and you always try so hard at everything. And you listen, and you care. And you’re so pretty, Helen… you’re really pretty and you don’t even know. You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met.” She smiled at me. “You think you’re so uncool, you think you’re just some weird kid… but that just makes you even cooler. When I told you about Scottie, you used to believe me, and your eyes would light up and you’d be excited for me, and I loved that. I loved the way you made me feel. It made me feel special…” She wiped away tears. “I thought you’d get over this Mr Roberts stuff, I thought it was safe. I thought we’d go away to uni and you’d be sad, but we’d get through it and maybe then… maybe then you’d feel something…”
“Lizzie…”
She shook her head. “But it did happen… and I tried to be happy… I wanted to be happy! Because you were so happy, Hels.” She choked back a sob. “I loved seeing you so happy, but it made me feel so sad…”
“I never knew… I didn’t know…”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“Of course it matters…”
“You were the only thing that was good. The only thing that mattered…” She threw her cigarette out of the window. “When I was with you I felt ok, no matter what else was going on… no matter how bad things got at home… or how horrible it was… I had you…”
I felt like shit. Shit on top of shit. “I didn’t mean to ignore you, Lizzie. I’m sorry. I was just… distracted… I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s alright. You wanted to be with him. I get it.”
“I would have been there… I wanted to be there…”
She lit up another cigarette, but her shoulders were hunched, as though she hurt too much to stand. And I got that as well. I felt like that, too.
I dragged myself from the covers. Forced myself to my feet. “Can I have one of those, please?”
“A whole one?”
“I think I need a whole one.”
She handed me the packet and I lit one up.
“I’m so sorry, Helen. I got so angry and sad. I wanted to be with you… at Christmas… and I should have been happy that you were happy… but it hurt…”
I shook my head. “I should’ve called…”
“That’s no excuse. Not for what I did.”
“I do love you, Lizzie. Just not like that. I love Mark.”
She nodded and her eyes were all welled up. “I know. And I’ve ruined it.”
I forced a breath, sucked smoke deep inside and closed my eyes. “Dad was suspicious anyway. Miss Monkton, too. We weren’t careful enough. I wasn’t careful enough.”
“No!” she said. “Don’t blame yourself for this. This was all on me, Helen. I told your dad. You’d have found some way… you’d have made it work…”
“It’s all over now…” I felt the tears roll, and this time they were quiet ones.
“No! Don’t say that!”
“It is, Lizzie. It’s over. I won’t do this to him.”