On His Knees by Tabatha Kiss
Chapter 72
Jenna
“Well?” Heidi asks as she crosses her arms over her chest. “What’s the story?”
My tongue goes limp in my mouth. My throat constricts, extending this uncomfortable silence longer. What’s mine and Seth’s story?
Where do we even begin?
“We, uh...” I swallow to wet my dry throat. “So, do you remember that time their apartment caught on fire?” I ask.
Heidi and Drew nod. “Yeah,” she says.
“And then... you know, Seth kind of... stayed over in our house. With me.”
Her mouth sags. “That... was in August.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, I guess it was.”
“This has been going on since August?!”
“Well, no.” I raise a finger. “But also kind of.”
“We started seeing each other in September,” Seth says, finally chiming the fuck in. “But some things happened while you were in Europe.”
Heidi goes dead silent. Her eyes shuffle between us, the reality of everything sinking in. “But… you hate each other,” she whispers.
“We did,” I say. “We don’t anymore.”
“No, you…” She frowns in disbelief. “This isn’t possible. You can barely stand to be in the same room together.”
“I can’t explain it either, Heidi. We did hate each other — a lot — but then we clicked somehow. Things like this just happen, you know?”
“No, tornadoes just happen. Seeing your friend’s brother behind her back is a choice.”
Drew places a hand on her arm. “Okay, hold on…”
“And you.” Her frown lines crease even deeper as she glares at Seth. “You publicly humiliated Drew after you found out about us. And now, what? You wanted to do the same to me? You’re such a hypocrite!”
I look at him, swallowing the I told you so on my tongue.
He notices, but shakes it off. “No, that’s not—”
“Hey, party people.”Wilder sidles in with her hands propped on her hips. “What, uh… what’s going on? We’ve got a room full of very curious people here and it’s getting a little awkward.”
“Jenna is Seth’s mystery girl,”Heidi spits out, each word dripping with contempt.
Wilder gawks at us. “You’re telling her now?”
“Wait, you knew about this?!”
“Uh…” Wilder bites her tongue. “Maybe?” She steps back. “You know, I should go get Ellie…”
“Don’t bother.” Heidi pulls her arm out of Drew’s grasp. “I need a minute.”
She spins away and marches out of the restaurant into the lobby.
“Heidi, wait!” I say, bolting to catch up with her. “Heidi.”
She ignores me.
“Heidi, I wasn’t sure how to tell you, okay?” I say behind her. “It messed me up, too.”
“Messed up?” She faces me. “Messed up is putting this lightly, Jenna.”
“I know.”
“It’s Seth.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“You’re always snapping at each other. Never letting things go. I mean, you two got into a huge spat last week over whether or not a hot dog was a sandwich!”
Oh, sweet foreplay.
“It’s complicated,” I say.
“I begged you guys to stop for years and now—” She throws up her hands. “What happened? Suddenly you’re dating?!”
“We have a connection. It sounds so stupid out loud, but you weren’t there. We needed each other.”
“Why?!”
“It…” I deflate. It’s not my place to tell her about Seth’s issues following the fire, and I’m not even going to explain the rest of it in a public lobby. “It was just… the right timing. That’s all!”
“Oh, I’m sure it was. Right when everything is going well for Heidi Newbury, here comes Hurricane Jenna. Just like always.”
I pause. “What are you talking about?”
“You couldn’t let me have this one thing, could you? Just one perfect night?”
“Heidi, I didn’t—”
“It’s always Jenna, Jenna, Jenna. The center of every man’s attention with your skinny waist and your big boobs. A blonde and a red-head? I mean, for fuck’s sake!”
“How is that my fault?” I ask.
“I really thought that when your mother cut you off, you’d notice that the universe doesn’t actually revolve around you. But no. It doesn’t matter that you could literally have anyone or anything you want, you can never handle me getting some of your attention!”
“That’s not true!”
“Dickie Ironside!”
“What the fuck is a Dickie Ironside?”
“My crush freshman year,” she says. “I told you I liked him and then not two days later, you were all over him in the lunch line!”
I pause, trying to remember. “I have no memory of this person.”
“Surprise, surprise! Just another stitch on the hem for Easy Abrams.”
I gasp, genuinely hurt. No one’s called me that since senior year of high school — and no one has ever said it to my face. Until now. “Heidi…”
“And then there was Drew!” she continues, unfazed. “You tried to sleep with him, too!”
“No, I didn’t!”
“Yes, you did! You tried to get him upstairs on the night of our first Delta Xi party.”
“I didn’t know who he was then! You didn’t even tell me you liked him until the next morning, as I recall!”
“I bet you loved it, didn’t you?” She scoffs in disgust. “Getting to pretend you were together in front of everyone. In front of me.”
“Okay…” I bite down hard, so very over this tantrum of hers. “I did that to help you. To hide your relationship from Seth.”
“And now you’re helping him get revenge on me?”
“No,”I say. “No, Heidi, we didn’t do this to hurt you. We never wanted to hurt anybody.”
“Stay away from me.”
“Heidi, wait—”
She dodges around me and heads back toward the restaurant. As she goes, she notices Drew and Seth standing together several feet away. Drew reaches out, but she dismisses his hand as she glares at Seth and continues across the golden lobby.
Drew offers me an apologetic face. I nod, signaling for him to go tend to her, and he leaves.
Seth lingers behind. I turn away from him, discreetly dabbing the tears on my lashes as he slowly approaches me.
“Jenna…”
I bare my teeth. “I told you—”
“I know.”
“—not tonight.”
“How was I supposed to know she’d react like this?” he asks.
“Because she’s a Newbury, Seth!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you guys always react badly.”
He scoffs. “No, we don’t.”
I give him a glare, silently willing him to remember the epic way he reacted to Drew and Heidi before turning around and returning to the restaurant.
“Hey, I wanted to do this earlier!” he says, keeping stride with me. “I told you from the start that I didn’t want to do to her what she did to me, but you kept putting it off.”
I lower my voice as I reach our table and grab my clutch. “And you thought ambushing everybody, including me, was the way to go about it? What did you expect, Seth? That’d we all just laugh it off? Have some cake?”
“Yeah. I did.” He nods with a gesture around the room. “And we still can.”
“No, we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Rule number three.” A tear escapes down my cheek. I don’t bother wiping it away. “You lied to me, Seth.”
His shoulders sink a bit. “Jenna, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” I say, having heard that before. “I know.”
I step around him toward the exit.
“Where are you going?” he asks, stopping me.
“Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve been uninvited, so I’m just going to go,” I say.
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, I’d rather be alone tonight.”
“Jenna.”
“Be seeing you, Seth.”
With my head down, I leave. I avoid their eyes, their stares, the judgmental glances of family and friends. I don’t want to see Heidi’s pained expression again. It’s always far too heartbreaking, but in the past, I always knew we’d get past it. Tonight, I’m not so sure.
I don’t know how we’ll come back from this.