Then I turned and walked out his room, making my way quickly down the hall. I saw Mike's car in the driveway, but just as he opened his car door to get out, I went flying past his car, hoping he didn't see the tears I had just brushed away.
Alex was there when I got home, and he could probably tell just looking at me that not only had I been crying, but I was so cold that I couldn't feel my hands.
"What happened to you?" he asked, jumping up off the couch.
I didn't respond, I just made my way into my room and climbed into my bed, still in my coat and my shoes, and pulled the comforter up over me, closing my eyes and going to sleep.
When I first woke up the next morning, I didn't remember what had happened. For a split second I held onto my sleepy oblivion, and for those few seconds my world was as it had been before I talked to Derek.
Then, suddenly, it all came back.
I groaned, rolling over.
How could this be happening?
My unforgiving mind reminded me of the day at the park, the day I found out the rest of my mother's story, when Derek had wrapped his arms around me and told me he promised he wouldn't hurt me.
Oh right, that's how it happened.
I was stupid enough to believe him.
But I still couldn't quite understand. It was as if my heart absolutely refused to admit defeat. I ignored my sensible side to let Derek have a chance, so maybe I could have a chance at happiness, and of course, as I had always predicted, it ended in pain. If nothing else, that feeling of needing to double over in pain when he first said the words was enough to validate my brain's resistance.
But I was sincerely baffled. Even if Kayla was pregnant, I wouldn't have expected Derek to just roll over and do what his father had done. I realized on reflection that the reason I had finally let myself take a chance on Derek was because I thought he was on my side. I thought that he agreed that his father had made a bad choice by staying with Sarah. I never dreamed that he would do the same exact thing. He made it seem like I meant more to him than that.
But then, hadn't Mike done the same thing to my mother?
It took most of that day to stop crying, but by the time night came again, I had finally managed to contain my tears.
He wasn't worth my tears, after all. Nobody who made you want to cry was worth your tears.
And it was my own fault. When he told me that love wasn't what hurt my mother, his father was, I took that to mean that Derek thought his father made the wrong decision.
I told myself I must have been seeing only what I wanted to see.
Since I was no longer allowing myself to cry over him, but all I felt like doing was crying, I decided just to sleep.
However, when I would close my eyes and drift off to sleep, my dreams were filled with Derek and Kayla, happy, kissing. In one dream she had a rounded belly and she was shopping for baby clothes. Derek came up beside her, rubbing her belly and they looked so happy that even when I made myself wake up, I felt like I was going to vomit.
Damn him! Why did he have to win me over? When I initially had the dream that he got Kayla pregnant, I hadn't been nearly as bothered. Hell, I had even contemplated not trying to stop it.
But something had changed. What had changed? When had it changed? More importantly, why did I let it change?
On the third day that I kept myself locked in my room, not answering my phone, not writing in my journal, just reading books and working on my extra credit paper to distract myself, I heard a knock on my door.
"I'm not hungry," I called, assuming it was Alex offering me food again. Apparently, getting insanely obese would solve my problems—at least that seemed to be Alex's train of thought as he tried to shove food at me every half hour.
"Not even for chocolate ice cream?" Stephanie asked, opening the door.
As soon as I saw her, I felt the tears burning behind my eyes again, but I tried to suck it up.
; "Aw, Nicole," she said sadly, coming to my side and hugging me. "I heard what happened."
I took deep breaths, angry at myself for the tears welling up in my eyes. I tilted my head back, hoping the tears would go away.
"I brought ice cream and A Walk to Remember," she stated, sitting the tub of ice cream down on my bed and pulling the movie out of her purse. "We’re going to watch this movie and bawl our eyes out as we eat every last bite of this ice cream."