Marilyn Brant - According to Jane

• I wanted to extract some serious revenge in return for the emotional damages I’d suffered that last week of senior year in high school.

• I wanted him to endure, if only for one day, a fraction as much hurt as I’d felt.

• I wanted to make his life such a living hell that night that he’d wake up in the morning clutching his ribs, feeling agonizing stabs of pain where his heart should’ve been.

• I wanted his whole body to ache from the emotional torment. Just like mine had.

• I was a really nice person, huh?

• I shrugged to myself. Having once come so close to loving Sam, no degree of hatred seemed too extreme or even remotely unjustified.

However, before I could work out my best strategy for dismembering his life piece by piece, I decided I needed another gulp of my drink. When I lowered the glass from my lips, Camryn was standing right in front of me.

“Look,” she said, her voice chilly, “Sam’s in the bathroom. I’ve only got a minute, so I’ll say this fast. He’s taken.” She paused, leveling those green eyes at me with utter gravity. “I saw the looks that passed between you two. I don’t know your history with him but, whatever it was, it’s over now and he’s with me.”

A granule of salt must’ve caught in my throat because I had to cough a few times before I could laugh. “Camryn,” I said between cough-laugh spasms, “I am so not after him. He’s all yours, and I sincerely wish you the best of luck because, honey, you’re gonna need it.” I took another sip.

Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you say that?”

A glimmer of a strategy started to coagulate at the fringes of my mind. A devious one, true, but both drinking to excess and being around Sam had a way of bringing out the worst in me.

Again, I told Jane to calm down. (She wasn’t letting up on the ranting.) I assured her I was doing all right and had the situation under control. Really.

Then I smiled sweetly at Camryn. “You each got into med school, right?”

“Right,” Camryn said.

“The same med school?”

“No.”

“The same city, at least?”

She shook her head and the gorgeous dark red tresses swayed like weeping willows. “But he’ll be in New York, and I’ll be in Philadelphia. They’re not that far apart. We may be busy, but we’ll see each other on some weekends and — ”

“When do you leave?”

She pressed her lips together and her grip on her daiquiri tightened. “The end of the month. Why?”

“He’ll break things off before then,” I told her, my voice projecting a certainty I didn’t feel in truth, but I made sure I sounded believable.

She tried to shrug it off. “Just because you couldn’t hold on to him doesn’t mean I — ”

“Has he told you he loves you?”

“I don’t have to answer that,” she shot back.

“Fine, don’t answer. Just think. Has he made you any promises? Or, when you bring up the future, does he deflect your questions?” I stopped for a long swallow of margarita.

Camryn remained silent, a cloud of uncertainty darkening her eyes.

I pressed on. “How about this — does he hide his feelings behind a façade of arrogance and cleverness, so you never really know what he’s thinking? Does he enjoy the sex, but always keep a barrier between you? I’m talking emotional, not prophylactic,” I clarified, although Camryn was, I gathered, a smart enough cookie to figure it out.

The slight pallor of her complexion let me know I’d hit a nerve. This should’ve made me feel guilty. But, guess what? It didn’t.

“You seem like a very intelligent person,” I told her with measured condescension, “but even clever girls make mistakes in judgment sometimes. No one would blame you if you got taken in by him. Temporarily. Although, knowing the truth, one has to wonder why you’d put up with it for — ”

“What the hell is this?” a furious male voice demanded.

Sam.

Camryn and I swiveled toward him. “Back so soon?” I said.

Sam’s eyes sparked with blue fire. Guess he’d overheard some of our conversation. Oops.

He speared me with a glare, then turned to his girlfriend. “Seems Ellie has become a bitter, spiteful person who never forgets the stupid things that happened in the past, and she can’t see beyond her own issues and biases. Oh, and — ” he said and glowered at me again, “she has a history of lusting after loser guys like Jason Bertignoli, for God’s sake, so her judgment is questionable.”

Every syllable leaving his mouth jabbed me like a stiletto to the heart. He thought our night together was a “stupid thing.” God damn him. But, yeah, he was right about my judgment being bad. After all, I’d practically fallen in love with him.

He returned his gaze to Camryn. “So, regardless of what she’s told you, just because she and I had no way of working things out four fucking years ago — ” He paused to frown at me. “It doesn’t mean it’ll be the same with us.” He reached for Camryn’s arm.

She snatched her arm away. “What went wrong?” she asked him.

“What?”

“‘Four fucking years ago,’ Sam. What went wrong? How did it end?”

“Yeah, Sam,” I chimed in. “Tell her. Please. And, while you’re at it, I’d appreciate an illuminated recap because I was kind of deprived of your high-level reasoning back then.” I drained my drink, set the glass on the counter and crossed my arms to keep them from trembling. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Sam looked between us, an expression of incredulousness on his handsome face. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “I am not doing this. Here. Now. With either of you.”

“So, she wasn’t lying then,” Camryn said, her voice turning several degrees colder. “You really did something to warrant her anger and total bitchiness.”

Total bitchiness? “Hey,” I said. “I’m not being — ”

She pointed a well-manicured fingernail at me. “You shut up. You’ve caused enough trouble.”

Then she scowled at Sam. “Were you planning to break up with me this month? Is that why, no matter how many times I asked you about Labor Day plans or whose house we’d meet at for Thanksgiving, you kept putting me off? Is that why you couldn’t commit to going to my brother’s wedding in October? Why you kept saying, ‘We’ll see, Camryn,’ every time I brought it up?”

Sam stared at her. So did I.

“Answer me, dammit!” she shrieked.

He exhaled long and hard. “Camryn, please. Let’s go somewhere else and discuss this rationally. I don’t want — ”

“No! I want to know now. I don’t want you trying to weasel out of it again.”

Sam shrugged, but his shoulders looked so stiff I thought they’d crack from the motion.

“Okay, fine,” he told her. “The thing is, I don’t know about the wedding. I don’t have a clue what our schedules are going to look like then. We’ll both probably be up to our ears in work. You know as well as I do that’s what med school is all about.”

“We’re talking about two national holidays, Sam, and one once-in-a-lifetime event. Three lousy days out of four months.” She twisted her fingers together into a warped steeple. “I told my family all about you. They wanted to meet you. I told them you might be someone they’d be glad they got to know. Someone I might have in my life…” A few tears dropped from her eyes, making the green even brighter. She swiped them away viciously and bit her lower lip.

I took a step away from the two of them. I didn’t belong in the middle of this and, I’ll admit, I was beginning to feel a few pinches of remorse for my — how did Camryn put it? Oh, yes. My anger and total bitchiness.