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  “He… Hello?” I answered nervously, half-expecting Diana to know about my little stake out and immediately start yelling at me.

  “Hey baby,” she responded, sweetness dripping from her words. “I just wanted to call and wish you a belated Merry Christmas and see how your day was. I also wanted to apologize. I know I kind of ghosted you over the past few days, but you have to understand that it wasn’t my choice. Hailey let me back into the house, but it is all on her terms and she’s been watching me like a hawk. I feel like a prisoner in my own home lately.”

  “Where are you now?” I asked, completely disregarding her apology in order to make sure she wasn’t about to show up at the diner as soon as we hung up.

  “I’m at work. I had a few days off following Christmas, which was another reason I wasn’t able to get ahold of you sooner. This is seriously the first chance I’ve had. I’m really sorry, sweetie. You don’t know how hard things have been. I feel like I’m drowning right now, and Hailey is holding me under the water.”

  As she said those words, I watched Hailey kneel down next to her daughter by the door of the diner. She zipped up her jacket, then placed kisses on her forehead and nose. Ava laughed hysterically at this gesture, at which point, Hailey pulled her into a tight hug, then lifted her up and carried her out of the diner. It was hard to believe that the lady I was watching in front of me was the same person who was being described over the phone. I knew looks could be deceiving though. Maybe I’d imagined that sadness. She was sweet to her daughter, but weren’t there a lot of awful people who still somehow managed to be good parents or at least appear that way in public?

  “Are you there?” Diana’s voice interrupted.

  “Oh yeah. Sorry. Don’t even worry about it, babe. It’s no big deal,” I lied.

  “It is a big deal,” Diana responded. “But thank you for being so understanding. Do you have any plans for New Year’s Eve?”

  Samantha and I normally spent New Year’s Eve together. It was our tradition to order Chinese food and then get wine drunk while we watched the coverage from Times Square, but the two of us hadn’t finalized any plans. Maybe she was planning to spend the night with Caroline. It would make sense, even if it was hurtful to think that she’d back out on our tradition.

  “I’m not sure actually. Samantha and I always hang out, but I have a feeling that she will be doing something with Caroline this year instead.”

  “Well, how would you feel about me coming over later in the evening? I’m thinking I should be able to get away by ten. It wouldn’t be unusual for me to be called in on New Year’s Eve. People are idiots and always end up hurting themselves on heavy drinking holidays. The hospital always needs back up those nights.”

  So, there it was. Even with Diana’s confession to Hailey last week, we were still going back to lying and sneaking around. I pictured Diana putting that cute little girl to bed, then looking at her phone and telling some elaborate lie about being called into work—a lie that Hailey probably wouldn’t believe at this point. An image of the sad look in her eyes flashed into my mind, and I could picture those eyes watching Diana as she left the house to come see me.

  “I think it’s probably for the best if you just stay home this time,” I answered quietly, feeling heartbroken over the words that were leaving my mouth.

  “Oh.” The surprise and sadness in that one simple word from Diana made me almost tell her to forget what I’d just said and that I would love to bring in the new year together. We were both silent for what felt like hours, before she spoke again. “I understand. You do know I love you though, right?”

  Her words sent a warmth through my whole body, and I wondered if that was the feeling of being in love that Samantha was talking about. While it was a strong reaction, it still didn’t seem to measure up to what Samantha was describing.

  “I know, Diana. Thank you for reminding me. I’ll get there. I promise.”

  Diana reminded me that she loved me one more time, before hanging up to get back to work.

  ***

  When New Year’s Eve rolled around, I was starting to highly regret my decision. When I had asked Samantha if we were going to spend the night together, she told me she already had plans. What made it worse is that she wouldn’t even tell me what those plans were. I wondered when our friendship had become so strained.

  I watched the ball drop and welcomed the New Year on my own, then stood up from the couch to make my way to bed. A few minutes after finishing my nightly routine and crawling under the covers, my phone rang. I looked down to see Molly’s name on the screen.

  I picked up the phone and before I could say anything, Molly’s voice was coming through the phone at a volume level that was completely unnecessary, leading me to believe that she was highly intoxicated. If the volume of her voice hadn’t given it away, her slurring would have. “Carly. My girl. My number one. I need the hugest favor from you.”

  I couldn’t suppress the laugh that escaped my mouth. “What is it, Molly?”

  “Could you m-maybe do me a ssssolid and pick me up?”

  “Are you okay, Mol? Of course I don’t mind coming to get you, but you normally have no problem calling someone in your family to pick you up.”

  The other end of the phone was silent for a few seconds before Molly started to speak again. “You ssssee, the thing is, my family doesn’t exactly know where I am.”

  “And where is that?” I asked, nervous about where this might be going. Molly was very open with her family about most things, and they certainly didn’t care if she partied, especially since she was twenty-one.

  “I just might actually happen to be at a party with the Mount State basketball team. But shhh.”

  “Oh… OH.” It took me a moment to understand what was going on. Mount State was a rival to Molly’s college basketball team and the team they’d been playing when she broke her leg. That’s when it hit me. Mount State is where the girl went that Molly had confessed to have a crush on. Since she hadn’t come out to her family yet, it would make sense that she wouldn’t want to raise questions by telling them that she was going to ring in the New Year with her apparent archnemesis.

  “Yeah… YEAH,” Molly responded mockingly. “The plan was to crash on Gina’s couch, but I can’t. You see. I almost kissed her and I’m not even a hundred percent sure she likes people of my… you know… gender… like girls. I got no clue if the girl is even gay. I don’t want my first kiss with a girl to be when I’m more drunks than slam dunks.”

  I shook my head at her drunken rant. “I can be there in about thirty minutes. Do you think you can keep your hormones in check until then?”

  “No guaranteessss,” Molly slurred.

  When I arrived at the address that seemed to be the closest existing address to the jumbled mess that Molly had sent me, I saw her sitting out front of a beat-up old house, typical of the party houses I remembered from college. There was a girl sitting next to her, whispering something into her ear, and I quickly recognized her as the girl who had collided with Molly. The two of them made their way over to my car, and Molly opened the back door.

  “I would like to request a ride home for this girl right here,” Molly declared, as she threw her crutches into the car then crawled in herself.

  Gina, who clearly wasn’t as drunk as Molly, gave me an apologetic look. “You really don’t have to. I live just two blocks away. I can walk.”

  Before I could respond, Molly cut in. “No no. I told you. A beautiful princess like you should not be out walking the streets by yourself.”

  I laughed, while also cringing at Molly’s words. No matter how things turned out, she was going to regret that one in the morning. “As an honorary member of the Phillips family, I can tell you that it’s a family trait to be severely stubborn, so you might as well take the ride because this one won’t let you not accept. Plus, I don’t mind at all. Sadly, this is the most exciting thing I’ve done all night.”

  Gina thanked me and c
rawled into the car, directing me the two blocks to her townhouse apartment. Once we were there, Molly offered to walk her to her door, which Gina tried to politely decline, citing that it probably wasn’t the best idea to be crutching around while highly intoxicated. The Phillips’ stubbornness won out again, and soon the two of them were making their way to Gina’s front door. I noticed that Gina kept her arm tightly around Molly’s waist to keep her from falling. Once they were at the front door, the two separated and stood face to face. I watched them talk back and forth for a few minutes and then, to my surprise, Gina leaned in and captured Molly’s lips with her own. I looked away so I wouldn’t be intruding on their moment, but when I looked back, it was still going. Now Gina’s hands were on Molly’s hips, and Molly had her arms draped around Gina’s neck. The two were so engulfed in one another that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous of the innocence between them. Everything seemed so simple.

  After a few minutes, the kiss was over, and Molly was stumbling back to my car. Once she was seated beside me in the front seat, I started to laugh. “I thought you weren’t going to kiss her when you were drunk.”

  Molly smirked at me. “Technically, she kissed me. And, my God, it was the best freaking kiss of my entire life.”

  I laughed again, then started the drive back to her house. When we arrived, I was surprised to see Samantha’s car in the driveway.

  “What’s your sister’s car doing here?” I asked as I helped Molly walk up the sidewalk.

  Molly gave me a look like I was crazy. “She’s home. She didn’t have any plans tonight. Isn’t it your job as her bestest forever and ever to know that?”

  Instead of responding, I led Molly through the door of the dark house and into her bedroom. Once she was settled and I’d made my way back into the hallway, I was surprised to find that there was light coming from underneath the door of Samantha’s bedroom. I walked over, ready to go to battle with her over her lies, but decided to stop myself. Mr. and Mrs. Phillips didn’t need to be woken up by us fighting.

  Instead, I headed back to my apartment and sent her a text once I had arrived. I was just at your house dropping off your sister. I know you lied to me.

  Samantha’s reply came quickly. Why did you pick up my sister?

  This reply annoyed me, and I couldn’t help but get snippy. She’s wasted and asked me to pick her up, but that’s not the issue here. The real issue is that you lied to me. What the hell, Samantha? We don’t lie to each other.

  It took a few minutes for her to respond this time. I’m coming over. Be there in about twenty.

  Instead of saying anything in return, I just waited for her to arrive. Like clockwork, there was a knock at my door exactly twenty minutes later. When I opened the door, Samantha was standing there looking completely disheveled.

  She walked right past me and into my apartment. “Listen. I’m sorry I lied to you. I just felt like I needed a break from all of this, Carly. Plus, I figured you’d want to spend the night with Diana anyway.”

  “I turned her down so we could spend the night together,” I lied.

  I could tell that Samantha saw right past my white lie because the look in her eyes changed from apologetic to angry. “That’s bull and you know it, Carly. So, what’s the truth? She can’t leave the family? Doesn’t want her wife questioning things?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll have you know that I wasn’t lying about the fact that I turned her down. I really did. My reasoning might have had to do with more than just you.”

  Samantha made a go on motion with her hand. “So… what was the reason you turned down time with this amazing woman?”

  Her obvious sarcasm was starting to get under my skin, but I decided to ignore it. “Well, I kinda sorta have been stalking her wife.”

  “That sounds extremely creepy. Elaborate please.”

  I could feel my face turning red, which almost never happened to me. “Well, I looked her up. Then I may have searched for her social media and stalked through her Instagram.” I hesitated, then added, “And I also may have shown up at a diner I knew she was at so I could get a better look at her.”

  Samantha’s eyes went wide with that final confession. “Okay, that’s super crazy, Carly, and completely unlike you. I don’t understand why you’re letting Diana have this effect on you.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, but when I opened my mouth to answer, Samantha put up one hand and shook her head. “No. You know what? I don’t want you to explain it to me. I can’t deal with hearing you talk about Diana anymore. I just can’t do it, Carly.”

  I opened and closed my mouth a few times, but I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. I knew Samantha had disliked all of my terrible exes in the past, but never once had she flat out expressed that to me while I was dating them. She certainly had never stopped me from talking to her. She was always about forcing me to open up. “But, Samantha, I don’t understand,” I just barely whispered.

  With those words, she became even more angry, probably angrier than I had ever seen her before. “If you honestly haven’t figured it out by now… God, I just… you know what? Never mind. I’m done, Carly.” At this point, she was yelling and headed back to my door.

  I reached out and grabbed onto her arm, forcing her to turn around and look at me. “Please just tell me, Sam.”

  She pulled her arm away from me. “No, Carly. Open up your eyes and see for yourself. For once, just stop looking at things from that little bubble you’re in. And if you ever figure it out, then maybe we can talk.”

  With those words, Samantha walked out of my apartment and possibly out of my life. I stood there wondering where I’d gone wrong and what I was missing.

  Part II: Hailey Smith: 9 weeks earlier (October 31st)

  Chapter 17

  “I think my wife is cheating on me again,” I admitted, as I sat on a couch across from the therapist I’d just started seeing a few weeks prior. After years of fighting with my wife, Diana, over doing couples therapy, I finally decided to give up and see someone by myself.

  “And why do you think that?” the pretty blonde sitting across from me asked. Her name was Caroline, and she was a few years younger than me, and I couldn’t help but notice how good looking she was. I’d tried to push off those thoughts from the beginning though since I was a married woman and the whole point of seeing the therapist was to save my marriage, not make it even worse.

  “I’m seeing the same signs that I saw when she cheated before. She’s more distant, on her phone a lot more, and ever since the beginning of this month, she’s been working weekend night shifts more often. That’s her pattern.”

  Caroline nodded in response and jotted a few notes into the notebook she had opened in front of her. She always kept her face so neutral that I could never tell what she was thinking about what I had to tell her. When she was done taking notes, Caroline looked back up at me. “So, this isn’t the first time she cheated? Has she cheated multiple times?”

  I let out an embarrassed sigh. I hated to admit that I was the pathetic loser who would stay with someone who continued to treat me badly, but I couldn’t seem to let go of the relationship that I used to have with Diana. “There was one other time I knew about. It happened two years ago, and once the other woman found out about me, she contacted me to let me know about the affair. My wife tried to deny it, but this woman had saved all of their texts in order to back up her story. I’m also about ninety-nine percent sure that she cheated on me soon after our daughter was born, right before we were moving back to Pennsylvania. She was unhappy about the move, but I thought it was best if we moved back so our daughter could be close to both sets of her grandparents. That had always been our plan. We went there for college, and we both loved the area, but we agreed we’d move back once we were ready to start a family. My wife seemed to be dragging her feet on the move, but didn’t actually express that she was against it until we had already bought a house ba
ck here.

  “But anyway, right around that time, she became distant and I had a strong suspicion that there was something going on between her and one of her coworkers. We moved before I could actually confirm anything. To this day, I don’t actually know what came first—the distaste about moving or the likely affair.” I threw up my hands in frustration. “I blew off that affair as a one-time thing because we were happy for a while once we moved back here. When the confirmed affair happened, she begged for my forgiveness, and I gave it because I wanted to do anything to keep our family together. Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  Caroline shook her head. “Of course not. I’m not here to judge or to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do. I’m simply here to listen and guide you toward your own decisions.”

  I nodded my head. “So, what now?” I asked, unsure what decision I was supposed to make.

  Caroline smiled and I noticed a slight dimple had formed on her left cheek in response. “Like I told you, that’s your decision. Not mine. Have you talked to your wife about your suspicions?”

  I reached down and grabbed the glass of water sitting on the coffee table in front of me, taking a large gulp as soon as it hit my lips. Even thinking about talking to Diana about this made my anxiety go through the roof. “I haven’t. Honestly, I don’t want to bring it up unless I am a hundred percent sure.”

  Caroline furrowed her brow a bit, before quickly regaining her stoic appearance. “And why is that?”

  I lifted one shoulder and let it drop, feeling defeated. “As pathetic as it sounds, I’m worried about pushing her away even more. I honestly hate to even admit that, but you have to understand that my wife is my high school sweetheart and first love. We’ve been through everything together. We made sense of our sexuality together, came out together, shared our first time together; heck, she’s the only person I’ve ever been intimate with. Come to think of it, aside from two spin the bottle kisses back in sixth grade, she’s the only person I’ve even kissed. We also made two huge moves together and created a beautiful baby girl. That seems like something that should be fought for.” I inhaled deeply as soon as I finished, realizing I hadn’t stopped to breathe during that whole ramble.