Lost Along the Way(49)

“And did you or did you not say that you thought I looked fat in my wedding dress? How can you possibly call yourself a friend and then say something like that?”

“How do you even know that I . . . ?” Jane asked as she flashed back to the events surrounding Cara’s wedding. She could not believe that she was being forced to defend things that she may or may not have said more than a decade ago. Jane had commented on the dress after Cara had sent her a picture of it, but only to one person, and only in confidence. She should’ve known that Meg would tell Cara.

“I never said that! All I said was that your hips were your problem area, and I was surprised you were going with a mermaid gown. I simply thought you’d have looked better if you had worn something that flared at the waist. And I would’ve told you that to your face if you had ever bothered to ask me to go dress shopping with you. But you never did. All I had to go by were the pictures you showed me.”

“I went with my mother! Don’t make it sound like I was running around Manhattan with an entourage looking at dresses and left you out. And how is that a defense to what you said about me? Is that why you couldn’t bother to stay for the entire wedding? Because I didn’t ask you to go shopping?”

“Why did you tell her that, Meg?” Jane asked, angry at herself for being surprised to discover that Meg had broken her trust. “To hurt her feelings or to make her mad at me? I’d like to know exactly why you decided to betray me like that.”

“You’re mad at me now?” Meg yelled. Her voice was high-pitched and whiny. Jane had forgotten how annoying it could be. “You were the one backstabbing her at every turn and you expected me to just keep my mouth shut? Honestly, Jane, I was so disgusted by the way you were acting that I thought Cara should know. If you said those things, then own up to them. Admit it and stop blaming other people for the things that you said and did.”

“Are you happy now? Was this what you wanted? For Cara to resent me? Well, congrats. But don’t either of you sit there and tell me how upset you were when I decided to pull away from you. This is exactly the reason why I did. I was so f*cking sick of always feeling like you didn’t want me around but I was grandfathered in so you didn’t have a choice. And you know what, Cara? I wanted to be happy for you, I really did. I tried, even though I thought then, and I still think now, that your husband is a loser. So yeah, I left early because I couldn’t stand pretending for one more second to be pumped that you attached yourself to an *. I was the only one willing to at least be honest. Besides, it’s not like you ever made any effort after that. All I heard from you after you got back from your honeymoon was a Christmas card with a preprinted note on it. You didn’t even sign it. Did you ever think about how that made me feel? That maybe I was hurting, too?”

“You can’t say you’re sorry, can you?” Cara asked. “All these years later and you’re still making excuses for everything you did. And now that all the bad decisions you’ve made over the years have caught up with you, you’re playing the poor-me song you’ve played your whole life, and the reality is, you’re complicit in what happened to you. You are no one’s victim.”

Jane’s breath caught in her throat. She had been prepared for some painfully honest arguing, but she was not prepared for this. “You want to know what a good friend is, Cara? Someone who is willing to fight for you. When I pulled away, you didn’t even bother to come after me. You never tried to fix the rift between us. You just let it go, like our friendship meant nothing. Like I meant nothing.”

“I e-mailed you. You never wrote me back. Your version of revisionist history won’t work on me. I was there. Remember? I know exactly what happened.”

“And if I’d known that that was all it took for you to just give up on me, I would’ve cut our ties long before I did. You guys always thought you were better than me. Always.”

“That’s not true,” Meg said. Jane couldn’t even look at her, knowing that she’d betrayed her confidence. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised. One thing she’d learned since leaving for college was that most girls were bitches, and the idea of a real friendship existing among any of them anywhere was utterly ridiculous. Maybe it was better that she didn’t have any friends anymore.

“Oh, really? You guys don’t think I know that you looked down on me all those years I was trying to get acting jobs? That you thought I was being silly, and vain, and unrealistic? You never thought I was as smart as you. You never thought I would amount to anything. Once you guys got married you looked down on me because I was still single and you thought I was pathetic. I know you did.”

“I never said that. Not once,” Meg said.

“You didn’t have to. You never said otherwise, either.”

“Still waiting on that apology,” Cara said.

“What do you want me to say? Okay, Cara. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I said you’d have looked better in a different style dress. Shoot me for disagreeing with your fashion sense. But you owe me an apology, too.”

“For what? I didn’t do anything!”

“There was a time when we did everything together. Not a single day went by where we didn’t talk multiple times a day, and then all of a sudden, you were too busy for me. You don’t think you owe me an apology for that?”