The Game Changer(81)

There were two quick knocks on the door before it opened and Dean burst through. “You told him I was here?” I whispered to Melissa.

“No,” she whispered in response.

“Sis. What’s going on?” Dean practically sprinted to me. I loved it when he called me that, even though it wasn’t official.

“How’d you know I was here,” I asked, before he snatched me up from the couch into a bear hug. I missed Dean and seeing him forced me to realize just how much.

“Jack called me, out of his mind. Told me to go check on you and make sure you were OK. He said he thinks you broke up with him. Is that true?” Dean’s voice was filled with disbelief.

“What? You did what?” Melissa asked through her surprise.

“I don’t know what I did. I just left and told him I didn’t know if I could do this anymore.”

“Jesus, Cassie! Are you trying to fucking kill the guy?” Melissa shook her head. “After everything the two of you have been through?”

“Why is it always about Jack and how my decisions affect him? Why isn’t it ever about me and what all of this bullshit does to me?” I broke down, the tears spilling out as I leaned back onto the couch.

Dean dropped onto the other side of me, wrapping his arms around me, “I don’t want you guys to break up.”

“I’m a fucking wreck on the inside. Can’t you see that?” I looked at him before looking away. I hated disappointing Dean. “Chrystle’s stupid article pushed me over the edge. I can’t take another picture of me with ‘home wrecker’ or ‘man-stealing slut’ written across it.” I buried my head in my hands, pressing my palms against my eyes.

“What does any of that have to do with Jack, though? I mean, really?” Melissa’s forehead creased.

“It has everything to do with Jack!” I shouted, throwing my hands up in the air. “I’m only dealing with all of this because I’m dating him. This keeps happening to me because I’m his girlfriend.”

“So if you two weren’t together, then no one would post stuff about you?” she asked.

I breathed out a loud, annoyed breath. “Obviously! They wouldn’t care about me if I wasn’t with him.”

Melissa’s hand rested on my thigh. “Well, then. You should definitely let these strangers dictate your love life.”

“Don’t be a jerk.” I narrowed my eyes.

“I’m not. I honestly can’t believe I’m sitting here listening to this. You would walk away from Jack just to stop some stupid gossip?”

I shook my head. “You don’t know how it feels. I know it probably seems like I shouldn’t care, or I should let it roll off my back, but people read those things and they believe them without question. They shout mean things to me all the time at Jack’s games. New York might be a big city, but it feels really small sometimes. Everything that gets posted, I have to deal with. Not anyone else. Me.” I pointed at my chest. “And it sucks.”

Dean reached for my shoulder. “Cassie, leaving Jack isn’t the answer.”

I shrugged. “All the harassment would stop.”

“Do you honestly think you’d be OK not being with him?” Dean pleaded, his voice becoming more agitated.

“I don’t know, but I’m not OK right now and I’m with him.”

Melissa cleared her throat. “You know you’re not a real person to them.”

“A real person to whom?”

“The people that post on those websites, they don’t know you. They don’t know anything about you. It’s really easy for people to talk shit about someone they don’t know. Especially when it’s someone they think they’ll never see in real life.”

I’d never been one of those types to write nasty things online about people I didn’t know. Did I read gossip sites and watch shows about celebrities? Of course I did. But I always remembered there were two sides to every story, and I never trusted what was reported. Melissa’s mom instilled that in both of us from a young age. Occupational hazard, she called it.

I sniffed, wiping away a tear as Meli continued. “You know this. You’ve just never been at the receiving end of it like this before. Last year was bad, but it was nothing like this. It’s horrible and hurtful, but people do it because they can. They hide behind a computer screen where no one else can see them. They aren’t held accountable for their words. They can type them, press enter, and walk away.”

“But I read those words and they stay with me. When someone takes a picture of me at lunch eating a burger with a caption that says, ‘Maybe she should lay off the burgers’…” I looked down at my thighs before staring ahead at the wall.