Demands. Me asking him when we could get married. Really married because it mattered to me. When we could have kids because I had always wanted them and he knew it, and I wasn’t getting any younger.
I’d been his most faithful friend for fourteen years, and I had made demands.
But I kept the comments to myself and kept my face even. I let her keep going.
“He was in a bad place.”
In his ten-million-dollar house, traveling around in a two-million-dollar tour bus, flying around in a private jet that his record label owned.
He hadn’t been in a “bad place.” I knew Kaden better than anyone and knew that, apart from a time after his grandfather had died, he had never been devastated a day in his life. He had been bummed and disappointed after his Trivium album had gotten reamed by music reviewers, but he’d shrugged it off and said he was lucky it had taken him six albums to finally have a flop. It happens to everybody, he’d insisted. His mom on the other hand had been furious… but it had been her idea to stop using my songs so…
He slept soundly every night, fueled by the countless people who brushed off the failure and kept reaming him with butter-covered words that would go up his butt easier. He had lived in a fantasy world of love. Part of it was my fault but not all of it.
“And you’d been together so long, he needed to get his head straight. Make sure.”
Make sure?
I almost choked, but she didn’t deserve that.
Make sure. Wowee wowsers.
I wanted to laugh too but held that back as well. Just… wow. She was digging herself into a deeper and deeper hole, and she had no idea. I should’ve been insulted by how dumb and desperate she assumed I would be to fall for this.
But I could play this game. I was good at it. I’d had fourteen years to perfect this with her. I’d even practiced on Randall Rhodes. I should’ve invited him over and unleashed him on her.
“He had so many options. Wouldn’t you rather he be totally confident than question everything later on?” she asked.
I nodded seriously.
She bared her teeth in something that tried to resemble a smile but actually made her look like she was being tortured. Which this probably was for her. “He misses you, Aurora. Very much. He wants you back.”
She emphasized that “back” like it was some sort of fucking Christmas miracle—no, not a Christmas miracle, an immaculate conception. Like I should fall to my knees and be grateful.
Instead, I just nodded seriously some more.
“He’s tried calling everyone he knows to get them to give him your new number. He’s begged Yuki and that sister of hers.”
They might have gotten along while we’d been together, but I was their friend. A real friend who cared about them and worried about them and loved them for no reason other than they were great people. Not because they could do something for me.
“One of the private investigators we hired had to get creative to get your phone number once he located you. He has tried getting back in contact with you. I know he’s emailed you and you haven’t had the decency to respond.”
And that’s when I snapped.
Decency.
Decency was a strong word that usually people the furthest away from being decent would use. Because decent people didn’t use the word as a weapon. Decent people understood that there were reasons for everything and that there were two sides to every story.
And I was a decent person. Fuck it. I was a good person. These motherfuckers were the ones who wouldn’t know what decent meant if it backhanded them.
And I wasn’t going to get dragged through the mud more than I already had. So that’s when I stopped her.
I leaned forward across the table, reached toward the woman who I had never really loved but had cared about because someone I’d loved adored her, and set my hand on top of hers, the hand she had sitting on top of her Hermès purse. And I smiled at her, even though I absolutely didn’t feel like smiling at all.
My smile was the only weapon I needed then.
“I didn’t respond, not because I wasn’t decent, because I am, and the next time you approach someone to try and get them to listen to you, maybe don’t disrespect them. There is literally nothing I want from Kaden. Not six months ago, not a year ago, and definitely not today. I told him, Mrs. Jones, when he showed up at our house after spending the night at yours, that he didn’t mean what he said. That he would regret ending our relationship. And I was right.”
I exhaled through my nose and pulled my hand back, aiming another one of those deadly smiles at her so she would know her time for talking was done. She was done. “I don’t give a shit if he actually misses me or if he misses what I did for him and that’s why he wants me back. I know he loved me, at least he did genuinely for a while, and I hope he knows I loved him. But that’s the thing, I don’t anymore, and I haven’t in a long time. He killed every inch of the love I felt for him. You helped kill every inch of the love I felt for him too.”