Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle (i am malala young readers edition .TXT) 📗

not sad about what she did anymore, but baring my emotions like this has me on the edge of myself, and I am so intensely exposed that the tears arrive without permission. “You lied. You embarrassed me. Used me. Took advantage of me. I don’t know how it ever got from you confessing you’d tricked me to us just pretending it never happened and you acting like everything was okay. Everything hasn’t been okay for me.”

“I’m—” She’s sputtering. “I’ve already apologized—”

If I let her interrupt, she’ll take control of this conversation and I’ll never get it back. Somehow, I’ll end up comforting her. “You wanted me to forgive you because you didn’t want to have to feel guilty anymore,” I say in a rush. It drops like an anvil, and she snatches her hands back from where she’s been wringing them in front of her, waiting to be held. Coddled. “Wanting to be forgiven isn’t the same as being remorseful.

“I know you could be incredibly nice,” I go on. “You bought me a birthday cake. We went to the movies together. We went shopping. And that was fun! But I think the reason you went out of your way to be extra, extra nice was so that you could then get away with occasional cruelty. I never called you on it. I should have confronted you, but I didn’t, because even as the protagonist in my own life, my feelings came second to yours.”

Her face is changing color, but the impossible has happened: Gemma Peterson is speechless.

“I let you think that your apologies were enough, even though they were empty, and I could tell you didn’t appreciate the full extent of what you’d done, how awful you made me feel. I should have stood up for myself. The quick forgive-and-forget wasn’t fair to me.” My chest is unbearably tight. I do not feel lighter than air or that all has been made right with the world. Just the opposite: I’m tasting my breakfast all over again. The room spins.

But this has weighed heavily upon my heart, and I persevere. “So here I am,” I finish quietly, “better late than never, to tell you that your forgiveness is not the point. You need to learn how to be a better friend. If you keep treating people like their emotions don’t matter as much as yours, like they’re just background roles in your life, you will end up all alone.”

A pregnant pause follows, in which I expect Gemma to land on habits and gush apologies like she used to. Meaningless ones, because she wasn’t sorry at all—she only wanted sympathy.

She does not apologize. Instead, she is angry.

“Well, I am sorry you feel that way—” she spits, complexion going red and blotchy.

I give her shoulder a mild squeeze. “You don’t have to say anything. Just sit with it, okay?”

When I walk away, I look back once. She’s already walking away, too, in the opposite direction. She is going to go find the nearest person and complain about me, and garner their sympathy. There will be crocodile tears. I’ll be the villain in her story for a while, but then hopefully, as time passes, what I’ve said will sink in. Maybe not consciously. But maybe she’ll start to do better by others. That is going to have to be enough for me.

Out in the parking lot, I find Wesley pinning my hotel brochures under somebody’s windshield wipers. Little pink rectangles wave in the breeze on every car in the first two rows. He revolves to take me in, squinting against the sunlight. “Well?”

I sigh.

“Didn’t talk to my old boss. Didn’t give the middle finger to Christine.” I hang my head, still nauseated. My skin is overheated yet clammy, my arms and legs weak. Not at all how I thought victory would feel. “So. Didn’t exactly go down in spectacular flames like I set out to.”

Wesley tips my chin up with one finger. One corner of his mouth lifts. “Of course you didn’t.”

“You didn’t believe in me?” I return, half in jest.

“Just the opposite. My Maybell is not a vengeful person. Her head is in the clouds because she can see the beauty in the world from up there. Going down in flames doesn’t suit.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, choosing to lean my cheek into his palm. At thirty years old, I am finally accepting that I am simply nobody else but myself. I will always only be me. A little bit naïve, a lot idealistic. In the regard of many, understated to the point of forgettable, and easy prey, because my heart is so large a target. But those who deserve to be in my circle will like me just as I am, and will treat me the way I deserve to be treated.

“On to the next,” I announce, linking my arm in his. “It’s your turn now.”

At that, Wesley’s tender expression falters. “I feel like your part of the deal was easier.”

“Yeah, but yours is gonna be way more fun.”

•  •  •  •  •  •  •

IT’S A FIFTY-MINUTE DRIVE to the airport in Knoxville, in which we dream about what we hope Scotland will be like. We hope the weather will be sunny and the Loch Ness Monsters in the mood to be glimpsed by humans. We hope we won’t get stuck behind people who like to recline their seats on the plane. I am doing most of the hoping. Wesley is mostly nodding along to all my chattering and growing progressively more pale. When we park the truck and get our luggage out of the back, his face is alabaster.

“Hey.” I rub up and down his arm. “Okay?”

My brain zings in a billion directions. He’s mad at you, it suggests. You did something wrong. Did I? I scan for anything I talked about on the drive over that might’ve offended him.

A darker thought creeps in: maybe he’s thinking about last night and regrets it.

I study his figure, which hunches over slightly, and feel my