GABBY
"Remind me again why mom thought it was a good idea for her and Janice to drive together and have all four of us in a car together?" Bianca moans from the passenger seat, cradling her head in her palms.
"Drama queen." Haley and I both snort from the back seat. We immediately shoot one another a glare and look out opposite windows.
Kurt honks at the driver in front of us and Bianca whacks him in the head, muttering something about traffic being 'no one's fault' and Kurt being an 'inconsiderate twat.' He flips her off and turns on the radio. I have no objection, it's not like we were having a life-changing conversation. Bianca and I have barely spoken since school started. She's always been a bit of a stranger to me and probably always will be. Haley and I were super close until the Kurt thing. And Kurt just straight up ignores me. He used to, at least. Since the three hours I've been back with him, he's been nothing but polite and courteous to me. He doesn't seem to hold a grudge. And he avoids Haley like the plague, as he should.
"How're things with Harry?" I ask Bianca, raising my voice a little so that she can hear me over Kurt's obnoxious rap music. Bianca's latest boy toy, and her longest one yet, is the perfect boy next door. That means Bianca is acting normal as opposed to adopting yet another fake persona because she is regularly the epitome of 'girl next door' anyway. I think that if I want her to last with anyone, it's Harry.
"They're good." Bianca blushes from the front seat. "They're great, actually. I think he might propose."
"What?" Haley leans forward in her seat, forgetting that she's supposed to be pouting. "No shit? Aren't you guys a bit young?"
"When you know, you know." Bianca turns to face us and nibbles on her bottom lip absentmindedly. "And I know. I love him."
"Well, shit!" I grin. Haley and I both smile at one another before remembering who we are and what our relationship is. "Can I be the maid of honor?"
"Fuck no." Haley frowns. "Pick me!"
"Both of you." Bianca smiles. "If we get married. And if you two can stop trying to claw each other's eyes out. Seriously, it's getting old. Kurt's moved past the incident." Kurt accidentally swerves the car in response, letting out a choking noise. Bianca raises a perfectly plucked brow at him before turning back around to face us.
"Bianca!" Haley squeals, turning tomato red. "Shut up about it!"
"Nope. I'm addressing the elephant in the room. Or in this case, the car. We're spending a week together in the Hamptons and I am sick of this awkward bullshit dynamic you're both living. Kurt, you've gotten over it, right?"
"Do you have to bring me into this?" Kurt moans, "I want peace."
"Too bad." Bianca winks at him. "Do you hold a grudge against Gabby?"
Kurt meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. "No." He says and I believe him. "I mean, I did at first. I hated you. No offense, Gabby."
"Little taken." I laugh awkwardly.
"But then I realized that if you hadn't stopped it then, everything would have gotten worse. We'd have been caught one way or another. I'm just glad it wasn't by someone who couldn't keep a secret. Gabby kept it confidential and that means a lot."
"Did she though?" Haley mutters under her breath. I shoot her a nasty look.
"I've learned a lot from the experience." Kurt continues, oblivious to Haley's nasty remark. "And I think I'm better off for what happened."
"Yeah." Haley chimes in. "He even has a girlfriend now. Did you guys know that?"
"No shit!" Bianca exclaims, punching Kurt in the arm and causing him to swerve a bit. He shoots her a glare, but it's playful.
"Yeah. She's from boarding school." I see Kurt's eyes flick up the rearview mirror and meet Haley's. She looks sad. I almost feel sorry for her--her stepbrother has moved on. As he should have. "Her name is Corrine. She's awesome."
"How's the whole long-distance thing working out for you?" Bianca snorts. "I'm assuming not well...?"
I watch Haley subconsciously lean forward in her seat and I feel something twist in my gut. She's jealous. Does she still...?
"Great, actually. Corrine's super cool. We can go days without talking and when we start again it's like we never even stopped."
Haley's shoulders slump ever so slightly and I get this perverse need to show her how little she means romantically to Kurt now. She needs to know. She needs to move the Hell on. "So, Kurt, do you love her?"
Kurt's eyes meet Haley's in the rearview mirror, but she quickly turns to look out the window. She's trying hard to play nonchalant but, despite the past year of our fighting, I know her better than anyone. She's glass and one wrong move will cause her to shatter into a million pieces.
"I do." Kurt responds, hesitantly. "I love her..."
I watch Haley from the corner of my eye, expecting a tear to slide down a cheek. For her to freak out. Something, anything other than what she does next.
She smiles. "I'm happy for you, Kurt. I'm sure you deserve each other."
HALEY
That motherfucker. That bastard! That son of a bitch! I want to kill him--to gut him alive! And Gabby...she's smiling with some fucking sick expression on her face. She wanted this to happen because she knows. She knows I still have feelings for him. That bitch.
I hate them both. They can both go to Hell.
I look out the window, watching the city turn into the open road, and then into trees. I don't let the tears fall. I'd never let them see me cry.
GABBY
Me: Baby, please...
Me: Answer me!
Me: Adam, please, whatever you heard...let me explain myself!
Me: Please! I have feelings for you, Adam...Please let me explain...
Adam: There's nothing to explain, Gabby. I heard everything you had to say loud and fucking clear. We're done.
Me: Adam, don't let it end like this...
Adam: Too late, Gabby. Too fucking late. Lose my number.
I try to muffle a sob. I'm in my room at Leo's home in the Hamptons. We arrived an hour ago and I immediately rushed to my room--the same one I stayed in the last time I was here--and sent rapid-fire texts to Adam. I need him to understand that I didn't mean to hurt him. I have feelings for him...they just aren't the kind that I know he wants me to have. I feel pressure building up in my brain and I feel like I might explode.
It's not like I wanted to not love him. God, I want to love him the way he needs me to more than anything. I want to be in love with him. I just can't do it. There's something wrong with me, I know it.
Against my better judgment and Adam's demand to lose his number, I pick up my phone and dial him, using a star sixty-seven caller ID so he won't know it's me.
"Hello?" He answers almost immediately and I want to laugh because he's so naive and trusting that, of course, he would answer a number with no caller ID.
"Let me talk, Adam, please. Give me a minute."
He's silent, but he doesn't hang up. I take this as an invitation to continue.
"I want to be in love with you. I want it more than I have ever wanted anything. You're fucking perfect. And I think I can get there, Adam. I do, I think that I can be in love with you eventually. It just takes time, like anything. Just give me time. Please. I can be in love with you, Adam, I'm already halfway there."
I wait for his response, but there's silence. Finally, he speaks.
"Sex with me feels like a chore? You see me more as a friend than a lover? Romance with me feels forced and fake? You're contradicting yourself, Gabby, because you told Camille that you don't want to be in love with me, that you don't ever see yourself being in love with me..."
He takes a deep breath and I know that despite how angry he is, he's still trying to keep a calm composure. That's how good he is. "You had something good with me, you know that? I treated you like you were a fucking queen. I was everything for you. I was a friend, I was a lover, I was a confidant. And still, I'm not enough? Still, I'm a chore to you? You're selfish, Gabby. You're not a good person. You never loved me. You loved the idea of me. You loved having a boyfriend. You loved feeling desirable. You self-sabotage. Everything good in your life, you have to ruin it because that's who you are, Gabby. You're a miserable, mean person. You pretend that you're not, that you're good and that you're a victim, but you're not. You're bad news, Gabby Hampton. The only thing that's changed between us is that, now, I finally see it. So I meant what I said. Lose my fucking number. I'm done being second place."
He hangs up, the dial tone ringing in my ears and, finally, I allow myself to sob. It's over, I know it is, and it is completely and utterly my fault.
LEO
"If you like making love at midnight..." I pull the full figured girl closer to me as she rests her head on my shoulder. "...in the pouring rain." The song continues as my hands wrap around her waist and then lower and lower...
"Moo!" Bryson runs up to me and Jane. "Moooooooo!"
"Leo, is this beached whale attacking you?" Jackson Peters rushes to my side and feigns fear and shock. "I thought they were docile creatures!"
The girl tenses in my arms and I gently pry her off me before turning to my fraternity brothers. Memories flood through my mind, of all of the times in high school that my friends shit all over Gabby and I just let it happen. Looking at Jane, the Mexican beauty that I met at the bar last night, I know I have to stand up for her. She's not nearly as confident or strong as Gabby and she looks like she might start sobbing on the spot.
"Guys, leave her the fuck alone." I snap, knowing that they will. I'm one of the top dogs in my fraternity and if they don't listen they know there will be Hell to pay.
"Shit, sorry man. We were just playing." Bryson shrugs.
"You don't owe me an apology." I cross my arms and nudge my head to the girl beside me, protecting herself with her arms and looking as if she wished the ground would swallow her whole.
"Sorry, dude...ette. We were just playing." Jackson nods.
"And, I'd like, totally still bang you as you are right now." Bryson nods up and down erratically as if he's just given her the best compliment in the world.
"Yeah, me too." Jackson nods.
"Get the fuck outta here." I wrap one arm around the beautiful girl's waist and use my other to point in the opposite direction. Jane looks petrified.
"They want to...bang me?" Jane asks in broken English and I realize, hopefully, that she might not have understood the hurtful things my brothers were saying about her. Her English is decent but she's no native speaker.
"Hook up with you, because you're gorgeous." I give her a half smile that I know will drive her wild. Only a little while ago I'd have dropped dead before being with a plus-sized girl in public, but now I'm confident. I don't need validation from friends.
"Hook up with me?" She tilts her head and gives me a shot of those big, brown eyes that I can just imagine being wrapped around my...
Gabby.
I'm not with her, she's with the Adam douche, but it still feels sort of wrong to be here with Jane. Especially if there is a chance that I can still win Gabby over. On the other hand, I have a curvy, sexy brunette. She has full lips and big eyes full of an innocence that I'd love to drain her of. She has a defined nose and long brown hair that falls slightly past her bosom. She's every guy's wet dream, whether they admit it or not.
She's wearing a red bikini that's driving me nuts but I can't let my dick think for me. I know this girl is ready and willing--and better yet, she knows I'm only here on vacation so she's not looking for anything long term--but I feel like sleeping with her would be a betrayal to Gabby. But...Gabby is dating someone else. And...Gabby doesn't have to know. I...could use some release.
"Wanna get outta here?" I put my mouth on top of the sexy girl's head and she shivers in response to my touch.
"Yes, Papi. I was thinking that you would never ask."
-------
We arrive back at the hotel and as soon as we're in my room I'm kissing her, undressing her (not that she had much on to begin with), and touching her everywhere but all the while I'm just wishing that I could touch Gabby again. Jane is letting out little pants and moans everytime I do something that she seems to particularly like.
"Get on your knees," I order her down to the ground, and she obeys hungrily.
-----
Once we're finished, she falls asleep in bed next to me and I don't have the heart to kick her out right away. Instead, I gently reach across from her and grab my phone. Opening Snapchat, I see the usual videos: my brothers partying, girls going wild for spring break, alcohol, and drugs, the whole she-bang. But what I don't expect is to see a picture of Gabby. It's a selfie. She's looking tanner than ever, her hazel eyes hidden squinted up at the camera as she sticks her tongue out playfully. Her open mouth reveals a line of perfect teeth. She definitely looks like she's lost a significant amount of weight but she still has a belly and thighs. Her hair is long and dark. And her tits...did I mention her tits? Best of all is the caption. The caption alone gives me a hard-on which is odd because it's not even sexy. All it reads is 'Enjoying the single life.'
And that's all the incentive I need. Before she can be swooped up by another guy while I'm here in Mexico for two more days, before her boyfriend can try to win her back when he's realized how much of a dumbass he is for dumping or getting dumped by her, and before she can decide that the single life is just too good to leave, I have scheduled a plane ticket to the Hamptons. I am leaving my Mexico spring break early and going to the one that I've wanted to be at all along.