Broken Little Melodies(34)

“I didn’t expect you’d be hanging around in a place that should be bulldozed with the kind of girls who give sexual favors in exchange for money! Jesus Christ, Belle! Being poor isn’t an excuse for this kind of shit!” Balling my hands at my sides, I sneered. “Is this what you do when I’m not around? Make out with random guys on the dance floor and offer to suck them off for a little cash? Is that how you made your way to camp?” Then, with a surge of red-hot anger ripping through my chest, I asked, “Were you really a virgin before you slept with me, or was that all bullshit?”

Her beautiful eyes filled with an ugly, hateful look that would leave me uneasy for countless years to come, even though I knew at the time that I deserved it for the shit I said. I immediately wanted to kick myself for accusing her of something so crude. How could I say that to the girl I had loved for so long?

“Fuck you,” she spat before turning away from me.

She strode away so quickly that I had to jog after her.

“Belle, wait!”

She spun around, her eyes filled with tears. “I can’t believe after all this time you’d think I'd lie to you about being a virgin! You—of all people! You know me better than anyone!”

“After what I saw back there, I’m starting to doubt that’s true!”

Her lips flattened into a tight line as she started for me, poking my chest. “What about you, huh? You seemed to know an awful lot about kissing the first time we made out! How many other girls were there before me, Roman? How do I know that I was your first?”

Unable to lie to her, I looked away. I knew it was a little late to confess to the hand jobs I was given in Texas a couple of years ago when I was worried that I wouldn’t see her again. I may have been young and dumb at the time, but I still knew it made me a jerk to mess around with anyone else when I already thought of Belle as my girl.

“Do you see what’s happening?” she yelled at me. When I looked back her way, tears streaked her face and her hands were aggressively held out at her sides. “This is the universe showing us why we can’t ever be together outside of camp! You don’t belong in my world any more than I belong in yours! Do you really believe if you took me back to New York with you that I’d fit in with Brooke and your crew, or that someone like me would get accepted into Juilliard? Wake up, Roman! What we have is just a summertime thing! You shouldn’t have come here!”

I should’ve taken her in my arms and told her she was wrong, that things would be different once we were out of high school, but I was still pissed after meeting her friends. I didn’t understand how she could hang with those girls without being disgusted by how they were acting, or at least be outraged that one had propositioned me while she stood inches away.

For the most part I believed that she truly cared about me. I wouldn’t have spent countless hours telling her about my sucky life from the other side of the country if she didn’t. Despite having a hard time with the word “love,” I knew she felt it. She proved it in the way she kissed me when we made love. I knew the adoring way she had looked at me as our bodies joined under the stars, like I was her universe, wasn’t something that could be faked.

Still, a small part of me would always wonder if she was like her friends the other nine months out of the year. Maybe she had tricked me into believing she was someone else.

“You’re right,” I muttered, walking past her in the general direction of her apartment. “Coming here was a mistake.”

We didn’t say a word to each other as she lead the way back. That night I lay on the couch, but couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours with the obnoxious noises of her neighborhood and the traitorous thoughts whirling through my head.

I loved Isabelle and would do anything for her.

But the shit I said to her outside of that club proved otherwise.

And although I had never questioned whether or not she was faithful before, I couldn’t deny that I had my doubts after what I had witnessed.

How well did I really know her?

In the blink of an eye it was morning, and the harsh sunlight was pushing through the cracked blinds in the kitchen. As I was rubbing my eyes, Chris came out of the master bedroom wearing only a pair of boxers.

His nose crinkled when he saw me stretched out on the couch. “What the fuck did you do to Is? She was cryin’ half the night.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood upright. I had no doubt at that point the guy was a slime-ball. It sickened me that Belle was forced to live with him. “None of your fuckin’ business.”

“Seein’ that you’re on my couch, sniffin’ around my girl, I’d say it is my business.”