Afterglow

wasted

Shopping with Jenna was a ridiculous idea. I honestly had no idea what I was thinking, but it did yield some promising results.

Three and a half hours later and arms filled with shopping bags and gown sleeves, we set up shop in a little cafe on the side of the outlet mall and swiped through pictures of the dresses we'd tried on.

"I still think you should've gotten the silver strappy dress."

I rolled my eyes.

"That one cut into my stomach too much and it was way too itchy," I said, still surprised that my mother had agreed to let me go shopping anywhere in the first place.

I searched around us, checking the faces of every patron in the restaurant to see if I could notice anyone out of the ordinary. I felt extraordinarily guilty for flaunting Jenna in the face of my birth father if he was watching us, but it wasn't like I could tell her about my birth father. I wasn't necessarily that close with her, but she deserved to know if she was in danger...

Ugh! I didn't forgive her for what she did to me and how she treated me, but alone, she was just a normal girl. Without the friend group around to impress, she was actually pretty easy to hang out with.

"Hey, I have something to-"

"Oh my god, and you're going with Lachlan? I thought you said you couldn't forgive him," she said, wiggling her eyebrows at me while she sipped at her latte.

I rolled my eyes and sighed, pocketing the hard conversation until she was done analyzing my not-relationship with Lachlan.

"I told you, he came over and pretty much dared me to. What was I supposed to do, let him think that he was right?"

"But...he was right."

"Ugh!"

Her twinkling laughter brought my head up to meet her wry stare. Her blue eyes didn't glow with hatred towards me anymore, and they didn't gleam with mischief. I wondered what had changed.

"I'll only say this one more time. Whatever he did, you should probably just get over it. Any girl at school would kill, and I mean that literally, to have a shot with him, and here you are just pushing him away. I know you like him, and I know he likes you. Unless he did something unforgivable like cheat on you or hit you or emotionally abuse you or something like that, then I think you should just forgive him. It looks like you're just torturing yourselves every time you stare at each other thinking the other doesn't notice."

My cheeks reddened at her apt observations. My heart raced in my chest at just the mere thought of forgiving Lachlan. If I forgave him, then I would respect myself just as little as he had respected me when he started getting close to me for his dad, when he broke into my phone and stole information that wasn't his to know. What did that say about me?

"Okay, changing the topic now. Do you think I should ask Taylor to be my date to the gala?"

"I thought Taylor broke up with you? If I remember, it wasn't exactly a good breakup either..."

She scrunched up her face at the memories that brought back.

"Yeah, well, I started doing this self reflection journal and my therapist says that I need to make amends. Oh yeah, also I'm sorry for all that drama. It was stupid and all over jealousy over a guy, which is not a good enough reason to fight someone. My meds fluctuate and I sometimes get manic and other times I get really depressed. I'm not saying that to excuse anything, but just to kind of explain things. You've been really cool lately so I just thought I needed to apologize."