A numbing chill ran down Charlee's spine. This couldn’t be possible. “Danny did. Is it true?”
She shook her head, but Drew’s words said otherwise. “I couldn’t tell you, Charlee.”
Feeling as if her heart had just been ripped out of her chest, Charlee sucked in her breath but couldn’t hold back the emotion any longer. “You knew?” Drew’s own lip quivered now. There was no denying Charlee’s worst nightmare. Drew had done the unthinkable and joined the bullies against her. “You knew and you let me go?” She raised her now-sobbing voice. “Encouraged me to when you knew I didn’t even want to in the first place!”
Drew’s dad came to the dining room doorway, looking very concerned.
“I wanted to tell you,” Drew took a few steps toward her. “But I couldn’t.”
“Why? How could you let me go? How could you do that me?” The pain was so profound Charlee could barely breathe between sobs now.
Drew turned to face her dad then Charlee again. “I just couldn’t. It wasn’t supposed to turn out that way. You know I’d never hurt you like that, Charlee.”
“But you did! You knowingly let me do something that you knew would humiliate me. You pushed me to do it!” She sobbed, unable to understand how she could be so wrong about Drew. Then she gasped and looked back down at Drew’s phone in her hand. “You and Hector text?”
Drew’s eyes became a little wider. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be mad.”
“You think!” Charlee dropped the phone onto the sofa and spun around.
The mortification that possibly Drew had told Hector about the dog party and maybe he too knew that Drew had been in on it sunk in.
“Charlee, please let me explain,” Drew hurried into her room behind her.
Charlee grabbed her still-packed carryon, her purse, and her keys and rushed out past Drew. “I’ll send for the rest of my things.”
“Don’t go, Charlee. Please!” Drew sobbed. “I’m begging you. I’m so sorry.”
Ignoring Drew’s pleas, Charlee walked out of the room and stalked through the front room.
“It’s late, Charlee,” Drew’s dad insisted now also. “Maybe you should wait until tomorrow morning if you really wanna leave.”
“I’ll be fine, Mr. Morris,” she managed to say before walking out.
She wanted to thank him for his hospitality, thank him for allowing her to stay there rent-free all this time, but she couldn’t. Her throat was so swollen it hurt. Saying the few words she had said alone was a struggle. Drew followed her all the way out, continuing to plead and apologize over and over.
Throwing her suitcase in the backseat of the car, she glanced back at Drew, who was now on her knees on her front lawn while her dad stood over her with one hand on her shoulder. “I love you, Charlee,” she continued to sob.
Never, not in a million years, would Charlee be able to understand how Drew of all people could do this to her.
~*~
Hector
The continued buzzing woke Hector. Frowning, he glanced at his nightstand as his phone finally stopped buzzing. He laid his head back and began to close his eyes when the buzzing began again. Grumbling, he reached for it. It took a moment for his eyes to focus enough to read the name on the screen, but he sat up instantly when he saw it was Drew calling him.
“Hello?” he answered, hoping nothing was wrong.
Drew said something he couldn’t understand through her sobs, but his heart was already racing. Something was definitely wrong. “What?”
“Is she with you?”
“Charlee? No? She’s not with you?” Hector pulled his legs off to the side of his bed.
“She left about an hour ago. She was upset.” Hector heard Drew take a deep breath and clear her throat in an attempt to speak more clearly. “I figured it would take a while to get to your place since I’m assuming that’s where she’s going unless she’s headed straight to the airport.”
“The airport?” Hector gripped his phone. “Why would she go to the airport? What’s she upset about?”
“I couldn’t tell her, Hector. I know she probably thinks I’m the worst person in the world, but I couldn’t, and it killed me to not be able to, but I swear if I had known how things were going to turn out I would’ve never encouraged her to go to that party.”
Hector stood up, bringing his hand to his confused head as he shook it. “What party? What are you talking about?”
“The dog party last year. She said she told you.”
The puzzle came together suddenly, but he still didn’t understand what Drew was saying exactly. “Yeah, she told me about it. So back up. What happened now?”
“She found out I knew it was one of those parties before she went and didn’t tell her.”
Everything Hector was trying to put together in his head stopped at once. “You knew?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t tell her—”
“You fucking knew they were setting her up, and you still let her go?”
“I couldn’t explain to her because my dad was here. I wouldn’t have even cared if he found out about the picture I texted an old boyfriend of my tits, Hector. But I didn’t want him to hear the rest.”
The anger was already too overwhelming, and she was still saying things that made no sense to him. “What are you talking about? What does that have to do with you not telling your best friend she was being set up?” Thoughts of Charlee being out there right now possibly on a plane back home inundated him. He rushed to the window, hoping he’d see her car out there.
“Danny came to me and confessed about the party. He said he only asked Charlee because word had gotten around that he was talking to her and he was being pressured to invite her to it. He said he only had because he knew how shy she was and was certain she would turn him down, which she did.”
Hector started out of his bedroom toward the front door. He hadn’t seen Charlee’s car from his window, but maybe he would if he walked outside. This shit was getting more confusing by the second. “I don’t get it. She turned him down? So how she’d end up there anyway?”
“I convinced her to go.”
Feeling even more disgusted with Drew, he understood completely now why Charlee would be so upset. He stopped at the top of his porch steps. “Why? Why would you do that?” Then it suddenly hit him. “How did she find all this out now?”
Drew was quiet for a moment then finally spoke again. “I don’t know. All she said was Danny told her, so I’m assuming she saw him in Maryland this weekend.”
Hector stopped once again at the bottom of the stairs and thought about that. Charlee had only mentioned meeting up with her mom on Saturday for lunch. She didn’t say anything about seeing the asshole. He did remember thinking she seemed a little weird on the flight home and when they said goodbye tonight, but he’d assumed she was just as exhausted as he was.
“Hector, she didn’t give me a chance to explain,” she said, her voice cracking once again. “And I know it was awful of me, but I had no choice.”
“What do you mean you had no choice? Of course you did. You know what?” he said ready to hang up on her ass. “I don’t even wanna hear your bullshit reasons. What you did was fucked up, and I don’t blame her for leaving. I don’t care that you’re feeling like shit right now either. You should be.” Slammed with another realization, he stopped where this thought was going, his mind rewinding back to a few things that infuriated him even further. “Was this why you said you had to do this for Charlee as much as yourself?”
”Yes,” she whispered.
“You selfish little bitch.” The words flew out without thought. “So after you literally helped set up your best friend, the one you claim to care so much about and who deserves to be happy, you watched her fall apart, saw what it did to her, and then you brought her out here and took credit for making everything better. So you could feel better about yourself?”
“I do care for her!” She yelled. “What I did could not be helped. I feel terrible about it, yes, and does it help me feel better to see her happy? Yes! Because she does deserve to be. And you will listen to my reasons, damn it. You are no angel either. You know all about feeling guilty and wanting desperately to make up for it.”
Hector didn’t say anything, but he continued to listen to her, partly because she was right: he wasn’t without his own faults, but mostly because she was hysterical now and he figured he may as well let her finish. But there was no way she’d let her lump them in the same category. He wouldn’t even help set up someone he didn’t know well much less one of his closest friends.
She was just about done with her explanation when his other line clicked and he saw it was Charlee. His heart jumped to his throat with excitement, but at the same time with the dread of hearing her cry. Because if Drew was hysterical about this, he knew Charlee must be too.
“That’s her on the other line,” he said quickly. “I gotta go.”
“Call me back,” was all he heard as he clicked to the other line.
“Charlee!” he said, bracing himself to hear her sob.
The last thing he expected was to hear a dude on the other end and the resounding words he said loudly. “You’re an asshole. You know that? And I don’t care if you are a badass boxer. If you were in front of me right now, I’d still take a fucking swing at you!”