Falling for my Ex-Fiancee’s Best friend

Demelza checked into a hotel after she had left the house.

She knew that Nathan probably could follow her if he wanted to, but she hoped that he would not. She couldn’t deal with anybody right now, especially him.

She ordered room service in the hotel, but could not bring herself to eat even though she had hardly eaten anything all through the day. The loss of her father was still very much painful to her. The scars were still fresh in her memory.

Demelza took out her phone and searched for a video. She found what she was looking for and hit play. The video was one of her and her father. In the video, he was still alive and smiling, and he looked like there was nothing in the world that would ever change that fact. But it had changed anyway.

He was dead and there was nothing else to it. Demelza clicked the phone to lock and threw it onto the bed. She could not start revisiting their happy memories. He had only been interred a few hours ago. It was much too early to start dredging up memories of him.

She remembered how she had left the house. Her mind played back to the last memory she had of her father, when they were all still living in the same house, under the same roof.

“Do you really have to go, Demelza?” her father asked.

“You know I have to. Nathan has asked me to move in with him. I’m not useful to either of you here. I need to work, and I need to earn enough money to take care of you-”

“We don’t have a lot of money, that’s true.” Her father replied. “But look what we have? It’s more than enough.”

“Dad, it’s not. We’re barely getting by.”

“So? We’ve got each other. We’re happy, aren’t we? That has to count for something.”

Demelza shook her head in a half-laugh and turned to her father as if she was explaining something to a child. “Happiness won’t feed us, dad. We’re alright now, but what happens if there’s an emergency, or God forbid, the prices of food skyrocket? Or there’s an economic collapse?”Published by Nôv'elD/rama.Org.

Her father huffed and turned away. “You’ve been reading too many books, girl.”

She smiled at him. “I know. But these are all possibilities. There’s still truth in what I’m saying. You know there is.”

Her father seemed to mull the thought over in his mind for a while, then he added thoughtfully. “But even with work, you should still be able to return home to us. Come back. Work is fine, but do you have to move in with Nathan? You know we need you. We need our Mel baby.”

“I know, dad.” Demelza laughed. In the past, she had told them that she was absolutely in love with Nathan and that she felt like nothing could come between them at all. She wanted there to be nothing between them.

Nathan loved her. Nathan loves her, and he was being so kind. It would be an insult for her to down his offer. And his offer was good. They were seeing each other, so it was not some inappropriate office romance, everything was being done according to the books. All Nathan wanted was for them to spend more time together, and that was what she wanted too.

In the past, she told her father all these things, and she said that she would come down to the house occasionally, to check in on them and spend time with them because they were her family, after all.

Now, in the present, Demelza knew that she lied. She could not tell her father the same things that she had told him back then. She could not tell him that she was doubting her feelings for Nathan. She could not tell her father that she was scared and that she regretted not spending more time with him at home. She could not tell him that she wished she could turn back the hands of the clock if it meant that she would be able to spend another second with him.

She could not even muster the anger she had felt before at her mother anymore. Her mother had known that her father had been drinking in secret. She knew, and she had aided him, led him slowly to his grave. But now, she thought that she couldn’t fault her mother. People do crazy things in love.

She had not cared much for how they felt back then. They were old. They might have understood what it meant to be in love once, some long time ago, but they certainly didn’t understand it right now. What a lie! She thought bitterly.

Demelza curled in on herself on the bed and wished that dawn would never come. She focused on the memories that she had of her father-the only things that she now held of him, and tried to picture only her happy memories with him, but try as she did, when she slept, only nightmares filled her head. Dreams of her father’s corpse putting a bottle of beer to its lips and leering obscenely… her father in his casket with pennies pouring out of his mouth…

She woke up feeling worse than the previous day. She packed her things and headed back to Nathan’s house, but even while she was there, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed. Something was off.

When Nathan welcomed her back with a hug and a kiss, she felt nothing. Only a dead numb. She was stiff in his arms and shook herself out of his grasp. Nathan observed the new development, but said nothing about it. He only hoped that she would soon snap out of it. He was no newcomer to the game of healing. He wanted her to heal, but he needed to give her time too.

He decided not to intrude too much in her space, but he still made sure that she understood that he was as much in her life as she was in his space. Nathan tried to put her in better moods by doing silly things, but Demelza was either indifferent or enraged whenever he tried to dance or mimic someone or purposely make a mistake with the cooking.

She could no longer stand the sight of him, and being in the same room with Nathan was too much for her to handle. She needed to come to terms with the fact that her father was dead, but every single time that she tried to let go of everything and just try to breathe, she was reminded of the fact that she had left her father and her family so she could pursue love with Nathan. She had left everything to be with Nathan. And now she was regretting it.

She needed there to be a reason why her father was not alive. If she was not enough to take the blame for leaving, then Nathan would have to do it. In her mind, she made Nathan the main reason that her father died because, she reasoned, if Nathan had not invited her into his home and his life, she still would have been with her father and perhaps he would still be alive.

She saw Nathan struggling to cheer her up, and it pierced her heart. She did love him, but right now, she was grieving and didn’t know what to feel.

Everything was suffocating. She had stopped sleeping in the same room with Nathan. She slept on the couch in the living room now, always alert in case Nathan tried to lead her to the bed. Paranoia filled her head and dreams. She was slowly dying.

So she did the only thing that she could think of at that time.

She took out her phone out of her bag and dialed the number. Even this person too, she had abandoned her quest to love and be with Nathan.

You’ve fucked up a lot of things, Demelza. She chided herself mentally.

The phone rang for what seemed like forever. Then the call connected.

“Hello?” a soft feminine voice said uncertainty on the other end of the line.

Demelza gulped.

“Katherine… it’s me.” She heard the silence on the other end and the slow draw of breath. “I need a favor.”