Sylvia huffs and rolls her eyes again. “Tell me about it. I mean, I know he’s been your friend forever, and I don’t want to put you in the middle of anything, but it was a pain in the ass finding a place to crash. I ended up on my friend Casey’s couch.” She waves an elegant hand breezily through the air. “But it’s fine. She doesn’t care if my boxes are stacked against her wall for a few weeks while Justin works through his issues and realizes he’s made a mistake.”
My mouth goes dry and I can’t think of a single thing to say aside from things I absolutely can’t say, like he’s never going to realize he made a mistake, Sylvia, because he’s with me now, and he’s mine, and I licked him and peed on him—in the metaphorical sense, not the literal sense, because that would be disgusting. I’m saying that I’ve marked Justin as my territory and that’s it’s over, super model girl, no sharing, no take backs. Mine, mine, and also, mine.
But it’s okay that I’m tongue-tied because Sylvia has plenty to say.
“He’s called me twice already,” she says with a silly, secret smile, one that is innocently happy, not vicious, because she clearly has no idea that Justin and I are more than friends. “Today he said he was calling to make sure I didn’t need my bike from the storage unit in his building before Sunday because he was going to be busy this weekend, but we ended up talking for almost an hour. It was nice. We cut through a lot of the bullshit. Got real, you know?”
I swallow hard and manage to convince my head to bob up and down a couple of times.
Justin talked to her today. Today, after he left my bed and texted me, wanting to get together and talk, he called and chatted with Sylvia instead. For an hour. And they “got real,” whatever that means.
It could mean anything. Or nothing.
He has her bike and they just broke up and they have normal, just-broken-up things to talk about.
“It was so nice to hear him say that he realizes that he wasn’t giving as much to our relationship as he should have been. As much as I deserved.” Her gaze is soft, unfocused, as if she’s reliving the moment Justin made it clear that he’s on his way back to her, sooner or later.
He’s on his way back to her. He really is.
Why else would he have called her and said all of those things?
Why else except that sleeping with someone he wasn’t in love with showed him that he wants something more, something meaningful and romantic with a beautiful, confident, successful woman? It’s just like Laura said. The rebound girl is just a phase, a step in the process, a tissue used to mop up the emotions until Justin realizes that he really wants the girl he had before.
But this time, the girl he had before wants him back, too.
“Anyway,” Sylvia says with a laugh, oblivious to my inner meltdown. “Sorry to talk your ear off. It’s just nice to see a familiar face. I don’t know anyone on this side of town. We should get together sometime. Jus said you were the one who taught him how to crochet. I’ve been dying to learn, but every time I ask him to teach me he ends up using the yarn to tie me to the headboard.”
She laughs again and something in my forehead swells, bigger and bigger, until my head starts to pound and my vision begins to swim.
“But if you have time to teach me, I can pay you back with brunch and Bloody Mary’s or something. I make a killer Bloody Mary.”
“I have to go,” I mumble, patting the counter near the sink blindly for a moment before I realize that I left my purse on my chair in the restaurant. “Sorry, I just remembered I have an appointment.”
“Oh, okay,” Sylvia says. “All right. Nice talking to you, Libby. See you around.”
“See you,” I echo as I head for the door on numb legs. I stumble through the increasingly crowded restaurant, going more and more numb, until I feel like a zombie, something alien and only half human shambling through the throngs of happy people.
Had I seriously imagined that Justin might want to be with me? Had I actually thought that what we’d started was something special, and that I would be able to make this work because I know Jus in a way no other woman ever has? Because I know about his inner goofball and his secret, tender heart and that most of the time when he fails at something it isn’t because he doesn’t have what it takes to succeed, but because he lets his fear of letting people down get the better of him.
He hates to let people down. He wants to make everyone happy all the time.
And maybe that’s all this was between us. The sweet words and passionate kisses and the way Justin swore that I made him as crazy in bed as he made me were all part of not letting down a friend who desperately needed his help. Maybe all this time, he’s secretly been feeling sorry for me, pitying poor Libby, the socially inept virgin who needs step-by-step instructions to give a blow job, and making plans to go back to Sylvia as soon as possible.