Boy meets girl, girl falls in love, blah-blah-blah.
Let me be clear with you from the beginning. This is not that kind of story.
My name is Cait, and I live in the great city of New York. Okay, so maybe I've only lived here for a week and a half...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"Cait?" A voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I blinked a few times as my best friend and manager stared at me. "You okay?"
I nodded, throwing up a sarcastic thumbs up, "Peachy."
Peter snorted, shaking his head as he exited the break room. It was a busy shift, and this was the first time I'd been able to sit down in over six hours. My legs were aching, the muscles throbbing from overuse...and poor choice of footwear...and I still had at least 3 hours to go, since we're currently understaffed. In times like these, I couldn't help but regret my life goals. It would be so much easier to be a slacker, but no. I just had to have ambition.
Val stared at me, her brown eyes taking in every aspect of my appearance from my frizzy braid to my - yes - mismatched shoes. The dark circles are so prominent under my eyes that I've given up trying to mask them with makeup. What's the point? Are people really gonna say, 'Oh, she looks awful, but at least it's not that awful.'
Damn, I'm so pathetic.
"Cait," Val sat down next to me, staring at the bagel she picked up for lunch, and sighed. "Cait, we need to talk about this."
I groaned, rocking forward as I pushed myself out of the uncomfortable metal chair and back onto my feet. My body screamed in protest, but I shrugged it off and headed toward the door of the breakroom. I still had twenty minutes left of my break, and I had zero intention of spending it sitting in that room having a conversation I didn't want to have.
Sure, I might have been a shitty friend. Sue me. Val kept trying to bring it up, and I told her over and over again that I had zero interest in talking about it. She refused to give up though, being a great friend and all, and it was starting to piss me off. Our relationship was strained, we hardly spent any time together, and I avoided the apartment like the plague. I picked up extra shifts at Starbucks, I went on hour-long runs every single day without exception, and I spent most of my spare time filling out scholarship applications for school. We'd learned to pretend everything was okay, but I was not. I was not okay.
Every time she cornered me, it only made things worse. It wasn't going to help to talk about something I couldn't change, so why bother?
Why fucking bother?
Allowing the door to close behind me, I nodded to Peter as I stepped out of the coffee shop and onto the busy street. I knew that I shouldn't have acted like that to Val, but she wouldn't understand even if I wanted to tell her. Even if I could tell her. That's the thing about being blackmailed, however, you can't exactly tell someone that it's happening. Kinda defeats the point.
I knew it wasn't my problem. I knew I could've told that girl to go to hell. I probably should've. After all, I'm just Cait, right? I'm the good girl with the perfect grades. The good girl with two ex-boyfriends, who can't bring herself to hate either one. The girl who had so much potential, the girl without any demons, the girl with the whole world ahead of her.
