Mister West by R.J. Lewis (animal farm read .TXT) 📕

you. And since he put you in that apartment, you’ve been paying out of your ears. You’re barely eating. Your skin’s gone all yellowy, Ivy. You used to be curvy. Now you’re sick looking.”

“Well, Derek and I have been talking about it. We’ll probably work a little more overtime to up our food budget –”

“He’s going to spend it on alcohol!” she seethes, cutting into my sentence. “Then he’s going to party it up again and fuck some girl behind your back. And once again you won’t discover it until weeks later when the bitch is posting pictures of her and him on Facebook, making you look like a fool! Then, like clockwork, you’ll both fight and he’ll punch holes in the wall or break your shit because he has a horrible anger problem. I can’t have that happen again. I refuse to let my best friend be taken advantage of by a fucking cheating manwhore of a man that makes lame excuses for cheating. Enough is enough!”

I’ve never seen her so pent up before. She’s trying to drill it into my head, and I know I should listen, but the heartbreaking sound of his voice… It’s so hard to think of myself when for the last eight years it’s always been about him and worrying over his feelings first.

How do I untrain that part of my brain that automatically empathizes with him?

I’m not in love him, we’re not together technically, yet I’m still behaving like I’m his. What is wrong with me?

“To be fair, I was destructive too,” I reply, defeatedly. “I pushed him away when I got depressed. He was practically alone all the time –”

“Stop defending him!”

“I’m not. I’m telling you how it was, Ana. I know I’m that infuriating friend everyone shakes their head at. But it’s not as black and white as you make it out to be, and it’s one thing to say you want to leave someone and it’s another thing to actually do it. It’s…hard, Ana. I can’t explain the conflict you go through on the inside. It’s that feeling of aloneness. Of…facing the unknown. Of starting all over again. I know why people who leave need courage. I…don’t know where mine is.”

She takes a moment to think about my words. I start to think maybe she understands.

“Answer me a question,” she then tells me with a set of challenging eyes. “One simple question. Are you happy?” Before I answer, she adds, “And don’t tell me you are because you feel happy every now and then. I’m talking about you, as a human being, is your heart happy?”

I already know the answer but saying it out loud would confirm the awful reality.

“And what if he drags his feet in the sand and makes the entire divorce process a nightmare?”

“I’ll be right there with you, Ivy. You know that. You have to get out of there. Being under the same roof is slowing the process down. You can’t keep delaying this.”

“I’m not trying to delay anything.”

“You say that now, but then you’ll lag and take a millennia. Slowest person in the world. God help us if you ever run a workplace. How many people are going to die under your slow watchful eye?”

I laugh again. “I’m not that slow.”

Her thin lips curve upwards. “Just think of the freedom when you’re out of there, hon. A new start. Hell, I’m excited for you.”

“You’re assuming I’m going to do it.”

“Because I know you are. You take a little longer to get there, but when a thought enters your head, it eventually plays out. And I know you’ll be lonely in the beginning, but it’ll get easier. Especially when you don’t have to hide checking out hotties. We’ll be a team. We haven’t been a team since we were sixteen. Don’t you miss those days?”

Just as I open my mouth to respond, my phone chimes. Without thinking, I grab my purse and open it, crazed and quick, sifting through the bag of shit – why do I have that much shit – inside it. I don’t stop to think Ana is looking shocked as I find it and turn it on. I just think of Aidan, knowing for certain it’s him messaging me (the only other person that messages me is sitting across the table from me).

My heart blossoms when I see his name in my inbox. My thumb hovers over his name. I’m dying to see what he wrote, but at the same time, I’m painfully aware of the scene I just made in front of Ana. She’s peering at me now with suspicious eyes.

I clear my throat and look at her innocently. “What?”

She glances down at the phone and then back at me. “Give me your fucking phone, Ivy.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know who’s messaging you on Facebook.”

“Facebook?”

“I recognize the sound of a Facebook message.”

Immediately, I shove the phone back into my purse. “It’s just my mom.”

Her mouth parts, and she looks beyond disgusted. “Do I have Idiot written on my forehead?”

“No.”

“I’m offended you’d think I’d believe in that garbage. You would not leap into your bag if your mother was telling you she was being shot at by a plane in the middle of a fucking corn field.”

“That’s happened to someone before, you know. It’s not funny.”

She glares. “It’s a guy, isn’t it?”

I try to pretend I don’t know what she’s talking about. “Ana, I spoke to my mother. You know, she took me in when shit fell apart with Derek.”

“She tried to exorcize you in front of her church peers.”

“I think she got the demons out.”

Ana leans across the table, getting closer to me, eyeing me like I’ve just committed murder. “We’ve been best friends since the second grade. Since Miranda Gerbert stole your orange juice in Art class before Lunch and I cut her pig tails off for you.”

“I never asked you to do that.”

“You cried for hours.”

“I was really looking forward to my juice.”

“Point is, you tell me everything. And