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Chapter Forty-Five

RUTH

“ W hy is there music playing?” I ask as we reach the final few steps up to my apartment. Rowan’s hand is on my lower back, likes he thinks I’m going to go tumbling backward.

“I don’t know,” he mumbles, sounding distracted.

I turn the key in the lock, ready to crawl into bed, and try to put the whole night behind me, but as the door swings open, I’m hit by the smell of pizza, and laughter coming from the living room.

“Georgie?” I call out as I move toward the noise. Who else is here?

“Ruth?” Her voice comes out squeaky, and I hear a bunch of shuffling. Oh shit, is she in there with a girl?

“Are you naked?”

“What? No!”

With the assurance that I’m not about to walk in on her fucking someone on the couch, I push open the door and see her standing in the middle of the floor, face flushed. Steph, Indira, and Beth are sitting around her. Our Econ study group. The coffee table and couch are covered in notebooks and discarded takeout boxes, and nobody says anything. The silence is thick, and I get the ugly impression that I’ve walked in on something I wasn’t meant to see.

“Hey guys!” I try to sound casual, but nobody’s buying it.

Georgie’s smile is a little wobbly, sagging at the edges like she can’t quite hold it up. “Hey, I thought you were gonna be back later.”

Does she not want me here?

“Oh, um-sorry?”

That seems to jolt her out of whatever trance she’s in. “Oh god, no, that came out wrong.” She runs a hand through her hair. “You live here too. Obviously, it’s fine.”

Did they think I wouldn’t come back? Is that why they’re here?

“We were actually just finishing,” Steph chimes in from the floor. They all start moving at once, packing up notes and folding pizza boxes until it’s like they were never there. They mutter awkward goodbyes and file out, Steph stopping to give Georgie a quick hug. Indira’s the only one to look at me, her face burning red as she gives me an apologetic smile. It’s the kind of look someone gives an elderly dog who doesn’t know they’re going on that last trip to the vet.

Throughout all of it, I stand awkwardly by the kitchen island, feeling like the ground under my feet is shifting. I almost want to clutch the counter to stay upright, but Rowan’s at my back, his solid presence holding me up.

“What’s going on?” I ask as Georgie locks the door. “They didn’t need to go. You guys weren’t done.”

“Are you okay?” she asks as she steps toward me. “You look like you’ve been crying.”

“I didn’t know we were studying tonight?”

“You were busy.” She frowns. “Can you please tell me what’s going on? You’re kind of freaking me out.”

I shake my head, trying to get my jumbled thoughts into some sort of sense. “You didn’t even tell me you were all meeting up?”

“Ruth, we were just studying.”

“Do you do that a lot?”

Her face is all confusion. “Yeah, kinda?”

“And you don’t tell me?”

“We just have our study group meetings.” She puts a hand on my elbow and I fight the urge to brush it off. I’m so confused, but I know that I don’t really want her touching me. “Ruth, please tell me what’s happened. Why were you crying?”

Oh.

I finally get what’s happening, and I can’t believe how long it’s taken me.

They didn’t want me here.

The weight of the realization hits me so hard I take a step back, almost landing on Rowan’s feet. He pulls me into him, his presence reassuring even as he doesn’t speak. He probably doesn’t know what to say either.

I don’t know how long they’ve all been hanging out without me, but tonight obviously isn’t the first time. This is why Steph introduced me as ‘Georgie’s roommate.’ That’s just how they see me. All along, I thought we were friends, that they were my people, my college family, and they didn’t even want me around.

I should have seen it a while ago, but I guess I was just so desperate for attention, desperate for somebody to care about me, that I managed to convince myself of something that wasn’t true.

This is Georgie’s real life. And I’m not in it.

I wanted so badly for us to be those kinds of inseparable friends who are each other’s maids of honor, who raise their kids together, that I completely fabricated the whole thing. My breaths come hard as I remember the way I latched onto her the minute we got assigned as roommates. I went with her to every orientation event. If we had a class together, I’d always sit by her, always want to study together. Did she ever even want that? Does she even like me?

It's a physical pain, one that wraps around my chest like razor wire, tightening with every breath. I’d double over if I didn’t have Rowan holding me up. I dig my fingertips into his forearm as Georgie comes closer, stepping into my space.

I know I’m catastrophizing. I can see that after everything that’s happened tonight, my brain is doing what it does best and jumping to the absolute worst-case scenario: the nuclear option, where Georgie’s secretly hated me for the past two years and never said anything because she needed someone to split the rent with. I know that’s probably not true, but I can’t stop the what-ifs from coming.

The whole of my time at Allbreck flashes before me like the last moments while I’m dying, and it kind of feels like I am. Every time I heard about plans at the last minute, or when Georgie asked to hang out because something else fell through. I’m always her last choice.

I’m always everybody’s last choice.

“I think we should go,” Rowan says from behind me.

“Please just tell me what’s happened?” she asks again.

I finally relent, just so she’ll stop asking. “Marshall. He was using me for his film.”

“How?”

“The whole thing was about when we were together, it was about us.” A fresh wave of tears threatens to escape.

“Oh my god.” She pales, covering her mouth. “Oh, shit, I never thought-”

“You knew?” Rowan cuts in, his voice like granite.

My knees almost buckle.

“No, not like-no!” she stammers, squirming under what I can only imagine is one of Rowan’s hard looks.

“Georgie, did you know?” I ask again, fighting to keep my voice level.

“He just said you inspired him,” she rushes out, “that he’d based a character on you. I thought it was sweet!”

“What the fuck?” I’m finally allowing myself to get angry, and it feels really good. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I didn’t think it was a big deal!”

“He put our most private moments out there for anyone to see!”

“I didn’t know he was gonna do that!”

“You should have warned me! You should have said something so I wasn’t completely blindsided!”

“Ruth-”

“How could you do this to me? You’re supposed to be my best friend!”

She quirks her head to the side.

“I am?”

It’s like she’s set off a grenade. The room falls silent as the confirmation of all my fears echoes around the space.

The worst part is she doesn’t even look embarrassed. Her brows are furrowed in confusion because she genuinely has no idea what I’m talking about.

Holy shit.

It was all in my head. Our whole friendship, I just projected feelings onto her. I basically forced her to hang out with me so that I wouldn’t feel so alone. I’m not even angry anymore. None of this is her fault. I just can’t believe how stupid I am.

“We should go,” Rowan says as he starts steering me toward my room.

“Ruth?” Georgie asks.

“Just leave it,” Rowan tells her. “I’m gonna take her to my place.”