My Shallow Regret, Chapter 6 - Regression free porn video

"I'm dead." I looked at myself in the mirror, and I certainly appeared to be alive, but being dead seemed like the only logical explanation. I'd obviously died Tuesday afternoon in my bedroom, and everything that had happened since then had been me experiencing some kind of hell, a punishment for failing to be a good person in my life. Because there was no way I was pregnant. None. But the plus sign on this stupid stick I was holding confirmed what a more professional and accurate test from my doctor's office already told me. I'm a woman and I'm going to have a baby. When the nurse from Dr. Briggs' office called and told me that last night, I was too shocked to do anything but run out of the bar and drive straight home. I didn't even say goodbye to Cash and Sara. I just put my drink down, picked up my purse and bolted. Cash texted me to ask what happened, but I wasn't about to tell him the truth. When I got home, I called him back and made up some story about a family emergency, which I realized this morning was a really stupid idea, since he works with my stepdad and would probably ask him about it. I figured it'd be at least a few months before "pregnancy brain" set in, not a few minutes. Oh, God, I think I'm going to be sick. My mind was racing as thousands of questions filled my head. I slumped to the floor, and as I closed my eyes, I tried to regain focus. As I did, one thought became clear. "She knew." In an instant, it all fell together, clear as day in my head -- which I still wasn't entirely comfortable calling "my" head. Before this happened, before my mind... spirit... essence... soul... whatever you want to call it... took up residence in Alana's body, Alana knew she was pregnant. The Facebook post, the moving back home, not moving with her boyfriend out to Los Angeles... it all adds up. She knew this had happened and had no idea what to do next. So did SHE do this to me? Did she make this switch as a way of getting out of being a mother? It seems awfully drastic, and not particularly well-planned, since aside from the not being pregnant, my life as Andrew was much more of a mess than Alana's life. I mean, sure, she was sleeping with her best friend's boyfriend -- a man who I'm now afraid may be the father of this unborn child, since it seems like Alana was far more sexually active with him than with her own boyfriend -- and she didn't appear to have much of a post-college career lined up, but I mean, I was a total mess. But I wasn't pregnant. I slowly opened my eyes and looked down at my stomach. I'd put on a couple pounds in my short time as Alana, but I certainly wasn't anywhere near showing yet. It was difficult to process that I'd only been in this lightweight, healthy body a few days and now -- unless I figured out a way to reverse whatever caused this, and soon -- I'd have to live with it blowing up, and due to circumstances entirely out of my control. God, how was I supposed to deal with this? I'd never even experienced anything remotely close to a pregnancy scare from the other side of the equation, and now that I'm on this side, I'm not just dealing with a scare, I've got a fucking person growing inside me. I closed my eyes again and started taking deep breaths to try and compose myself. There were so many things I needed to do, so many ways my life would be turned upside down -- again -- and I wasn't going to be able to do any of it sitting here on my bathroom floor having a panic attack. Pulling myself up by the shower curtain, I flushed the toilet and made sure to grab the home pregnancy test (and the box) before I headed back to my bedroom. I didn't need anyone in my family coming across the evidence before I was ready to tell them, assuming that I would ever be ready. It was still very early for a Saturday morning, and no one else was awake, so I managed to make it back to my room without any interruptions or unwanted encounters for once. After quickly stashing the pregnancy test in the very back of my bottom desk drawer, I grabbed the yellow notepad and a pen off my desk and sat down at the edge of my bed, trying to think of all the things I needed to deal with in the immediate future. Even beyond the pregnancy, it all seemed overwhelming. I was supposed to leave for California in two days, but I had to figure out how to get Bryce out of my life, preferably while not completely ruining a friendship with Monica. I hadn't even begun to seriously address where I stood with Mark, I had no idea what was going on with Cash, and on top of all that I was pretty sure I was still crushing on Sara, though my current physical state -- the womanhood, not the pregnancy -- certainly complicated that situation. I had no job, a complete inability to draw upon any of Alana's years of dance training, and a pile of clothes I had to cram into an empty suitcase at some point before Monday morning. Okay, this is simple... well, not simple, but I just needed to take care of one thing at a time, starting with what was likely going to be the easiest. I pulled out Alana's tiny laptop -- just another in the endless line of reminders that nothing was the same -- and logged on to her Facebook page. There were dozens of messages waiting for me, some from friends, others from what could easily be categorized as "creepers" (they were easy to identify, since most of them started with some variation of "hey, sexy"). A few people had posted on my wall asking where I'd been, and there were plenty more asking to meet up when I got to L.A., even though I was only going to be there for a couple days. "Hey everyone," I started typing in the status update field. "Sorry I haven't been around. Things have been totes craze in CT." God, I hated how that sounded, but I needed to make this post match the tone of Alana's past posts as much as possible, and writing how Andrew would write wasn't going to do that. "I'm WAY excited to be visiting L.A. (and my awesome boyfriend Aiden, kisses!) and I've got some big things coming soon. Can't wait to share with you! xoxo" Immediately after hitting "Post", the comments came flooding in. Where are you staying? Can we get together for dinner? And far too many "I love you"s from people I was pretty sure Alana didn't actually know. I thought, "What the hell did I just get myself into?" But I was nearly certain that nothing could be worse than my current predicament. As my phone rang, I was quickly dissuaded of that notion. The number wasn't in my contacts list, so it didn't show up with a name and picture on my iPhone's home screen, but I recognized the 10 digits immediately. It was Mark. Of all the unexpectedly complex interactions I've had in this week from hell, none have been more confusing than dealing with him. On some level, I feel like he's the one person I may be able to be honest with about what's happening, and yet at the same time I feel like he's the last person on Earth I should be telling. "Hello," I asked as I answered the call, pretending not to know who was at the other end. "Ali, it's Mark." He paused, waiting for some kind of response from me, but I had no idea what to say. So he jumped right back in. "I know you said you needed some space yesterday, but I really wanted to get together and talk." Again, silence. "Look, Ali, if you don't want to get together, that's fine, just say so." I briefly consider just hanging up, but that'd just make things so much worse. "Alana," I finally say. "It's Alana." "Oh, so it's like that," he said. "Look, Mark... this is what I was trying to avoid," I said, being mostly honest with him for the first time since... well, since we'd shared our opinions on movie reboots. "Things between us are... complicated..." "So why don't we sit down, talk, and un-complicate them?" He knew it wasn't that simple, and so did I, but us going back and forth on the phone wasn't going to help anyone, and it was honestly just making me more pissed off, which I wanted to chalk up to hormones, which made me even more pissed off. "I have to go see the doctor in a couple hours," I tell him. "Can we meet up for lunch after that?" "That sounds good," he said. "How about Panera Bread before I go in to work?" Yeah, because that wouldn't be awkward at all. "Oh, hi Sara, girl of my dreams. Me and my ex-fiance, who spent the other night in my bed, would like to order lunch oh and sorry about running out on you last night and all." "Can we make it CPK," I asked, not wanting to see Sara until I'd come up with a more credible reason for bailing last night. "Sure, see you then." And just like that, he hung up. No "love you". No "looking forward to it." Not even a chance to let me say goodbye. I tried not to read too much into that, but I couldn't help but think that maybe Mark was so eager to get together in person because he felt it was the only appropriate way to break things off between us for good. And I also couldn't help but think that maybe that would be for the best. Whatever was in store for me and Mark, I was looking forward to it more than I was my follow-up appointment with Dr. Briggs - which I still actually had to confirm was happening, since I never actually responded "yes" to the nurse when she'd asked me if I could make it in this afternoon. I called the office and they were more than happy to squeeze me in that day, even on a weekend. In fact, the receptionist seemed more excited about my pregnancy than I could possibly be. With that out of the way, I picked up my notepad again and started sketching out a plan for the next two days, before my flight to Los Angeles. ? - Doctor ? - Lunch w/ Mark ? - Pack for Cali ? - Catch up with Sara? ? - Or Cash? Or both? As I was jotting stuff down, I scrolled through my phone's calendar. I had a brunch "date" scheduled with Monica and Gwen on Sunday morning, and I wondered if I could get out of it. I quickly shot her a text - "still brunchin tomorrow" - thinking maybe I could "incept" her into thinking she wanted to back out. I jotted down a couple more quick notes on the list before deciding to really start my day in earnest. After a quick shower, I threw on some workout clothes and headed down to the kitchen to grab a quick bite to eat. My ankle was still a little sore, but I figured I could at least go for a light walk around the neighborhood to burn off some calories and clear my head before my family was awake. That plan, however, was derailed rather quickly. My mother, as it turned out, was already in the kitchen, cooking eggs and pancakes. I hadn't seen my mom cook anything, much less breakfast before 9 a.m., in years. "Oh, hi sweetie," she said, barely looking away from the stove. "Are you going for a run?" "A walk, actually," I said as I began to salivate over the smell of home- cooked breakfast food filling the air. This wasn't a pregnancy craving. This was an "I've been eating like a skinny dancer for three days after a lifetime of eating like a fat football player and I'm fucking hungry" craving. "Well, I'll have some fruit and oatmeal ready for you when you get back," my mom said. "Actually," I responded hesitantly, not wanting to get too out of character, "could you save me some eggs? I'm in the mood for something different." "No problem," she said, opening the fridge to get some more eggs. "Have fun on your walk." As I put my headphones in and started listening to Alana's less-than- enjoyable playlist, I kept thinking that for all the things that had gone so wrong for me in this change, my family life certainly wasn't among them. My mom was happily re-married and had a cordial relationship with my dad. My well-behaved, pleasant sister basically adored me. And everyone in my family embraced me, no matter what. I looked out at the driveway in front of me and I couldn't say the symbolism didn't strike me. What was I running, or more accurately, walking, away from? Wasn't everything I needed, whether it was as Alana or Andrew, behind the door behind me? I popped my earbuds out and turned back around, into the kitchen where my mom was still cooking breakfast. "Mom," I said, nervously, as she calmly cracked eggs over a mixing bowl. "Oh, you're back," she said. "Did you forget something?" "No," I said. I was hesitant to continue, but I knew I'd have to say it eventually. "I'm... I'm pregnant." And just like that, the egg she was cracking missed the bowl entirely and landed on the floor, and she froze up. "Okay, I'm not eating THAT egg," I said, trying to break the tension. She grabbed some paper towels off the counter and cleaned up the mess on the floor, without saying a word. After she threw the towels in the trash, she turned off the stove, and walked into the dining room. I stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do, when her voice called out. "So, are we going to talk, or were you just going to drop that news and go for a run," she asked. I let out a sigh of relief. For a second there, she had me worried that I'd really upset her with that news. We sat down at the dining room table and just started talking. I admitted that my pregnancy certainly wasn't something I'd been planning, and when she asked if I'd told Aiden yet, I just said no, without admitting that I wasn't even sure if he was the father. Given how my relationship with my mother had been in my life prior to this change, I'd expected a line of judgmental questioning leading in to outright lecturing, but that wasn't the relationship Alana had with her mother at all. In fact, telling her I was pregnant made her dismiss all my "weird" behavior from the past few days, which I wasn't remotely ready to explain otherwise. She didn't really have any specific advice for me but it was the way she talked to me and just generally comforted me that made me feel safe and, more importantly, confident that I'd made the right decision to tell her... and also that I'd make the right decision about this baby and its future, whenever the time would come for that decision. We didn't talk for a long time -- maybe 20 minutes or so -- before Ron made his way downstairs expecting a fully cooked breakfast. I'd made it clear to my mom that I wasn't ready to share my news with everyone yet - I hadn't even planned on telling her - so she just told Ron that we'd been talking about my upcoming trip. Which, to be fair, we did talk about briefly, in the context of "yes, mom, I'm still going, if only to talk to Aiden about this in person." So as my mom went back to making breakfast and Ron started getting old- person-frisky with her in the kitchen, I headed out for that walk I'd meant to go on earlier. And, strange as it was, a playlist filled with Taylor Swift didn't seem as off-putting as it had just a few minutes earlier. But that wasn't going to stop me from downloading some of my own music when I got back. ***** "Can we get much higher? So high... Oh, oh, oh..." I knew I sounded ridiculous singing along to Kanye West alone in my room, but it was soothing to have a bit of my own music added into Alana's iTunes library. I'd started downloading some after I got back from Dr. Briggs' office, and I probably went a bit overboard on the Yeezy - hell, I didn't even really like "808s and Heartbreaks" - but it was like auditory comfort food, a blanket of sound I could wrap myself in. I was bobbing my head to the beat and drumming my hands on the desk when I knocked over the Apple Store bag with the hard drive Mark had brought over for me. I paused the music and picked it up, my eyes darting back and forth between the drive and the computer. Two days ago, it was all I could do to get my hands on this to back up Alana's drive and try and "restore" my life. But now it wasn't just my life in my hands. The visit to the doctor, and the pile of prescriptions I came away with, had made that clear. As much as I wanted my life back, I knew I couldn't do anything until I'd figured out how it would impact Alana's unborn child. But I also had realized something else between my conversation with my mother, my mind-clearing walk and even my doctor's appointment: if this was going to be my life for the time being, I needed to live it my way, and not keep trying to pretend to be Alana, a girl who I only know through social media posts and anecdotal conversations. Which meant listening to my music, eating my food - though still less than I was used to, since I'd been given this miraculous weight loss and I didn't want to blow it - and spending time with MY friends, starting with Mark this afternoon. I'd already showered and eaten (and my god, did those eggs taste amazing after three days of barely eating), but I was still sitting around in my bathrobe only 30 minutes before I was supposed to meet Mark. Downloading music had distracted me, as had texting back and forth with Aiden. I still hadn't broken the news to him - about Bryce or the baby - but I managed to dance around that all morning. Which was ironic considering I couldn't possibly be as good a dancer as Alana was. Rummaging through my closet and my drawers, I managed to find an outfit that didn't totally creep me out to put on: a mid-thigh denim skirt and a short-sleeved shirt with a built-in v-neck vest. Looking at myself in the mirror, I looked a bit like a black-haired version of Emma Stone in "Amazing Spider-Man". I even found some nice knee-high boots to go with it. The whole ensemble was more "cute" than "sexy", which was the signal I wanted to send Mark. I didn't have time to put makeup on, which I'd hoped would help send that same signal. Now I just had to make sure to ignore the signals my own body was sending me. Ever since that night he helped me up to my room, just thinking of Mark gave me a weird tingly feeling in places I wasn't entirely comfortable feeling weird and tingly. I would have loved to have chalked it up to a mix of female emotions and pregnancy-fueled hormones, but I knew it was far more complicated than that. Mark and I had been so close in my real life, and Mark and Alana had been even closer -- at least for a period of time -- so I didn't know exactly what I was feeling. And I knew I wasn't going to solve that over a lunch at a shitty mall pizza chain, but I could at least create some space between us to give me more time to think. As I headed down the stairs to leave, I heard the unmistakable excited voice of my little sister. "Ohmigod, you're going to see Mark, aren't you?!" "What," I asked, caught completely off guard by both her presence and her accurate guess. "I'm just... going out. For lunch. With... a friend." Well, I mean, it certainly wasn't a lie, at least not from my perspective. "Yeah, a friend," she said, the sarcasm dripping from her voice in the way it only can from the voice of a teenager. "Sure. And you just happen to be wearing Mark's favorite outfit." Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me. I randomly picked out one thing from Alana's massive, overstuffed closet and it happened to be the one thing Mark loved seeing her in most? "This old thing? I didn't even think about it," I said, again not entirely lying. "I just threw on whatever I could find." "I still haven't heard you say you're not going to see Mark, which means you're totally going to see Mark. I knew you guys would get back together eventually." "We are NOT getting back together," I said, starting to lose my patience. It was good in some way to know that even this sweet, caring version of my sister still knew exactly how to get on my nerves. "But you ARE going to see him!" "I'm leaving now," I said, walking to the back door. I quickly picked up my purse off the kitchen counter and as I opened the door, I turned back to Alexis and said, "Also, what the hell did you do to your hair?" She frantically started looking for a mirror, and I chuckled as I closed the door behind me. Her hair was fine, and quite frankly I'm not sure I would've noticed if she had done anything to it -- good or bad. I just needed to make a quick getaway and I knew that would stall her." As I backed out of the driveway, I saw a text message from Alexis: "MY HAIR LOOKS FINE. YOUR AN ASS. SAY HI TO MARK 4 ME." I responded back: "*YOU'RE" She was right, I was an ass. But this felt playful and fun, as opposed to the kind of bile my sister and I would spit at each other before this whole insane change happened. Driving to the mall was much better today, mostly because of the soundtrack ("Late Registration") but also because I wasn't worried about possibly running into Mark, I knew for a fact I was going to see him. And I knew for a fact what I wanted to say. "Mark, I know we have a history, and we've always had strong feelings for each other, but I'm in a committed relationship right now with a man who loves me unconditionally and I have no intention of breaking his heart. I hope we can mend old wounds and be friends, but we need to take things slow and set proper boundaries." At least, that was exactly what I'd planned to say -- I'd literally rehearsed it multiple times in the vanity mirror before getting out of the car -- but as soon as I walked into CPK and saw him sitting there I completely forgot the words. "Hey," he said, giving me a friendly hug. "I'm glad you made it." "Me too," I said. "I mean, I'm glad you made it not that I'm glad I made it. Not that I'm not glad I made it, because I am happy to be here but that's not what I was trying to say and... I'm rambling." "You are," he said. "But it's cute. Your outfit is too." I let out a deep sigh. We were already falling into a pattern that I'd hoped to avoid, not that I was doing anything to help avoid it. "Can we just sit down and talk," I asked. He nodded, then pulled out my chair for me. "That's not necessary," I said. "But... thank you." "You're welcome," he said. He had this look of hopefulness in his eye, like every little thing he did was helping his chances of winning me back. It was so different from how he'd greeted me in the store the other day. It was almost like he'd built up this whole image of Alana as an unredeemable bitch, but then I had to come along and mess it all up all because I wanted to connect on some level with my lifelong friend, and now he was thinking like the 20-year-old idiot who proposed to this girl way too early. "So, Mark... I know we have a history..." I started to say, but before I could get any further in my monologue, a waitress came over. "Oh, your girlfriend is here," she said to Mark, "Can I get you some drinks?" I tried to correct her, getting as far as "I'm not his..." before Mark went ahead and answered her with "I'll have a Coke and she'll have a Diet Coke with lemon. Thanks." The waitress walked away, and I shot Mark a look that could've frozen a Brazilian beach in July. "What," he asked, surprisingly picking up on my signals. "Why didn't you correct her," I asked. "I'm not your girlfriend." "Sorry, old habits, I guess," he said. I wasn't buying it at all. "That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about," I said. "I know we kind of slipped back into things the other night, but it was nothing." "Nothing," he asked. "Because it sure felt like something." "Well, not nothing. Just, I mean, I don't want you to think that just because we spent the night together that we're together," I said. At this point, the waitress brought the drinks over, which gave me a moment to compose myself and remember what I'd practiced. As Mark took a sip of his Coke, I started again. "We've always had strong feelings for each other..." "Always" he asked, interrupting me. I was starting to think I'd never finish saying what I wanted to say. "Because it didn't seem that way when you left." "I certainly made mistakes," I said. "But I never stopped caring about you. You were the most important person in my life for so long." As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized this was getting away from me. In my -- Andrew's -- desire not to lose my best friend, I'd started leading on my -- Alana's -- ex. Mark looked like he was about to say something, so I quickly jumped in again. "Wait, let me finish. We've HAD strong feelings for each other. Past tense. HAD. I can't say that I feel that same way about you anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't want you involved in my life. I want us to put the past behind us, but I don't want to rush into anything that is gonna mess things up even more for both of us." He took another sip of his drink and looked at me silently for a few seconds before asking "Are you finished?" "I am," I said. Then, right as he was about to respond, it was my turn to interrupt him. "Wait, no, also I forgot, I have a boyfriend who loves me very much and I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt him," I said. "Seems like kind of a big thing to 'forget'," Mark said. God, he was right. I wasn't remotely plausible in barely remembering to bring up Aiden in the reasons why I didn't want to rekindle a relationship with Mark, and why would I be? I've literally never met this guy, I know for a fact that I've been unfaithful to him, and OH YEAH I'M HAVING A BABY THAT'S PROBABLY NOT HIS. Worst. Girlfriend. Ever. "Things between me and Aiden aren't always perfect, but that doesn't have anything to do with him. In fact," I said, pausing to take a sip of my own soda, and gather my thoughts, "I probably don't deserve him." "Don't say that," he said. "If anything, he doesn't deserve you." "Mark, I appreciate you saying that, but you more than anyone know how awful I can be." "True, but I also know more than anyone how amazing you can be." I honestly didn't know how to respond to that. On some strange level, I was hoping he'd just agree about my awfulness, and we could start moving on, but it was becoming more and more clear to me that he still loved me and hadn't gotten over me leaving. His reaction at the store the other day was probably more of shock and of expecting me to be the bitch that Alana had grown into at a distance these past few years apart. But me trying to be a friend was eroding any negative resentment he'd built up, which was just drawing him in closer. And here I was, sitting at this table, looking across at my best friend, the one person in this crazy world who made me feel slightly less crazy, and I just had no idea what to do. "Get away from him!" Well, that's certainly one option. I turned around to see who'd yelled that out, and -- to both my complete surprise and no surprise at all -- it was Monica. "Monica," I said shocked. "What are you doing here?" "Clearly saving you from yourself," she said. "Hi Nikki," Mark said. "You," she said, pointing at him with her perfectly-manicured index finger but all the time maintaining eye contact with me, "don't get to talk. And DON'T call me Nikki. No one's called me Nikki since high school." "Monica, we were just talking," I said. "No you weren't," she said. "You weren't talking at all. You were staring at each other, and probably two seconds from making out right here." "Look, Ali was just saying," Mark tried to say before he was interrupted again. "Uh, uh, uh... I SAID you don't get to talk," she said, pushing her finger right up against his nose. Then she took her other hand and wrapped it around my arm -- which, admittedly wasn't nearly as hard to do as it would've been last week -- and started to pull me up from my chair. "We're leaving. NOW." "Monica, you're not my mother," I said. "And even if you were, I don't let my mother choose who I get to spend time with." She finally took her finger out of Mark's face and reached into the back pocket of her white form-fitting jeans to pull out her phone. She tapped on it a few times, then handed it to me. "I'm just doing what you asked me to do," she said. There was the evidence right there on the screen. A text message from me -- or in this case Alana -- from 10 days ago in which I told Monica that I was coming back to Connecticut and I wanted her help in keeping Mark away from me. So I kind of understood her confusion over the fact that not even two weeks later I was voluntarily spending time with him, and it wasn't the first time I'd done so. "Look, Monica," I said, trying to come up with a plausible lie on the spot. "I was just being silly. Mark and I are both adults, and we can spend a lunch together without our history becoming a whole thing." "I'm not here to argue with you about this," she said, taking her phone back. "I'm here to save you from him." She pulled me completely out of my chair, then spun me around and starting pushing me toward the door. Then she stopped and turned back to the table. "And you," she said to Mark, "just leave Ali alone. She's moved on. She moved on years ago and you clearly never did. You're just ... sad." Then she picked up his Coke and poured it out on his lap before turning back around and continuing to push me out the door. I looked back at Mark as he tried to clean himself up and something in me just snapped. I'd never been Monica's biggest fan when I knew her as Mark's fianc?e, and this version of Monica was completely intolerable. So I did the first thing that came to mind. I slapped her. Now, I'd been raised to believe that you never hit a woman. I'd never done so in my life and never believed I would, but the circumstances I was facing in this moment were vastly different than they would have been just a few days ago. And while I'm certainly not saying it's okay for a woman to hit another woman - well, actually that might be exactly what I'm saying, especially when the woman getting hit just poured out a drink on the other woman's friend. Oh, and the woman doing the hitting just found out she was pregnant. So basically it's a very narrow spectrum of acceptability and ... and now I was realizing Monica probably didn't agree with me, based on the completely pissed off look on her face. "WHAT THE FUCK, ALI?" "I'm sorry Monica," I said, lying my ass off. I wasn't sorry at all. Well, I was kind of sorry I had to resort to hitting her, but I wasn't sorry that she deserved it. "I just need you to listen to me." "SO TALK," she said, still beyond angry with me. "DON'T HIT." "I tried," I said, growing increasingly angry with her. "YOU. WEREN'T. LISTENING." By this point I could tell we were making a scene - okay, we were making a BIGGER scene than the one we'd just made about 30 seconds ago - but Monica clearly didn't care. "No," she said, jabbing her finger into my chest. "You. Weren't. Listening. TO ME." She then took her finger out my chest and pointed it back towards Mark, who had gotten up from his chair and was starting to walk toward us. "He is wrong for you, he doesn't deserve you, he never did, and you shouldn't be anywhere near him. He's not boyfriend material." "And what would you know about boyfriend material," I asked, completely pissed off at this point. "You spent the last six months with Bryce, who was fucking around behind your back the whole time and you didn't even know it." Whoops. I did not mean for that to slip out, but it did and I could tell right away by the look on Monica's face that I'd crossed a line. She'd gone completely past anger and rage straight to total agony. It looked like she would burst into tears at any second. I don't know if she'd put together that I'd been the one sleeping with Bryce, but if she hadn't she was right about to get there. At that point, Mark walked right past Monica and stood right next to me. "Would you like to get out of here, Alana?" I froze. Part of me wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible before Monica decided to try to kick my ass, and part of me wanted to stay there and try and make things right with her, even if I knew that was as impossible as Cleveland winning a championship. We stood there looking at each other, each probably wondering who would speak first, when she finally did. "Go," she said, barely above a whisper, clearly trying to hold back just about every emotion possible. "Get the fuck out of my face." "Monica, I'm..." "GO," she yelled before I could finish. Then she turned away and ran straight for the bathroom. I thought briefly about chasing after her but knew it wouldn't do any good. After what I'd just dropped on her, she needed time to process, and me being in her face about it wasn't going to help anything. So I just turned and quietly walked out with Mark. He reached out to take my hand as we walked outside, but I pulled it away.