“Mia!” Thankfully, it’s Kayleigh who follows me and she has all my stuff with her. “Mia, wait up.”
I don’t stop running until I get around the corner. I don’t even want to see the gym or the pizza shop where we had an amazing date. I can’t see anything that reminds me of the good times with Noah because it’s all a lie. Everything he said wasn’t the truth, all of it now has a shade of betrayal over it.
I’m angry at him but I’m more annoyed at myself for falling in too deep. Why couldn’t I just keep it as a fling? Why did I have to over step the mark and act like a freak? Why do I always get carried away?
“Mia, what the fuck?”
“I’m sorry.” I clutch onto my knees and breathe deep. “I didn’t mean to just run like that.”
“What the fuck happened in there? You didn’t even talk to him.”
“I know. I didn’t need to. That child is his and he didn’t even tell me…”
“Oh…” Kayleigh looks as frozen as I feel. “That’s weird.”
“It is weird, Kayleigh, I told him everything about me. I opened up about last year.”
“What, all of it?”
“All of it, and he’s had lots of time to tell me that he has a kid but he hasn’t.”
“Was that the boy’s mother?”
>
“No, the nanny. I don’t know who the mom is.”
“Do you think…” Kayleigh bites down awkwardly on her bottom lip. “Do you think he might be married?”
I sigh and hang my head low, not noticing the tear leaking from my eye until it splashes on the sidewalk beside me. “I don’t know, but that makes sense, doesn’t it? Otherwise why wouldn’t he just tell me?”
Kayleigh doesn’t have an answer for me. She wraps an arm around me and I nestle into her.
“You know what? He must be an asshole,” she eventually says decisively. “If he’s willing to cheat on his wife and not say anything to you to at least let you know where you stand then he doesn’t deserve you.”
“He is always secretive about his cell phone,” I suddenly realize. “Like, I’m not ever trying to look at it or anything, but he gets a lot of messages and he never lets me see it. I didn’t notice it because I don’t want to look at it, but now it seems really strange. Probably because his wife is messaging him.”
“We need to get out of here,” Kayleigh decides. “Far away from him.”
“I can’t ever come back to this gym. Ever.”
I knew this was going to happen, this is why I didn’t want any involvement with anyone.
“That’s okay, I think we can just run now. We don’t need a gym. I don’t want you to ever see him again. We need to get him out of your life completely. Numbers deleted, stuff thrown away, everything. I don’t want you to be heart broken over this guy. He was only supposed to be a fling.”
I sob pitifully but nod to agree with her. Noah was supposed to only make me feel better not worse.
“Thank you, Kayleigh. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You don’t ever have to worry about that. I’m always going to be here for you.”
She’s always there for me through every heart break. Thank God, Wesley didn’t push her away from me. I don’t know where I would be right now. She’s my rock. I need her.
15
Noah
“Hi, this is Mia, please leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can…”