I stood back and glared at them, my eyes shooting daggers at both of them. My voice was even and deadpan as I spoke.
“When I leave this room I do not ever want to hear from either of you again and I mean it. You are both dead to me.”
I grabbed my bag, turned and walked out and slammed her door behind me. Seth came after me but I kept walking right out of Bethany’s parent’s house and he followed me into the street, grabbed my arm and spun me around. I snatched my arm out of his grasp and my face was mottled in rage.
“Do not touch me!”
“Please don’t leave like this Sky! Can’t we talk about this?”
I stood looking at him, my eyes cold and blank. His eyes were begging and I could tell that he knew he had lost me. “No! Goodbye, Seth.”
I turned to walk home and he didn’t follow me this time. I made it inside my house before the tears streamed uncontrollably down my face. I collapsed to the floor in a heap of sobs and my mom ran from the kitchen to see what was wrong. She helped me up to the couch and held me in her arms as I told her what Bethany and Seth had done to me. We talked for a while and she told me that I would feel better the next day after a good night of sleep. She also told me that if I didn’t want to talk to them anymore I didn’t have to.
“That chapter of your life is over Skylar and it might not feel like it now, but you have big, big things ahead in your life. One day this will be nothing but a distant memory. You’ll meet better friends, friends who won’t betray you, and you’ll meet a wonderful guy one day. I know it hurts now honey, but trust me it will get better. I’m so sorry that this happened to you, I know how much you love both of them.”
“It’s not fair mom! Seth betrayed me with my best friend! How pathetic and cliché is that? Why did he do this to me? How could Bethany do this to me?” I was wailing as my mom gently rocked me back and forth.
“It will be okay honey, I promise.”
Later, as I lay in my bed, I was so happy that my horrible day was coming to an end. I thought about all the stuff I had done with Bethany over the years; all of the sleepovers, sharing secrets, talking about first kisses, and I wondered if she ever really liked me, because if she did, she wouldn’t have done this to me. Maybe she was jealous of me and maybe she had secretly always liked Seth. I don’t know.
Oh, and Seth, what a liar. He was the only boy I had been with and we slept together for the first time on my 18th birthday a couple of months before. I felt sick to my stomach as I realized that he had slept with Bethany before he slept with me. I thought that night was perfect and so special at the time. He told me that he loved me, that he would never hurt me and that he wanted us to get married after college. It made me feel like he really did love me and I believed him and trusted him. We had all just recently had an incredible night together at prom the weekend before, Bethany went with a guy she told me she had a major crush on. I never in a million years would have guessed that my boyfriend and my best friend were hooking up behind my back. Maybe there were signs all along and I missed them because I thought I was so happy and in love.
My eyelids became very heavy as I tried to push thoughts of what had happened out of my mind. I drifted off to sleep wishing that graduation was the next day instead of a couple of weeks away. I would have to avoid Bethany and Seth at school because I didn’t want to see them and I didn’t want the whole school whispering about us. There was absolutely nothing either one of them could say to me to make things better.
***
We graduated a couple of weeks later and in those weeks, both Seth and Bethany called me and texted me non-stop. I defriended both of them on Facebook and didn’t return any of their messages. I meant it when I told them they were dead to me. I spent the summer with my other good friends, stayed as busy as possible and I was really looking forward to the next chapter of my life. It took a couple of months for the pain to subside, but it wasn’t totally gone.
Every now and then I felt sad about what Bethany and Seth did to me, and sad about the relationships that were ruined, but I kept reminding myself that I was better off without them. No one needed friends like that. My friends told me that Bethany and Seth had not seen or talked to each other since the day I caught them, and in a weird way I found that sad. They ruined our relationships for nothing. I didn’t see Bethany or Seth the entire summer and I was okay with that. I ended the summer on a good note, spending the last weekend with a bunch of my friends and it felt really good to have people I trusted around me. I had no desire to date any guys even though a few asked me out over the summer. I had a concrete wall protecting my heart and I vowed to myself to never allow anything like that betrayal to happen to me again.
It was going to take a very long time for me to trust new people and I was okay with that. I would go off to college, probably meet a few nice girls, stay away from the guys, and focus on studying. After what I had been through with Seth, I had no desire to let anyone near my heart, not for a very long time. It was a perfect plan, or so I thought. My first week of college I would quickly learn that there are some things you just can’t control.
Chapter One
I was so excited to go away to college that I almost forgot my silver ring the day I was leaving and I would have been devastated if I had left that behind. It was nothing expensive or fancy, just a thin, simple, sterling silver band with tiny sunflowers etched all around it. My dad gave it to me for my 8th birthday, it was the first piece of real jewelry that I had ever gotten and I wore it on my pinkie finger almost every day. Some days I wore it on a necklace if my fingers were too swollen. It used to fit on my index finger, but as I got older I found that I had to move it down a finger until the pinkie was the last stop. It was one of the things that helped me get through the whole Bethany/Seth thing.
I remember the day he gave it to me, it was after my birthday party and he came to my room to say good night. My mom had already kissed me goodnight so he and I were alone. He sat on my bed and placed a tiny pink box in my hand.
“Daddy, you already gave me a birthday present!” I couldn’t stop beaming at him because I was so excited to get another present.