You're Invited(89)

I’d returned home a few hours later to find a livid Amaya storming out of the building. She screamed at me that I’d chosen him over her and left. I didn’t understand. I’d just been trying to help her.

I didn’t see or hear from her again until she showed up at my house.

Did she have every right to be mad at me? Sure, I guess. I didn’t know what went down with Spencer, of course. Had something happened? Something bad? At the time, I never thought it was possible. Spencer was everyone’s hero. He was the only guy who hung out with us on girls’ nights. He was our designated driver. Our bodyguard when we got too much attention at a club. He’d treated Amaya like a heroine from a romance novel. He was a good guy.

He was a good guy to me, too, until he wasn’t.

“Ams? You okay? You’re not leaving, are you?”

She nodded.

I should have just said it. That I wanted her to stay. Instead we had some rubbish back-and-forth about my mother bugging her and her insisting that she was tired.

That was until she blurted out that I can’t marry Spencer.

But it wasn’t what she said. It was the way she said it.

So much entitlement.

For years growing up I was stunted in Amaya’s shadow. She always got what she wanted. She was bossy, sure, way before it was politically incorrect to call women bossy. But she used to order me around. Tell me what to do. I spent so much time and energy trying not to upset her. She was fearless back then. She’d taken the fall for me, too, sometimes—when I thought I was in love with a teacher at school and she pretended like she was the one dating him to discourage gossip and I could spend time with him. At the time I thought she was being my friend. Now I knew that she was using my mistakes to control me.

And here she was, telling me what to do again.

“You can’t marry him, Kaavi. I was with him for four years, okay? You can’t marry him.”

Not a request. An order. A stake to her claim.

I guess some things never changed after all.

I gave her a little smile. She wasn’t the boss anymore. I was in control.

“I knew that’s why you showed up here. You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?” I didn’t care if she was, to be honest. She could have him if it meant both of them were out of my life.

“No, it’s not like that. You don’t understand.”

I don’t understand? She broke my heart, worse than any asshole man ever could, and now I’m supposed to be the bad guy?

“I should have known. Really. Look, you’d cut me out of your life, okay? I’ve tried so many times to reach out to you. I wanted to talk to you about it, of course I did. But come on, Ams, after everything we’ve been through together you just decided to stop speaking to me. And why? Because I tried to help you all those years ago?”

I hated this. I fucking hated this. I’d made a promise to myself when she left. I’d put up my walls, tall and strong, and no one was getting over them again. And here I was, explaining myself to her again, pleading with her again.

“Help me? You ruined my life!”

Here she was again. Making it all about her.

“What the hell do you even mean?” I hissed. “You’re losing your mind, you know that? You’ve completely lost it. I mean, you just show up here, following me around, completely uninvited—”

“I’m not uninvited.”

Was this bitch high?

“What the hell do you mean? How the hell could I have invited you when we haven’t even spoken in five fucking years?”

“You invited me, Kaavi. You said you wanted me to come. You even lied to me about your parents wanting me to be here.”

Yep. She’s lost it. Completely batshit. I just needed to get away from her. I had bigger problems to worry about. I didn’t have time for this unhinged bitch from my past. I can’t believe I actually thought about opening up to her.

“You’ve lost your goddamned mind. Everyone said it, I just didn’t believe them.”

She grabbed my arm, screaming at me to listen to her.

This was the limit.

“Are you threatening me, Amaya? I’ll listen to you or what, huh? Or what?”

I’d been threatened way too many times in the last forty-eight hours, and I wasn’t taking this shit anymore. She needed to shut up and get out of here.

“Or what, Amaya? You’ll kill me like you killed Gayan Peiris? Huh? Is that what you’d do?”

That should do it.

“Yes! I’ll fucking kill you before I let you do this. You hear me? I’ll fucking kill you.”

Damn, and I thought I’d taken it too far. Mentioning Gayan was a low blow. We both knew that. It was just a stupid teenage accident. I just wasn’t expecting her to react like that.

“Well, there you go.”

She tried to explain but I didn’t care. I told her to stay the hell away from me and my wedding. I couldn’t deal with this anymore.

I stormed off toward the beach, but I didn’t make it to the party.

I found a quiet, unlit spot and took my shoes off.

Then I waded into the ocean, until the water was to my waist. It wasn’t cold. The Indian Ocean was never cold. My dress billowed out around me. Thank god I’d had the good sense to book out the whole beach so no one was around.