Free Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret by Vicki Grant

pictured myself jumping offthe big bronze boulders, my legs and arms spinning, the shock of the freezing water.
    Then I pictured Carly stretched out on the rock in her pink Billabong bikini. I remembered those boobs she was so proud of. Nick splashed her with his wet hair and everything jiggled. Oh, Nick! Look what you’ve done!
    How could I have been so stunned?
    I turned like a mule and headed down First Avenue. It was cooler here with all the trees, and quieter off the main road too.
    Off the main road .
    How appropriate. The perfect metaphor for my life. Everyone else was parading down Main Street and here I was scuttling around in the back alleys in my cheesy little cleaner’s outfit. It dawned on me that I always used to be in the parade. Now I was just a spectator.
    I kept walking.
    No, I’m not even a spectator . I wondered if there was a word for the people who don’t even bother coming out to watch. I tried to think of one. The distraction was oddly comforting.
    I heard someone gasp. It shocked me back to reality. I looked across the street to the park and saw a guy, doubled over, his hands on his knees, heaving.
    Nick .
    It was as if I’d been sucked backward out of a gash in the side of an airplane. I had no sense of having moved at all but suddenly I was behind a tree, eyes wide open, mouth wide open, everything pounding.
    That’s Nick .
    I tried to stick a strand of hair back into my braid but I was shaking too much. What if he saw me? Had he seen me? I looked at my hands with the dirty nails and the dry patches and the bleeding cuticles.
    I could just picture him staring at me in horror. Or pretending he didn’t see me. Or saying, Oh, hey, Betsy, how’s it going? as if I was someone he sort of knew from someplace else. He’d smile in a vague way and keep doing whatever it was he’d been doing. (That’s how he handled the old lady who lived next door to him. He somehow managed to be nice to her without ever actually having to talk to her.)
    I put my hand on my chest to keep my heart from bursting through. I felt like someone in a song. Dying, screaming, begging, aching — all those words made sense now. Why couldn’t he see what he’d done to me?
    Maybe—and it was almost more frightening to think this than anything else—maybe that was it. Maybe he just needed to see what he’d done to me.
    Nick wasn’t a bad person. I remembered when Hank got cut from his junior high soccer team. Nick took himout for lunch, he coached him, he built up his confidence, and Hank made the team the next year. Nick had a heart.
    Maybe if he just saw me. He’d realize he’d made a mistake. He’d look at me and his eyes would go all soft again and he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He’d put his arms around me and lean his face against mine and tell me how sorry he was.
    It wasn’t that crazy. We’d had our little spats before and we’d made up. We could do it again. We could get over this.
    I heard him cough in a breathless sort of way. It almost sounded like he was crying.
    I realized for the first time that this might have been hard on him too. Yes, he’d cheated on me and, yes, it was his fault—but everyone makes mistakes. I remembered overhearing Mom say how much Karen regretted leaving her husband. Karen knew she’d been stupid. She was willing to do anything to fix it but Craig wouldn’t take her back. She cried about it for months.
    Nick must have been ashamed of what he did. I thought of all those texts from him that I wouldn’t look at. He could have been apologizing, begging me to forgive him. I should have read them. I should have talked to him when he came over. Dad shouldn’t have sent him away.
    Maybe I should just say hello. What could it hurt? Sooner or later, I was going to run into him anyway andthen we’d have to talk. We were together for two and a half years. He must miss me. A