Chapter 2: Her warrior

She made it to the stairwell before her hands started shaking. She made it to the bus stop before the first tear actually fell.

By the time the bus pulled up she'd already called Maddy, phone jammed against her ear, trying to sound normal and failing completely.

"Hey, so, weird question," Tia said, "but do you have anywhere I can go that isn't my apartment."

"What happened." Maddy's voice went instantly flat and dangerous, the way it did when someone she loved was in trouble. "Who do I need to hurt."

"Tyler. And also Molly."

There was a beat of silence.

"Together?"

"Together."

"I'm going to kill them," Maddy said, with the calm, considered tone of someone actually running the logistics. "Where are they right now. I have a car and no alibi requirements."

"Maddy."

"I'm coming to get you. Don't argue, I'm already grabbing my keys, this is not a debate."

Tia laughed — a real one this time, wet and embarrassing, but real — and something in her chest loosened half an inch.

"I liked Molly," she said. "I actually really liked her."

"I never liked Molly," Maddy said. "I tolerated Molly because you liked Molly. I have hated that woman since the day she wore white to your birthday and called it 'ivory.' Consider that tolerance officially revoked."

Despite everything, that got a real laugh out of Tia too.

Maddy picked her up eleven minutes later in the beat-up Jeep she loved more than most people. She took one look at Tia's face through the windshield, got out, and just hugged her on the sidewalk without a single word — which, from Maddy, who had an opinion about literally everything, was somehow the most comforting thing she could have done.

They got in the car. Maddy didn't start the engine right away.

"Only you," she said, staring straight ahead through the windshield like she was addressing the steering wheel, "would spend two years thinking that girl was innocent."

"Maddy—"

"I knew since first year. She took your clothes out of your closet without asking, wore them to a party, and told everyone they were hers." Maddy shook her head. "I said something was off about her then and you told me I was being dramatic."

"That was one hoodie."

"It was never about the hoodie, Tia. It was about her testing how far she could push before you'd push back. And you never did. You never do." Maddy shook her head. "You look at people like Molly through rose-tinted glasses because you're good, so you assume everyone else is too."

Tia flinched. "Ouch. Could you be any more brutal right now?"

"What, now I can't say the truth?" Maddy finally turned to look at her, and there was no smugness in it, just something tired and a little guilty. "I tolerated her for years because of you. If it hadn't been for you I'd have told her exactly what I thought of her a long time ago."

"I knew she'd hurt you eventually," Maddy added. "I just didn't know how far she'd take it."

"Do you blame me?"

"For what?"

"For not alerting you," Maddy said. "For not being honest with you about her. I thought I could just — shield you from it instead."

Tia sat with that for a second, longer than she meant to. The parking lot lights blurred a little through the windshield.

"Honestly?" she said finally. "No. I don't blame you. I was there just as much as you were."

"And now that I actually think back on it — with fresh eyes, I guess — I can see all of it. How she'd 'joke' about Tyler being too good for me. How she always knew exactly where he'd be." Tia shook her head slowly.

"I can't put my blindness on you, Maddy. You tried to warn me as much as you could without me shutting you out completely. I just never let myself see how deep it went. This one's on me."

"Tia—"

"And honestly," Tia added, quieter, "a small part of me is grateful she took him. A scumbag like that doesn't deserve me. I just wish it hadn't taken this to figure that out."

Maddy raised an eyebrow. "So what, we're thanking her now?"

"No." Tia almost smiled, for the first time since she'd opened that door. "But she opened my eyes, even if that wasn't her intention. I'm going to remember this. All of it."

"Good," Maddy said, and finally turned the key. "Because I'm still going to hate her regardless of how enlightened you're feeling."

"Okay," Maddy said eventually. "Tell me everything anyway. And then we're getting food, and you're staying at mine tonight, and tomorrow you're skipping your morning class and I don't want to hear about it."

"I have a lecture at nine."

"Tia."

"...Okay."

They sat in the Jeep in the parking lot for a long time while Tia told her all of it — the soup, the laugh through the door, the you never let me touch you, all of it.

Maddy's jaw got tighter with every sentence, but she didn't interrupt once. She just listened, the way she always had, since freshman year, since long before Molly had ever been anything more than someone Tia dragged along because she felt bad leaving her out.

"He said that," Maddy said finally, quiet and furious, "like it's a reasonable thing to say to someone who trusted him."

"He probably thinks it is."

"He can think whatever he wants," Maddy said. "He can think he's the reincarnation of a Roman emperor for all I care. He does not get to make you feel like anything is wrong with you for not sleeping with someone before you were ready."

"That's not a flaw, Tia. That's just — that's you. And any guy who can't handle that isn't losing out on sex. He's losing out on you, and he is too stupid to know the difference."

Tia didn't say anything. She just leaned her head against the window and let herself cry properly for the first time since she'd opened that door.

Maddy drove one-handed the whole way, the other hand wrapped tight around hers.

She didn't go to her nine a.m. lecture. She didn't go to any of her lectures that week.

She told her academic advisor she had the flu, which wasn't technically a lie — she did feel sick, just not in a way any doctor could treat.

For three days she camped out in Maddy's guest room in the same gray sweatshirt, hair in the same messy bun, watching reality TV with the volume too loud so she wouldn't have to think.

On the third night, Maddy stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and a look on her face like she'd finally reached the end of something.

"Okay. That's it." She flicked the lamp on. "I have officially had enough of your moping in my room. I cannot do this anymore."

"Maddy."

"Don't Maddy me like I'm supposed to just nod along and understand your pain." Maddy came and sat on the edge of the bed, and her voice softened half a degree, though her eyes stayed sharp. "I get it. You got cheated on. You're hurt. You're allowed to be in pain."

"But I need to ask you something, and I need you to actually answer it instead of sighing at me."

Tia pulled the blanket a little higher. "What?"

"What are you going to do about it?"

"About what? They're already together, Maddy. What is there to do?"

"Are you seriously going to just let those two walk away from this scot-free?" Maddy leaned forward. "After everything they did to you? You're just going to lie here in my guest room and let them get away with it?"

"What can I even do? I'm not going to beg him to come back, if that's what you're—"

"God, no. Not that." Maddy waved a hand like the idea personally offended her. "I mean have you actually forgotten how many times that woman 'borrowed' money off you and never paid it back? The Chanel bag she 'just needed for one event' that you never saw again?"

"You've been letting people walk all over you for years, Tia, and I have sat there and watched it happen because it wasn't my place. It is now."

Tia sat up slowly. Something in her chest, which had spent three days feeling like wet sand, shifted half an inch. "You mean... revenge?"

"Now you're talking." Maddy's whole face lit up, delighted, dangerous. "Yes. Revenge. Cold-blooded, thoroughly documented revenge."

Tia thought about it — really thought about it, about two years of quietly absorbing Molly's small cruelties and calling them friendship, about Tyler standing there pulling his jeans on like modesty was the part that needed fixing.

"What's your plan?" she asked.

Maddy's grin could have powered a small city.

"Oh," she said, "I already have three."