Page 116 of The Scientist
Heart rate under control and coffee in hand, I grabbed my phone to wish Lex good luck when I saw a message from a blocked number. I opened it and had to look twice at what I was seeing. It was a picture of Lex lying in bed sleeping with pink hair draped across his chest, his arm around her. She was topless as well, and I felt my stomach clench painfully.
My heart was racing, and I tried to calm down, hoping this was just an old photo someone had sent to mess with me. Then my eyes zeroed in on the headboard.The fucking birds. I ran to the bathroom, thinking I was going to be sick.
My hands started to shake, and I fought to get control as my thoughts began colliding in a downward spiral of unbridled chaos. How could he do this? He told me he was done with Nicky. That he was just going to sleep early that night. He’d just neglected to mention that he wouldn’t be sleeping alone. I pictured his wet hair, fresh from the shower, when he had called me. Had she been there in the shower with him? Bile rose to my throat.
Is that why he always fought to have her around? Maybe that was why he hadn’t stood up for me outside the bathroom that night. Was it some kind of sick game the two of them were playing? If so, it was definitely not one I wanted to be a part of. The image of the two of them lying there together felt forever branded in my brain.
I dropped to my knees on the bathroom floor clutching my phone, the image still taunting me. Someone had obviously wanted me to see this. The possibilities raced through my mind. Was it Stuart? Did he want me to know what was happening without Lex knowing he was the one who ratted him out? That didn’t seem likely. It was probably Nicky herself who had taken the picture just to antagonize me, but why was she in his room in the first place? Why was his arm around her? None of this made sense.
Sobs wracked violently through my chest with a pain I’d never experienced before. I stayed frozen on the bathroom floor for hours, staring at nothing but seeing entirely too much.
When I finally managed some semblance of calm, I drove to my mom’s house and knocked on her door.
“Hey baby girl,” she said, opening the door. “What’s wrong?” Her tone changed instantly when she looked at my face. She grabbed me, pulling me into her arms as the tears came out in another fierce wave. We went to the living room, and she held me until I could finally tell her what happened.
She stayed quiet for a while, just listening before she said, “This doesn’t make any sense. He’s crazy about you. Why would he have waited for you all this time just to sleep with his ex-girlfriend the first weekend he went away?”
“I don’t know. They’re together all the time. They wouldn’t need to go away if they really wanted to be together,” I said as the horrible possibility sank in. I tried to push the thought out of my mind, but the seed had already been planted. All those late nights in the lab together… it was how they had gotten together in the first place. I had no way to know how long this had been going on, but I knew one thing for certain—he and I were done.
???
Lex tried calling me after his presentation, but I didn’t answer. I was too busy getting shitfaced with Sarah and Lionel because that was the only solution we could come up with for my problem. He had texted me that everything went well and that he would try calling again later.
“Hadley, just so you’re aware,” Lionel slurred after we’d had far too much wine. “I’m an avid true crime fan and dedicated podcast listener. I know the perfect way to get rid of this douchenugget, and we’d never leave a trace.”
“Here we go,” Sarah said, just as drunk. “Everyone knows you’d use the old icicle trick.”
I hiccupped. “What’s the icicle trick?”
“See? Not everyone knows,” Lionel said, giving her the side eye before turning to me. “All you have to do is freeze a gianticicle and use it as a spike to drive into your enemy’s heart. And then there’s no murder weapon to be found because it melts! Easy peasy.”
“Ohhh.” To my booze-addled brain, that sounded like a brilliant plan. “Although, I don’t think your plan would work in this case.”
“And why is that?” Lionel said, sounding offended.
“Because you’d have to have a heart to drive the spike into,” I explained. “And that assface definitely doesn’t!”
I knew that wasn't true, but with the picture fresh in my mind and my inability to come up with another explanation for what I saw, I let the hurt spill out.
Lionel cackled. “I see we’ve moved on to the trash-talking phase of the evening, and I am here for it!” he said, lifting his glass in the air.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Sarah said, unknowingly echoing my mom’s words from earlier.
“He fucked someone else. What about it doesn’t make sense to you?” Lionel asked, and I flinched at the image his words conjured up.
Sarah swirled the wine around in her glass. “No, I get that, but I swear, if you had seen him around her, you would have sworn her pussy was made of pure gold.”
“If you say so.” Lionel shrugged before turning to me. “Hadley, maybe this was all some big misunderstanding. What rules did you guys come up with?”
My brows knitted. “Rules?”
“Yeah. Did you guys ever talk about what you could and could not do?” he asked. “Like, I once dated this guy who came up with the hundred-mile rule. We could sleep with other people as long as they lived outside a hundred-mile radius. Is San Diego more than a hundred miles away?”
“We didn’t have any rules like that,” I told him. “We never even talked about it.”
“What do you mean you never talked about it?” Sarah asked, confused.
“I mean I just assumed we were on the same page. I haven’t been seeing anyone else. He acts like we’re together. He basically threw my ex out of my house a few weeks ago when he showed up on my doorstep. Not to mention, we’ve been sleeping together practically every night for the past month. I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out that I didn’t want him screwing other people.”