The Rental by Rebecca Berto Page B

Cara and Justin do stuff together on my bed? For how long were things going on?
    That was why I blocked all that stuff. The hammering feeling in my chest as I had now would’ve been overwhelming to experience all that time.
    Cara sat there after the extended silence, but the memories were overwhelming to take with so much wrong between us. I sat on my desk chair and swivelled around to face her.
    “I’m sorry about back there.”
    “I don’t care if you are or aren’t.”
    “I was just so desperate. Six months, Vee! I was going bat-shit cray cray without you. I didn’t realise how much you made a mark in my life until I spent every moment wondering about what I’d done and how you were.”
    “Did you think of me when you were with Justin?”
    Silence had never been so heavy. The air had turned to mousse and with every passing second, it expanded. It compressed down on me, shortening and shallowing my breaths.
    “I figure it doesn’t matter now.”
    I asked, “What doesn’t?” Before it hit me, I fell for Cara’s trap. I seemed interested. And it shifted the balance in a way I didn’t want it to.
    “He offered to supply me a night’s worth of coke if I fucked him at the party. It’s why I knew about Rick’s twenty-first earlier than you. He said you’d never do something like that, and that he was sick of waiting, and he wanted to be with me.”
    “Justin had no cash for …” I shook my head. “Never mind. And you just did it?”
    “Not immediately. He asked before, without the drugs.”
    “Did you not think about being caught or was that part of the thrill?”
    “No, like I said I wasn’t thinking!”
    Cara crawled forward and reached for my hand, but I jerked back, out of reach. I gave a warning glare. “Don’t touch me. I don’t want any more shit from you.”
    “You have to believe me. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship for money or drugs.”
    “But, alas, you did.”
    She sat up on her haunches. “But I didn’t mean to.”
    “Cara … It doesn’t matter what you intended. It matters what actually happened. And that, Cara, says everything about what we had.” I shook my head to myself rather than at her. “I have too much shit going on for this.”
    I stood and opened my bedroom door. I cocked my head into the open space.
    “Please, let me explain. We didn’t even do it for long.”
    “It? You mean you didn’t even fuck my boyfriend for long so it’s not so bad?”
    “No, I didn’t mean it like that .”
    “If this is your explanation, I’m done hearing it. You’ve spent all this time saying everything and nothing. Where are we now? You were my best friend and you cheated with my boyfriend. Keep it all, I don’t want any of it.”
    “If you’re talking about your dad, I heard—”
    “No diverting. I don’t want your pity or your apologies. You and Justin are deader to me than he is. If all you need is money or drugs to cross me, I can’t have you in my life.”
    “I came to help, Vee! It was such a shit time, and I had to get it off my chest. We were all bad with the drugs, and—”
    “You were,” I corrected. “I only dabbled in them. I was never addicted or spiralling out of control.”
    Cara averted my gaze and shuffled her hands in her laps. The awkwardness in her posture seemed like she had other things she wanted to say.
    “Justin wasn’t any different to me. We used often but didn’t say anything to you. How could we? You were this happy little thing who liked to experiment, and we hardly loved it—we did it because we had to. We loved you, and we didn’t want you disappointed in us when you barely used recreationally, like you didn’t care for how hard it was to stop. Like you had some superhero strength we didn’t.
    “I didn’t like Justin initially, but our feelings changed after all those times when we were high and you weren’t. He was like a drug too, and soon I was addicted to wanting him. He was the same with me. Call it attraction