The Day I Lost My Taste for Love, and for You Chapter 09
The moment the gate closed, all the noise was shut out behind it.
I unpacked the heater and plugged it in.
The orange bars came up and warmed my cold fingertips slowly.
The argument outside did not last long.
After about half an hour, a car engine started and faded into the distance.
The lane went quiet again.
I assumed the whole ugly scene had ended there, and how fast it spread went far past anything I had imagined.
That night, while I was cooking, my phone started throwing up notifications.
They came from a former coworker.
Coworker: [Anna! Have you looked at the alumni group or your feed? Oh my God, this is the story of the year!]
I opened the app.
The five-hundred-member alumni group from college had gone up in flames.
On the drive back, Oliver had added Jessica to his family group, his company’s executive group, and every social circle the two of them shared.
Then he sent the video out to all of them, packaged with screenshots.
—
of every message Jessica had sent him playing the victim and stirring up trouble.
And that was not the end of it.
He publicly tore into her in those groups in the ugliest language he could find.
Oliver: [This woman has the heart of a snake, and she destroyed my family under the cover of friendship. From now on, anyone who has anything to do with her has a problem with me.]
It was a counterattack that came close to self-destruction.
He did not care in the slightest that his own stupidity, the fact that he had been played for a fool, was now public. He only wanted to drag Jessica down to hell alongside him.
In the screenshots my coworker sent, Jessica was frantically deleting her own messages in the group and trying to talk her way out.
But it was all far too late.
The persona she had built, the good sport, the girl who kept it real, was gone completely.
Somebody dug up dirt on kickbacks she had taken on an earlier project and tagged her company’s owner directly.
Somebody else brought up old accounts of her wedging herself into other people’s relationships under the cover of being one of the guys.
Once a wall starts to fall, everybody pushes.
The circle she had been so proud of swallowed her whole in an
—
instant.
I looked at the abuse and the mockery scrolling wildly up my screen.
I felt remarkably calm.
That was the world they had wanted.
It was a world full of calculation and vanity and the pleasure of hurting other people.
Now the two of them had been pulled into the current themselves.
My dinner was ready.
I lifted a forkful into my mouth.
There was still only the softness of the pastas and no flavor at all.
But I ate that bowl slowly and carefully until it was empty.
The next morning came early.
A burst of urgent knocking woke me up.
I threw on a coat and opened the courtyard gate, and Jessica stood outside with her hair everywhere.
Nothing was left of the polish she had had the day before.
Her fur coat was caked with mud, the thick foundation on her face had been cut into gullies by tears, and her black liner had smeared all around her eyes until she looked like something out of a ghost story.
“Anna!”
—
When she saw me, she threw herself at me and grabbed my arm like a woman catching hold of the last rope.
“You have to help me! Put out a statement, say you edited that video! Say the two of us were joking!”
Her fingers dug hard into my flesh.
“Oliver’s insane! He sent people to make a scene at my office and my boss fired me this morning. And everybody I ever borrowed money from is calling to collect!”
She was shaking with sobs.
“Anna, we’re best friends! You always had the softest heart, didn’t you? You can’t just stand there and watch me die!”
I looked at the state she was in.
I thought about the gray lump of meat she had dropped in my bowl that looked like something dead, and about the cup of foul liquid she had made me drink.
“Jessica.”
I pried her fingers off me, one at a time.
“Have you forgotten? You strangled that soft heart of mine a long time ago, a little at a time.”
I stepped back.
“Everything happening to you now grew out of seeds you planted yourself, didn’t it?”
—
“You’re lying!” she screamed, and her eyes turned wild. “If you hadn’t pulled out that video, Oliver never would have turned on me like this! You did this to me!”
“Still blaming other people?”
I looked at her coldly.
“The day you decided somebody else’s suffering was entertainment, you should have known this day was coming.”
I took out my phone.
“If you’re not gone in the next minute I’m calling the police and reporting you for trespassing. The station is a quarter mile from here.”
Jessica went rigid.
She stared at me, and she seemed to understand at last that the woman standing in front of her was no longer dough she could push into any shape she liked.
She ground her teeth and let out a low, hopeless sound.
Then she turned and ran, stumbling, deep into the lane.