BROKEN AND SCREWED(Broken_Part One)(63)

I jerked away.
“You’re better off with Eric. I think you should make a move on him tonight.”
“He’s still dating Marissa,” I hissed at her.
She was the nonchalant one now. “We both know that’s going to end tonight. It’s just a question of who Marissa’s with now. I bet you money that she already tried to throw herself at Cord. I don’t know what happened, but I know he walked away from her. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Her eyes were steadily on mine in the mirror.
“I know you know.” She said it so faint, I might’ve imagined it. But I hadn’t. Pain flared in her depths and then she looked away. “It’s okay, you know. You kept that a secret for her. You’re a good friend to her.”
Oh boy. “Angie.”
“It’s fine. It really is.” She grabbed her glass and drank the rest of the wine. Then she cleared her throat, looking anywhere but at me. “She’s a horrible friend to you and you’re a great one back to her. And me, I’m a great friend to you and all you do is keep secrets from me. It hurts, Alex, but it’s fine. I should expect this, you know.”
I heard the change in her tone and stiffened. A different sense of dread took root in me now.
“It was always the two of you before. You were both the party girls. Cute, little. All the guys loved you two, especially when you were drinking, but then Ethan died and you became a ghost of what you were. Marissa stepped back, you know, and me…” She gulped with tears in her eyes, “I was there for you. I have been there for you. I’ve tried, Alex. I really have, but you two still have each other’s backs. I don’t get it. I really don’t.”
“Angie.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get it.”
“Angie.” She was about to leave the bathroom again, but I grabbed her arm. I stopped her. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” Her eyes seared me. The hurt was so much, too much, in her. “I really want to understand. Maybe then it won’t hurt so goddamn much.” Her voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper at the end.
I flinched. I hadn’t realized I’d been hurting her, but then I took a deep breath. “You have loving parents.”
“So? That means I can’t be in your little club because my parents love me?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that you might not understand because your parents love you. You have a boyfriend who loves you. You don’t get the other side, of when parents don’t love you or don’t treat you how you should be treated. Your parents protect you. They care about you, look over you. Mine stopped a long time ago.” I swallowed more pain away and confessed, “They stopped even before Ethan died.” It was why I had been partying so much.
“So what? I don’t get it.”
“I don’t cover for Marissa because I know all her secrets, but because I can guess at some of them. I have no idea what’s happened to her, but something did. She wouldn’t go through guys like she does if she had parents like yours.”
“Pat and Lorna are not like that. They’re good parents. They love her. They’re best friends with mine—”
“I know.” I gentled my tone. “They’re your parents’ best friends, but not all households are like yours. And I’m not even saying it has to do with them. I’m saying that something happened to Marissa. She hasn’t been the same Marissa since eighth grade. She changed that year, remember?”
Her eyes hollowed out and I knew she was remembering that year.
“She didn’t come to school the same.”