Polly grabs my hand. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head, trying to breathe through the pain and fear. My chest feels heavy. So does my stomach. “Get this dress off me,” I gasp. “Get it off!”
I start clawing at the corset ties as Elle tries to grab my hands. “Hey, Lys, it’s okay. Calm down. It’s gonna be okay.”
How can I explain to her that she’s wrong? I was standing on solid ground a few minutes ago. Now, quicksand is pulling me under.
“I can’t breathe,” I choke desperately. “I can’t breathe.”
52
ALYSSA
Riiiiiiiip.
The dress tears right down the side. I can’t even bring myself to mourn its loss as I shred it off me. I don’t want the fabric so much as touching my skin. I want it gone.
I’m such an idiot. What was I thinking? A pretty ceremony? A shotgun wedding? My dream husband? They were all just silly little figments of my imagination. A stupid fairytale I was clinging to because I was alone and I was scared.
Who the hell did I think I was to deserve a happy ending?
“Get it off!”
“Okay, okay!” Elle cries, pulling the last scrap of the dress from my body. “It’s off. See?” She holds up the fine silk and then throws it onto the chair next to my bed. “Take a deep breath.”
“I’m trying,” I pant, turning my back on both Polly and Elle and burying my face in my hands. “I swear I’m trying.”
I can’t stand the way they’re looking at me. Like I’m some sort of broken charity case. No. Worse. A jilted lover.
Uri as good as left me at the altar. Pregnant, no less.
I’d been riding high after that conversation with my parents. It felt like a true fresh start. When I hung up, I could tell myself with a straight face that I was finally growing up, putting my past behind me, moving on with life. It felt like I was well on my way to healing.
And now?
Not one bit of that is true.
How fragile we are. How easily broken. The difference between happiness and despair is as simple and as instant as a phone call. A diagnosis. A few angry words and a pair of smoldering blue eyes.
“Hey,” Elle says, approaching me from the side as though I’m a trapped animal she’s afraid of spooking. “You’re shivering, hon. Let’s get you covered up, okay?”
I look down to discover that she’s right. My skin is pimpled with goosebumps and my hair’s standing on end. But it has nothing to do with the temperature in the room.
Still, I don’t stop her when she ventures closer with my sweats in one hand and a t-shirt in the other. She and Polly help me shrug my clothes on and when they’re done, it feels like an hour has passed. Maybe more. I glance towards my torn wedding dress and bite down on my tongue until I taste blood.
“Sit down, hon,” Elle says gently. “Please. You look dead on your feet.”
Fitting. I feel pretty dead inside, too.
All she has to do is nudge me and I fall back into the bed. I say nothing as she drags a blanket over me. “Alyssa, say something. You look…”
She trails off and that final unsaid word hangs in the space between us. Horrible? Sad? Lost? Hopeless? Pathetic? It doesn’t even matter; they all apply. Dealer’s choice, really.
“Lys.” Polly’s voice is soft as she moves to the side of my bed and takes my hand. “I don’t know what’s going on with Uri, but it has to be a misunderstanding. It just has to.”
I shake my head. My eyes float to hers but I’m not really looking at anything, or if I am, my brain isn’t bothering to decipher it. I just see shapes with fuzzy outlines. Planes of indistinct color that add up to something vaguely Polly-shaped. “He doesn’t trust me.”
“Well, that’s bullshit!” Polly says with all that teenage angst that I sometimes think I still haven’t outgrown. “I’m gonna go talk to him.”
“Don’t,” I protest weakly, but Polly’s already storming off towards the door.
“Pol—”
“She’s already gone,” Elle says, grabbing my hand. “Alyssa, what happened?”
I try to focus on Elle but it’s more of the same. It’s not my friend looking at me. Just a cacophony of meaningless, flesh-colored prisms. “I don’t know.”
She’s blinking a lot and fidgeting a lot, so I know that she’s worried. “Alyssa, hon, you’re not looking so good.”
I wish I had the energy to smile. “I feel… weird.”