I Still Love You Read Online Free Page A

genius,” Jason said, as we were surrounded.
    This is why I hadn’t wanted to come. All the girls he’d been at school with still fancied him, and when I was feeling vulnerable, I didn’t like him being around them. To half of them I was still the out of town girl that Jason had weirdly attached himself too in the scary big city. I think they thought I was a toy he was going to get bored of.
    “Rach,” Lindy gripped my arm and pulled me aside. “You look awesome!”
    “Thank you.”
    “Come into the kitchen and I’ll get you a drink, and you can tell me all about trick or treating.” She knew I wasn’t comfortable about being here; she also knew I didn’t get on with their old school friends all that well. Some of them I did, but a lot of them I didn’t, because they all had years of friendship on me, and they used it like a weapon, talking about the past.
    “What do you want to drink, are you sticking to soft drinks?” Lindy looked over her shoulder.
    “I should do, but can I just have a little dash of vodka in a massive glass of OJ.”
    “Sure.” Lindy started making it.
    “How are you?” I leaned on the counter watching her, it was still only a few months ago she’d lost her mom to cancer. It was crazy really, she had hated me when Jason and I had got together, but as she’d been engaged to him she’d had a pretty good reason to hate me, and now she was the closest girlfriend I had.
    My meltdown had pushed Jason away and instead made his ex my friend. But seeing as she was now with Jason’s best friend, there would have had to have been some relationship between us otherwise life would have been painfully awkward for Jason, so this was probably really convenient for him. But it had come out of the fact that both of us were suffering. She’d been supporting her mom, and working out where Billy fit in, and I knew more about hardship than all the people in this house put together, and so Lindy and I had started talking.
    “I’m fine.” Lindy answered as she put my OJ down. It would just look like orange juice if Jason saw it.
    She sipped from the glass she’d poured for herself.
    “Not really, though,” I said to her smiling.
    “I miss Mom,” she whispered. Looking at the door like she expected Billy to walk in. “Don’t tell Billy, I’m trying to be happy for one night. He needs to have fun. But I feel guilty for having fun, I feel like it’s too early. I feel–”
    I reached over and gripped her hand. “It is okay to feel down. You have a good reason to.” I didn’t. “You thinking of your mom is a good thing. Keep her with you. She was precious. Keep every memory safe. Did she take you trick or treating?”
    “Oh yeah.” She laughed, “She was the queen of Halloween make-up. I used to get a ton of sweets. We were eating them for months. But you’d be good competition for her. You and Jason look amazing. God you haven’t even told me yet how you got on; what did Saint have on?”
    I smiled. “A pumpkin suit. But you won’t believe this, Saint laughed at the trick. He really giggled, it sounded amazing. I didn’t want to leave him but Jason wanted to come out.”
    It was Lindy’s turn to grip my hand. “Are you okay?”
    I straightened and shook my head, then stupidly I started crying. She came around the counter and hugged me as the tears ran down my face ruining my make-up.
    “What is it?”
    I pulled away and reached to rip off a bit of kitchen roll, and blew my nose. “I should be really happy, and I can’t be. You have a good reason to be unhappy, I don’t, and yet I can’t pull myself out of it.”
    “You’re sick. You can’t help it.”
    “But Jason is getting bored of it.”
    “He isn’t.”
    I looked her in the eyes. “He is, Lindy, he isn’t the same… ”
    Maybe she wasn’t the best person to say that to, but she was the only girlfriend I had, and anyway, she knew her and Jason hadn’t been right—because she and Billy were right—
and Jason and