The Sorry Trilogy Novel – A year ago, my boyfriend, now my ex-boyfriend, Chris Grover, got drunk at a party and cheated on me. Not only did he cheat, but also he got the girl pregnant. Of course, I kicked him to the curb. Problem is, Chris is not letting it go, nor are our friends. He says he’s sorry. They say he’s sorry. I don’t think so. It doesn’t matter that he’s sorry. Meanwhile, there’s this guy, my business partner and friend from college, Gabe whose been waiting patiently for years for his shot with me. I think it’s time Gabe got his shot if Chris will just stay out of the picture.
Diane “He’s really sorry, you know,” my best friend, Charlise Thompson, said and I sighed inwardly and thought, ‘Here we go’. “I know,” I said quickly, eager to get past this part of the program. I knew Chris was sorry, Charlise knew Chris was sorry, all of our friends knew Chris was sorry, and the whole town of Grover’s Corner knew Chris Grover was sorry. However, what they thought he was sorry about and what I thought he was sorry about, were two different things. Therein lay the problem. “Look, I get it, Chris’s sorry, really sorry, but that doesn’t change the fact. He cheated. Not only cheated, but cheated with that skank who’s been after him for years,” I said when Charlise didn’t say anything. I hated the fact we had to do this whenever we got together. I was the victim here. Chris was the villain. If anyone should leave, it should be him and that skank of his.
That wouldn’t happen so here we sat. Me, him, and her, in the world’s most clichéd love triangle. “But D…” Charlise started and I cut her off. I was so done with this. It was time to pull the plug. “Look, C, I get it. I really do. I know things have to be awkward with you and me being friends and you and Bo being girlfriend and boyfriend. Bo is Chris’s brother and I know this has to be pulling you in two different directions. So, if we need to cut ties, I get it and no hard feelings,” I said finally speaking frankly. She looked at me in shock, “So it’s just that easy for you? You and I have been friends since you got here and because I’m saying some things you don’t like, you’re willing to throw our friendship away? I thought I was your best friend.” “No, it wouldn’t be that easy, but I don’t want you caught in the middle of this drama.
The drama that is only slated to get worse now that that baby is here. So if you have to go, I just wanted you to understand that I’m okay with that,” I said calmly. She looked at me as if she had never seen me before and I got it. The old me would have been apologizing and backsliding in the face of her hurt. The new me wasn’t that concerned with her hurt, as mean as that might sound. She didn’t seem very concerned with my hurt. Charlise and the rest of the gang had rallied around Chris as if he was the injured party. They took every opportunity to tell me how sorry he was. Frankly, I was tired of it.Chris had shocked everyone when Janice got pregnant and he refused to marry her. The consensus was you play, you pay.
If for no other reason than to give the child a name. The marriage might not last too much past the birth of the child, but the boy still made the effort. Chris had refused. His parents had tried to force him. The church tried to force him. Even our friends tried to force him and he was having none of it. Janice was a drunken mistake and he said he wasn’t going to make it worse by marrying her. He didn’t love her. He loved me. Talk about gossip. The town’s jungle drums beat for weeks about it. “D, I’m just saying you need to forgive him. It was just once and he’s…” Charlise said, leaning over the table to express her sincerity. “I know, I know, really sorry,” I said, cutting her off before she could say it again. “You seem to think I’m still pissed, but I’m not. Chris did me a favor. He stopped it before it got too far with him and me. For that, I forgave him months ago.”
Charlise looked at me with scorn. “Forgave him? Yeah, right. That’s why you won’t talk to him. You won’t go to any of the gang’s parties. You leave a gathering if he shows up there. “If that’s forgiveness, girl, you need to check your dictionary. I get it, you’re pissed, and you should be. That was some lowdown Chris pulled, but still… I can’t believe you’re going to let one drunken night mess up the years you and Chris were together.” “Well, that’s as far as I’m willing to go. I haven’t stabbed him in the chest with an ice pick. I haven’t pulled out every bleached blond hair in Janice’s head. If I choose not to associate with him, then I think that’s my right,” I said defensively, not sure why I was letting myself be pulled into this same old argument.
Another vow of the ‘new me’ was not to put up with unnecessary BS, yet here I was doing exactly that. Time to pull the plug. Again. I smirked. This was one stubborn plug. “Look, I need to go. I still have grocery shopping to do,” I said scooting my chair away from the table before grabbing my purse off the back. “Go?” Charlise asked, looking around at all the interested faces. She flushed as she realized just how not private our conversation had been. “You can’t go yet. We haven’t even had lunch,” she said, leaning forward with a hiss of frustration. “Funny, but talking about ‘him’,” I said, making air quotes around ‘him’, “really kills my appetite. Maybe I should tell everyone about the wonderful ‘Chris Diet’. It has done marvelous things for me.” I finished, gesturing toward my new thinner body. Before she could say anything else, I turned and walked out of the little café.
Our little town didn’t boast many restaurants other than the fast food chains that seemed to be everywhere, so the café was the place for ladies to lunch, but casual, hence the jeans and T-shirts Charlise and I were wearing. I ignored the whispers and the looks as I made my way to the door. Once outside the glass doors I could see the talking picking up as women drifted from table to table spreading the news to anyone who might have missed anything. Again, the wide-open road was calling my name and the urge to answer was getting to me. I turned and walked toward my car for the short drive to the supermarket. I could have walked it, but the heat made that undesirable. In addition, I would need my car to get my groceries home.
I ignored the heads turning as I walked to my car. Yep, the grapevine was buzzing already. I felt another spurt of anger toward Chris and Janice. They caused this, but they were coming across as the victims. Chris, because he lost the ‘love of his life’, or so I’ve been told, and Janice as deserted single mother. Me? I was the bimbo who just couldn’t get over it. Chris’s family has money. Not crazy money, not Bill Gates money, but still in small town Texas, they have money. His father owns a car dealership. If it just relied on business from Grover’s Corner, it would have been out of business long ago, but it’s on the freeway so people come from miles around to buy their new and used cars there. They do okay, and I guess if you’re living in genteel poverty, like Janice and her mother, then they probably look like lottery winners. Janice just wanted her shot at the prize.
Which from all I’ve heard she was in line for until I moved to town and snatched Chris right from up under her. Huh? Didn’t know Chris was or had ever been hers, but we are hearing this from the skank’s standpoint. I looked around for our male audience, because there had to be one. Janice only acted this way in the presence of men. There was no way she was putting on ‘the act’ for me. I spotted a teenaged stock boy down the aisle and smirked. “No harm done,” I said, forcing myself back to the here and now, eager to end our little encounter. Janice and I had said all we needed to say years ago. Rehashing things now would accomplish nothing. I tried to move my cart away from hers, but she kept hers, including her baby, blocking mine.
“I can’t believe I was so careless,” she said, her hand on the handle of the shopping cart. “Chris would have a cow if anything happened to our baby,” she said with a smirk on her face at the last part. I hid the wince at the ‘our’ in that statement. It was what she was looking for. That hint that something she had done had gotten to me. I never understood her animosity toward me, but she hated my guts since the second I moved here to live with my grandmother. Then again, since I had supposedly ‘snatched Chris right out from under her’, I guess I did get it. It was our junior year in high school. My parents had been killed in a plane crash on one of their frequent rescue missions. They were physicians with Doctors without Borders and the last country they were scheduled to work in was ‘hot’. That meant there was some kind of civil unrest there.
Well, the rebels or the dictator or someone didn’t like the idea of foreign doctors coming in to repair the damage to the victims they had spent so much time torturing. They, whoever they were, decided to let that displeasure be known by blowing my parent’s plane out of the sky. Their bodies were never recovered, nor were any of the other 40 people on the plane. I know I sound flippant, but it’s either that or go stark raving nuts, and I refuse to let those terrorists have another victim, namely me. I had cried a river when my parents died, but I refused to let my grief rule my life. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, swooped in, bundled me up, and brought me here to her hometown.
Not that there was much bundling or swooping to do as I was already spending the summer with her while my parents were out of the country, but she did take care of the final arrangements. I was numb as she efficiently put my parents’ affairs in order. She didn’t have a lot to do there as their affairs were already prepared for this eventuality. My parents might have been dreamers, but they were practical dreamers. This tragedy was an accepted possibility for people like my parents. I had been staying with my grandmother for the summer while my parents were out of the country, but I hadn’t made any effort to get to know the local kids.
For what? Come fall, my parents would be back and I’d be back in civilization otherwise known as the city of Dallas. Of course, come fall, my parents were dead, our apartment had been cleaned out, and I was living with my grandmother full time. I entered the local high school and who was the lucky soul chosen to show me around? You got it. Chris Grover, the quarterback of the football team and local golden boy. Well, from that day forward, Chris and I were together until the day we went to college. We ended up at separate colleges due to Chris getting a football scholarship at one school while I went to another that had a strong Information Technology program. I love my computers. “Would you like to see her?” Janice asked, jarring me out of my memories.