He nodded as he ate a bite of his burrito.
I thought about his question for a minute before answering. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. The obvious feeling was annoyance at myself for never realizing it. "No, it doesn't bother me. Did Dan know?" I asked.
He nodded again, though this one was more curt as he took another bite of food. I studied him for a moment and ignored my meal. I felt like I was missing a major piece to a puzzle here. I wanted to dig further, but Brian switched gears on our conversation, moving to a subject that was more lighthearted. I filed my questions away for later. He wasn't getting off the hook.
I didn't bring up the subject again until we were driving back to my apartment. In the dark I could see Brian's jawline tense when I asked my first question. "So, Dan knew you were crushing on his girl?" I asked, trying to keep the question light.
"Yeah, he did." His tone had a finality to it. I watched him in the dark and tried to make sense of his cryptic responses. Dan and Brian had a great relationship. They'd been best friends despite Brian's exclusion from our group. Hearing Brian casting shade toward Dan seemed wrong. Misplaced.
"Was he mad you had feelings for me?" I asked, more than a little curious. It was unlike Dan to keep something of this magnitude from me. He'd been an open book. What he was feeling or thinking was always written across his face. If he couldn't express his feelings with regular words he'd change them to lyrical ones that would get his point across.
Brian turned into my parking lot and cut the engine off but didn't make a move to leave the car. After a few moments the headlights blinked out, leaving us in a cocoon of darkness. I began to wonder if Brian would answer my question. Maybe he was waiting for me to get out.
"He wasn't the one who should have been mad," Brian said as my hand reached for my door handle.
"You were mad?" I asked, shocked. No one ever got mad at Dan. It was the joke of our group. He wasn't serious like Zach or a natural rule follower like Mac had been, but he also wasn't a hell-raiser like Jessica. Dan was different. He was special. As far back as I could remember we'd all felt that way. He was one of those guys who could show up at a party and everyone took notice from the moment he entered it. Girls naturally gravitated toward him. It was the whole musician thing he had going on. He marched to his own beat. "When?" I asked.
"Cindy Mason."
A simple name. Nothing but a few syllables and letters spliced together, but they were the equivalent of having a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. Cindy Mason. Dan assured me she meant nothing. He begged me to believe him, telling me I was being silly for seeing something that wasn't there. "What about her?" I demanded. My stomach knotted with a million invisible ropes, and I regretted the meal I'd just consumed.
He turned to look at me. Even in the dark I could see the pity on his face. The urge to punch him ripped through me. I didn't want his pity.
"Forget it. I shouldn't have said anything," Brian said, reaching for my hand.
I jerked back. I didn't want him pacifying me. "Well, you did, and now I want to know." My voice filled the car with its venom. "Did he sleep with her? Is that what you were going to tell me?"
He didn't need to answer. I could see the truth reflected on his face.
The insanity of the moment clawed its way through me. Deep down I'd always known. I'd chosen not to believe what was right in front of my face. I dropped my head into my hands, shaking from trying to repress my feelings.
Brian reached for me and rubbed a hand across my trembling shoulders. "Kat, I'm sorry. Please don't cry. I shouldn't have said anything. My brother was an asshole. He didn't realize how good he had it until he almost lost you."
My shoulders shook again. Harder this time. I clamped my mouth closed, trying to hold in the insanity, but it couldn't be contained. It poured out of me in great big waves of laughter.
Brian looked at me as if I'd lost my mind as I peered up at him with tears of merriment leaking from my eyes. Maybe I had. Maybe I'd finally fallen off my rocker. "Dan cheated on me," I laughed. "I felt guilty as hell sleeping with you last night. Did you know that?" I chuckled again, though it felt a little more hysterical. "I felt like I'd betrayed him. But now you're telling me he cheated on me junior year with fucking Cindy Mason. No wonder that bitch was so smug. She got something from Dan I'd never get." The last of my laughter shut off like a switch.
Unable to sit still a moment longer, I scrambled from the car. Brian made a move to follow me but I whirled on him with more anger than he probably deserved. I was past seeing reason. "Just leave me alone," I shouted, racing across the parking lot. Carlos called out to me as I passed him, but I didn't even look in his direction. My anger carried me up to my apartment where I slammed my door with a resounding bang.
Rage shook my body from head to toe. I glanced around my apartment wanting to break everything in sight, but reason intervened and propelled me to my running gear.
Less than five minutes later I left my apartment and its confining walls behind. The memories were harder to shed. They dogged my every step with persistence, steeped in betrayal. The only good thing was that I no longer felt guilty.
Fifteen
I ignored Brian's calls that night once I returned home from my run dripping with sweat. I listened to his voicemails filled with apology and remorse. I could have called him back, told him he had nothing to apologize for, but a small seed of paranoia taunted me that this was his fault. If he would have kept his mouth closed, I wouldn't be facing something I'd tried so hard to ignore. The perfect image of Dan I'd immortalized during the last two years was slowly evaporating, leaving the stark truth behind.
Brian called me again in the morning, but I once again let his call go directly to voicemail. Instead, I headed over to Zach's. I needed to be with someone from the inside of the group. Someone who would remind me that not everything was a lie.
Zach was sitting on his couch watching The Walking Dead when I walked in.
"Hershel loses his leg in the next episode," I said, plunking down on the couch next to him.
"Bitch. You're lucky I already knew that."
"Too bad," I said, snapping my fingers in mock disappointment. "I guess I don't need to tell about the Governor and how—"