SHINE BRIGHT (Diamond Girls #4)

Chapter 4

4

Trihn woke up bleary-eyed at the c***k of dawn. She had slept horribly with a serious case of nightmares that she had been haunted with since she had found out about that bullshit with Preston a year and a half ago.

Trying to shake off the lingering feeling of unease, she dialed Neal’s number. Even though it was early, he was usually up long before she was, no matter how late he’d stayed out the previous night. When it went straight to voice mail, she frowned. He was probably just getting in a few extra hours of sleep or something. She figured she might as well help him with that.

She hopped into a quick shower. When she got out, she threw her wet hair up into a perfect ballet bun and then hurried into a pair of destroyed skinny jeans, a black tank, and her leather jacket—her favorite wardrobe staple.

She skipped out of the house hours before Bryna or Stacia would surface and drove her red hybrid to Neal’s house. Even almost two years after leaving New York, it was still strange to have to drive so much. She had gotten her license in the city only to prove that she actually could. Truth be told, it had taken her three times to get it, too. But with all the driving she had done in Vegas, she had gotten exponentially better.

Trihn pulled up in front of the house that Neal rented with a few of his art friends. When no one answered, she knocked on the door and tried the knob, but it was locked. She had a key, but her purse was stuffed with so much s**t that she knew it would take forever to find.

She pounded on the door again and then started digging around in her bag for the key. She found an extra pair of workout shorts, two pairs of socks, a mini sketchbook, a to-do-list journal, and half a dozen tubes of lipstick, but no key.

Just when she was about to give up on her quest and try Neal’s cell again, the door opened to reveal a mussed Neal.

“Trihn?” he croaked, as if he had just rolled out of bed. And he looked like it, too. His dark hair was a hot mess, his shorts and T-shirt were rumpled, and he had bags under his eyes.

“Hey. I tried to call you, but you must have been sleeping,” she said, mustering an enthusiastic smile.

“No, I wasn’t,” he said. He crossed his arms over his chest.

“Oh. Okay. Were you ignoring me?”

“I was going to call later but might as well get it over with now. I think we should break up.”

Trihn’s heart plummeted to her stomach. She gasped in disbelief. Her mouth hung open. There was ringing in her ears, and she could feel her pulse all the way through her fingers and toes.

“What?” she asked.

“This has been coming for a long time, Trihn. We’re not compatible. You’re a different person than who I thought I was dating. I’m over it.”

“We’ve been dating for a year and a half,” she sputtered. “How are we suddenly not compatible?”

“It’s not sudden. I’ve just been ignoring it for a long time. Last night was the end for me.”

“What happened last night?” she asked shakily.

How could this be happening? He couldn’t just leave. After all they had been through together, she didn’t want this to be over. She wanted to fight for this. She needed to fight for this. She had done everything right in this relationship. He couldn’t call it quits.

“Nothing in particular. I just didn’t miss you, and I didn’t miss you when I was home in San Francisco either.”

It was a knife to the heart.

Trihn stumbled back a step, her hand going to her mouth. He hadn’t missed her. She had missed him every day that she was stuck in New York without him. She had spent a lot of her time in her room or with her friends from home—Renée and Ian—but mostly she avoided her sister, Lydia.

She just didn’t understand. She felt like her body was being crushed. Everything ached and hurt.

“Is there someone else?” she managed to get out. She was surprised her voice was even functioning.

Neal looked down at the floor and then off into the distance, as if this were the last place he wanted to be right now.

He must have cheated on her. It was the only logical explanation.

Preston had cheated on her and left her to pick up the pieces of her heart off the floor and try to sew them back together. After that, she had been extremely careful about giving her heart out again. Neal had seemed like the perfect guy at the time. She had made sure he was for real about their relationship before introducing him to any of her friends. Things had been perfect from then on. They’d had their ups and downs, like any other relationship, but as a whole, she’d thought they had a good thing.

Now, her heart was shattering all over again, as if the last year and a half meant nothing at all to him.

“Tell me!” she yelled into his face. “Don’t just stare at the floor. Do you have someone with you right now?”

Trihn tried to force her way into the house, but Neal put his hand out, barring her from entering.

“Just give it up. It’s over.”

She raised her eyebrows and tried not to cry. She held on to the anger that welled up in her.

“I need an explanation. Do you have some w***e in your bed right now? Is all that frustration you’ve been taking out on me actually just bullshit guilt for cheating on me?” she asked.

“Just believe whatever the f**k you want to believe, Trihn,” Neal said, pushing her backward, out of the doorway. “It’s f*****g over, so it doesn’t even matter. I just don’t want to be with you.”

Neal slammed the door in her face, leaving her standing there in shock.

She banged on the door and shrieked, “It matters to me!”

When it was clear that Neal wasn’t going to answer the door or Trihn’s question, she screamed in frustration and turned away from the house. As she walked back to her car, her hands were shaking. She dropped the car keys twice before she got them the door unlocked.

Once she finally got inside, she sank into the driver’s side. Tears washed down her cheeks like rain. Hiccupping deep breaths racked her body.

She hadn’t cried like this in a long time. Sure, she and Neal had argued. Tears had been involved, but they had always worked it out. He wanted her to be just the artsy type, and she wanted to have fun and party with her girlfriends. No harm had come from it.

The only time she had ever thought about hooking up with someone else had been last night, and she had felt so guilty about it that she left the club entirely. Maybe Neal knew about that somehow. Maybe that was what this was about.

Maybe she wasn’t good enough for him.

“f**k!” She banged her hands against the steering wheel.

How can a guy make me feel this stupid?

She was all for feminist ideals—until this s**t happened to her. Then, she’d curl into a ball and let the man win all over again.

She hated thinking that she wasn’t good enough for anyone. She was strong and beautiful and smart. Maybe one day, she would even be a brilliant designer going somewhere—rather than a designer who had turned down NYU because of a guy, rather than a girl who had tucked tail and run instead of facing her issues, rather than a girlfriend who had let her boyfriend walk all over her instead of facing the facts.

The drive back to her apartment was seen through a veil of tears. She wasn’t even entirely sure how she’d made it there. It was a blur.

Did I stop at that stop sign?

She truly couldn’t remember. Autopilot had gotten her home in one piece, up the elevator, and back into her apartment.

She stripped out of her jacket and jeans and trudged down the hallway to Bryna’s room. She opened the door and peeked inside. Half the time, Bryna’s boyfriend, Eric, would stay the night, or she’d crash at his place. But since it had been a girls’ night last night, she was all alone.

Trihn sniffed and then crawled under Bryna’s silky sheets.

Bryna shifted in her sleep and then jumped up. “f**k, Trihn!” she cried. Her hand flew to her chest. “You scared the s**t out of me.”

“Neal broke up with me,” she whispered.

Bryna frowned and sighed. “Oh, Trihn, come here.” She wrapped her arms around Trihn and pulled her close. “What happened?”

Trihn wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “At least I didn’t waste my mascara on him,” she said to avoid the question.

“That’s good because that s**t is expensive.”

“Really f*****g expensive.”

Trihn burst into tears again. She rolled onto her side and cried into Bryna’s pillow.

Everything hurt, and her mind was moving a million miles a minute. She didn’t know if there was a way that she could have avoided this or fixed it. If I had stayed in with him last night, would it all have been okay? Had he been planning this all along? Every possible scenario ran through her mind, but she couldn’t find one situation where she could have made this right.

Bryna ran her fingers through Trihn’s long black-to-blonde hair and waited until her tears subsided before speaking, “Tell me what happened.”

“He said we weren’t compatible and that it was over. He said that he didn’t miss me when we weren’t together,” she groaned. Another sob escaped her. “Then, I asked him if there was someone else…if he had a girl with him right now, but he refused to answer me.”

“Bastard!” Bryna cried. “Do you think he was really cheating on you?”

Trihn looked up into Bryna’s blue eyes and felt like crying all over again. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Ugh! I’m sorry, Trihn.”

“He said that it didn’t matter whether I thought he was with someone else because he didn’t want to be with me. How could he say those things, Bri? We’d been together for so long. We were so good together.”

“Well, I think it matters whether or not he cheated,” Bryna said.

“I know. That’s what I tried to yell at him, but he slammed the door in my face.”

Bryna clenched her jaw. “You’re making it really hard for me not to call Eric and have him send half of the football team over to Neal’s house to beat the s**t out of him.”

Trihn’s laugh turned into a moan of despair. “Don’t do that. I still love him.”

“I won’t send them, but you know Eric has your back. The whole team would go to the ends of the earth for any of us.”

“I know.”

“You’ll get through this. You’re strong and beautiful and smart. I’m biased because you’re my best friend, but you’re not a cold, heartless b***h, like me. When you let people in, you give it all, a hundred and fifty percent. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you can do so much better than Neal.”

Trihn laid her head back and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m surprised that wasn’t the first thing you said to me. You hate Neal.”

“I don’t hate Neal. I hate the way he treated you, and I hate that he made you feel like less than the incredible person you are. You know the s**t I’ve gone through in my past,” Bryna said with a sigh. “Jude made me feel amazing, but bit by bit, he stripped my confidence from me and morphed me into something I wasn’t. I hadn’t even seen it until I got away from it. I think you’ll see that soon, too.”

“You think I changed because of Neal?” Trihn asked.

“I think Neal wanted you to change, and it’s hard to ignore that forever.”

Trihn just lay there. Bryna had good points, but all Trihn wanted was for Neal to take back everything that had just happened.

“I just want him back,” she whispered.

“I love you, Trihn, but I honestly don’t know why you want to be with him. He abandoned you last year at my party. You ran out of that party in tears, and that was nearly a year ago. He canceled plans to see you after you were apart last summer. He sabotaged Halloween and avoided you all last semester. Don’t even get me started on the emotional abuse of wanting you to only be an artist and have no other life outside of him.” Bryna sat up in bed and stared down at Trihn. “Everyone else saw this but you. You made excuse after excuse for him, but I didn’t think his behavior deserved to be excused. You’re better off.”

Trihn groaned. “I know. I know you’re right. I just wanted this to work out so bad.”

“You shouldn’t have to force it. Like this Damon guy,” Bryna said with a twinkle in her eye. “Maya told me he was hitting on you, and you were into him.”

“Ugh! She did not.”

“I have one word for you, Trihnity Hamilton,” Bryna said dramatically. She hopped out of bed, and in the tiny blue slip she had worn to sleep, she walked over to her closet.

“Do I even want to know?” Trihn called out to her.

A minute later, she returned with a slinky little black dress. Trihn had seen that dress on Bryna, who was a solid seven inches shorter than Trihn, and it barely grazed her mid thigh. On Trihn, she would be lucky if it covered her nonexistent ass.

“What is that for?” Trihn asked.

Bryna smirked, and Trihn knew what that meant—trouble.

“Rebound.”