“So you’re sure you don’t want to come with us today?” Becca asked. “We’re going to the top and snowboarding down.”

I nodded as I poured a glass full of orange juice. “I’ll just ruin your day if I come.”

“Oh, shut up,” Becca said. “You will not.”

I rolled my eyes. “Trust me, I’ll ruin your day.”

“So you’re just going to hang out here all day?”

“Ben’s here,” Justin spoke up through a mouthful of cereal. “Are you going to talk to him?”

I sighed and stared down at the liquid in my glass. “I don’t want to.”

“But will you?”

I shrugged and took a drink of juice. When none of us had said anything for a good two minutes and I got tired of them staring at me, I decided to break the silence.

“Are you guys going?”

Becca tore her eyes away from me and looked at Justin. “Yeah. You’re ready?”

He put his bowl down on the counter. “Yeah.”

My eyes moved to the window as they gathered their things. They both said their goodbyes and then I listened to them leave the house. When the front door closed and the house was once again quiet, I went back to staring at my juice.

I was so completely tired and all I wanted to do was sleep but I knew I wouldn’t be able to even if I tried. Every time I shut my eyes I could see was Ben with that girl. Like a broken record, it kept playing over and over in my head. Last night I had laid awake all night long and it had been torture. It was like my brain wouldn’t shut off and my mind actually hurt from thinking so much. All I wanted to do was shut everything off and go back to my old life where everything had made sense and everything was right.

“Emily.”

Ben’s voice scared me and my hand bumped against my empty glass, sending it into a wobbling circle on the counter. I quickly set my hand on it, steadying it, and shut my eyes, taking a deep breath.

“Emily.”

I turned my head and found Ben standing in the doorway of the kitchen. Justin seeing him caused all the pain of the past day to come crashing down on me a million times worse. I had loved him so much and now all I could feel was this insane amount of betrayal.

As I stared at him I couldn’t even blink although I wanted to so bad. The long I stared at him, the more hurt coursed through me.

“Emily, I’m so sorry. I’m just so completely sorry.”

I didn’t move, hardly breathing, as he talked. I could see his mouth moving but his words were lost on my ears.

“I messed up so bad and I’m so sorry.” He paused. “Em, say something.”

When he took a step towards me, I came back to the present and quickly took a step back, keeping the distance between us.

“Emily…”

I was already shaking my head. “No. Don’t come near me.”

His brow wrinkled. “Please, Emily. Just let me explain.”

My eyes widened a bit. “Explain?” my voice cracked as I spoke. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

“But it was a mistake. And I’m so sorry.”

The tears were already welling up in my eyes as much as I tried to keep them back. “How could you do this to me? I thought you loved me.”

“I do. I love you so much, Emily. I never meant to hurt you.”

“You had sex with another girl!” I whispered sharply and a tear fell.

“It didn’t mean anything, I swear. She’s nothing. She’s just some girl I met at the chalet and we were just talking and…it just happened,” he finished helplessly.

I shook my head. “No. Cheating on your girlfriend doesn’t just happen! You knew what you were doing was wrong!”

“I know!” He ran his hand through his hair. “I feel like shit.”

“Good!” I exclaimed, feeling the anger in me rise. The more he talked and tried to explain something that he had no business trying to explain, the more my sadness was turning to anger. How dare he betray me like this. “I hope you feel like shit so you can feel just a bit of how bad I feel!”

He shook his head silently and then mumbled again that he was sorry. Like anything he could say would make this better.

“You know I went through a lot of trouble to get out here and surprise you! We were going to have such a good time!” My tears were falling again. “I was so excited and you were here with some girl who ISN’T me! You just didn’t even care about how much that would hurt me! You just-”

“That’s not-”

“-completely betrayed me! You CHEATED on me!”

“Emily, please…”

“No!” I yelled, my hand gripping my juice glass tight. “Just shut up!”

“But-”

Rage overtook me and suddenly the glass I was holding was hurtling towards him. It hit the cupboard behind him and smashed into a hundred pieces. Ben jerked to the side, his eyes wide.

“Are you crazy?!”

“Shut up!” I screamed. I was so mad I was shaking. “I hate you so much for this!” I slumped back against the counter and tried to take deep breaths to calm myself down before I lost it. I kept telling myself over and over that Ben wasn’t worth me getting so angry. He just wasn’t worth it.

After several minutes of only the sound of our breathing, Ben risked speaking again.

“What can I say to make you forgive me, Emily?”

“Nothing. You can’t cheat on someone and expect them to ever forgive you.”

“But-”

“You know, I’ve put up with a lot of shit while we dated. I’ve put up with you ditching me when we had plans, I’ve put up with how irresponsible you are, and all your irritating habits. But if you think even for a second that I would ever put up with you cheating on me, you’re more stupid than I thought.”

“But I love you.”

“No. You can’t say that you love me after what you did. If you loved me you wouldn’t see another female in a sexual way like that. You wouldn’t have ever let yourself get into a situation where having sex with someone else was even a possibility.”

Ben gave me a helpless look. “But it did happen and I know I really messed up. But we’ve gone through so much together and we love each other.”

“Don’t speak for me. I did love you. But it’s gone.”

A wounded look came over Ben’s face. “You can’t mean that.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to keep my chin from trembling. I knew my voice would crack if I spoke so I bit down on my tongue and blinked a few times.

“We’ve gone through so much,” Ben repeated, his voice soft. “”That has to count for something.”

I shook my head. “How could you do this to me, Ben?” my voice came out in a whisper. “Was I not good enough for you?”

“Of course you are. I-”

“How could you hurt me so bad? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Would you have told me if I hadn’t walked in on you?”

“I…I don’t know.”

A couple tears fell and I slowly wiped them away. I stared at Ben with dull eyes for a moment before speaking again. “Nothing can ever repair what you did. From now on I want nothing to do with you. I don’t want to see or talk to you ever again.”

“But-but-” he sputtered and I ignored him and pushed past him, stepping over the glass on the floor as I left the kitchen. He called after me once but I blocked it out and kept my steady pace until I reached the bathroom. It wasn’t until I had the door firmly locked behind me that I allowed myself to completely break down.

* * *

I don’t know what I expected when Becca and I walked through the front door but dead silence wasn’t it.

“Where do you think they are?” Becca asked quietly as she unzipped her snowboarding jacket and pulled it off.

“Maybe she actually killed him,” I joked, pulling off my own jacket.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Becca mumbled, going to the kitchen. After a second she called out, “There’s a note here from Ben saying he went for a walk.”

“Okay.” I wandered down the hallway and found the door to Becca’s room closed. I knocked twice, received no answer, and then opened the door slowly.

“Hey, Chief,” I said when I saw Emily laying on her back on the bed, her eyes on the ceiling.

“Hey,” she replied, her voice pretty quiet.

I went further into the room and was about to ask her if she had talked to Ben when she spoke again.

“I changed my flight so I leave tomorrow morning at ten.”

“So I guess that’s my answer on how things went with Ben.”

She swallowed. “It’s over.”

“Totally over?”

She sat up abruptly. “Why wouldn’t it be? He cheated on me.”

“Well…good for you then. Do you feel a little better?”

She shrugged and rested her chin in her hand. “Not really.”

“Oh.” I didn’t really know what else to say. “So are you hungry or-”

“So there’s that club you guys went to a couple nights ago, right?” she asked suddenly, cutting me off.

I blinked at the sudden question. “Um, yeah.”

“I want to go there tonight.”

My eyebrows rose. “Tonight? But you said your flight’s at ten tomorrow.”

She stood up. “So? I wanna go out tonight. Will you guys come with me?”

“I…I guess. But are you sure you want to go out? We could just go for dinner and get a movie or something.”

“No, I definitely want to go out.” She leaned down to rummage through Becca’s suitcase. “Do you think Becca has something I could wear?”

“Probably.” I watched her as she continued to look through the clothes. “Are you really sure you want to go out?”

Her eyes turned up to me. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

I really just watched to crash but I had a pretty good idea what was going through her head right now and I wasn’t going to let her go out into an unfamiliar place all alone. “No, I want to.” I went to the door and stuck my head out. “Dickie, you wanna go out to that club tonight?” I called down the hallway.

“No,” came Becca’s reply from the kitchen.

“So I guess it’s just you and me,” I said, turning back to Emily.

“That’s fine,” she murmured distractedly, holding a shirt up to her body.

“How are you able to go out tonight?” Becca asked, appearing in the doorway. “I’m so tired and sore from today. I’m going to have a long bath and go to bed.”

“I’ve got more stamina than you,” I replied, sitting down on the edge of the bed, thinking that I wanted nothing more than to follow in Becca’s steps. Exhaustion was definitely setting in.

Somehow I was able to push any tiredness aside and get myself together enough to get to the club with Emily. I had fun with her and we danced a few songs together before I retired to a table just off of the dace floor, in a key position to watch her.

I was more than a little worried about Emily. It hadn’t taken her long to get tipsy and I was sure she wasn’t planning on stopping drinking anytime soon. She was currently dancing with some guy and I was keeping a hard eye on them. She wasn’t in her right mind.

I knew she was hurting more than she was letting on. And I also knew that whatever she was planning on doing tonight wasn’t going to help anything. Pushing the pain aside was just going to result in more pain later.

We had only been at the club for a couple hours when I got fed up with Emily dancing with the random guy. She was clearly drunk and his hands were clearly moving to places they shouldn’t be.

A million people seemed to appear in front of me as I tried to move across the dance floor to Emily. When I finally reached her, I realized she was more drunk than I thought.

“Emily,” I said over the music, touching her shoulder. “We have to go.”

“Why? We just got here.” Her words were slurred.

I pulled on her arm, receiving a dirty look from the guy she was dancing with. “I know but we’ve got to go.”

“Why?”

“Come on,” I pressed. I sent a clear ‘back off’ look to the guy and pulled Emily away from him. “You’ve got an early flight.”

Don’t even ask how I managed to get her out of the club without causing a huge scene. She looked ready to either throw up or pass out the entire drive back to the house. I was a little surprised-although I shouldn’t have been-to see tears begin to fall as we neared the house. Because she was still very drunk, I didn’t want to press for details and get the waterworks started but I couldn’t help myself from asking her what was wrong.

“I don’t want to see him,” she cried, her tears inevitably falling faster.

“You won’t. He’ll be in bed,” I said in a matter of fact tone, not wanting to encourage any more tears. Why did I always end up consoling the drunk girl at the end of the night? This was definitely not the first time I’d been in this situation.

“I hate him,” she sniffed, scrubbing her hands over her face, doing wonders for her makeup.

“I know. But the more you think about it, the more upset you’re going to get.” I parked the car and shut off the engine.

Her eyes suddenly turned serious and intense. “Did you know, Justin?”

I couldn’t believe she had asked me that. “Of course not. How could you even think that?”

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window. “But he’s your friend. He must have said something.”

Sighing, I undid my seatbelt and leaned over to undo hers as well. “I didn’t know.”

“What did she have that I didn’t?”

“Em, you are too drunk to have this conversation right now,” I said, opening my door. “If you’re functioning in the morning, we can talk but until then, can we just go to bed?”

I was helping her out of the car when the tears began to flow again. She turned to me and said, “I just don’t understand why, Justin,” and my heart once again broke for her.