Page 49 of Not Yet Yours
I smile and shake my head.
“No thanks. I need to keep a clear head for this. It’s crazy enough without involving alcohol,” I say.
If I have a drink, I’m likely to have more than one and I’m scared I’ll wake up tomorrow fuzzy headed, not sure what I saw and what I didn’t see, and I can’t have that. I need to keep that picture straight in my mind so even if no one else ever believes it, I will still always know the truth.
A few minutes later, the apartment door bursts open, and Cullen is standing there.
“What’s wrong Max? What happened?” Cullen says.
He looks genuinely worried, and I glance at Max. What the hell did she put in that text?
“Sit down,” Max says.
“I don’t want to sit down. Tell me what’s going on,” Cullen says, and I can see he is on the brink of panicking now. Max seems to realize this at the same time I do.
“No one is dead or anything,” she says. “But we wanted to talk to you about Liam.”
Cullen looks from Max to me and back to Max again.
“Are you kidding me? Harriet and Liam have some sort of a fight and you text me saying nine one one emergency, get home now,” he demands.
“Really? That’s what you sent?” I ask.
“Yes. We need answers and if I hadn’t said that he would have just said he’d catch up with us after work. Right?” Max says, the first bit to me and the last bit, the question, directed at Cullen.
“Well yeah, but still,” he says.
I can’t really say too much about Max’s text message because I used a similar trick in my text to her. It didn’t seem so bad when I did it, but it looked pretty bad from the outside looking in. I’ll have to try and remember not to do that again. But it’s not every day you find out your boyfriend is already married, so there’s that. Maybe that can be my thing. I only send over dramatic emergency texts when I find out my boyfriend is married. I shake away these stupid thoughts, thoughts that are obviously just me trying to think about anything but the situation at hand. I decide to start with a question that I don’t think hearing the answer will break me.
“Why did you assume Liam and I had a fight? Did you speak to him?” I ask.
“No,” Cullen says. “But I can see you’ve been crying and while I’m sure there is more to your life than Liam, I’m not sure what else there might be that would involve me needing to be here.”
I nod, letting him know that I believe him. His logic is sound.
“So, what’s this all about then?” Cullen says.
He sits down now in an armchair opposite where Max and I sit on the couch, the armchair at a right angle to us.
“I’m going to ask you something Cullen and I need you to be honest with me, ok? Even if you promised someone else you wouldn’t tell me,” Max says. Cullen looks confused, but he nods for her to go on. “Did you let my best friend start dating your brother while knowing he is already married?”
Cullen bursts into laughter.
“What the fuck?” I ask.
“Ok, I know I should be mad because I’m meant to be at work, but I see the funny side,” Cullen says. He shakes his head, still laughing. “I have to admit you had me there. I really believed something serious was going on.”
“Cullen, this isn’t a joke,” Max says. “Do I look like I’m joking? Does Harriet look like she’s finding this funny to you? You said yourself you can see she’s been crying.”
“But I thought it was part of the joke,” Cullen says, looking between Max and me again as though waiting for one of us to crack and start to laugh. He’s going to have a long wait before I find any of this even remotely funny. “God, you are actually being serious here, aren’t you? In answer to the question then, no, of course, I didn’t let that happen. It would be impossible for it to happen because Liam isn’t married.”
I study Cullen’s facial expression, the tone of his voice, and his body language as he speaks, and I can see he is genuine.Cullen had no idea that Liam is married. What the fuck is going on here?
“He is,” I say. “I saw his marriage certificate.”
“But… but that doesn’t make any sense,” Cullen says. “Why wouldn’t I know about my brother being married?”
I shrug my shoulders. I have no idea why Cullen doesn’t know about this. I mean I’m dating the guy, and I didn’t even know.