Girlfriend's Best Friend
PROLOGUE
x x x
.
You know the
old saying ‘history has a way of repeating itself?’
There’s a reason people say that. H.itler was only in
power once, but that was the second World War.
Christopher Columbus discovered America once, but that was
after the Native Americans had built life there. But
what about building a reputation for yourself, doing your best
to get rid of it, and then getting it back again? Is that
history repeating itself so a lesson is learned? Or is that
careless behavior that could have been avoided?
Was cheating on Kelli Carson with Brooke Cooper bound to happen
after I did it to Jade Lawrence with Lacey Steele last year? Or
did I just mess everything up again because I thought it would
be funny, and because I put no actual thought into it?
Maybe it was both.
I’ll admit, I meant to cheat on Jade Lawrence with Lacey
Steele last year. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But
when I realized the actual pain I’d put both of them
through, I’d never felt worse about myself. I know that
sounds selfish, you know, thinking about my own pain when
I’d put those girls through hell and back. But when you
ruin someone else, you ruin yourself. You ruin your reputation,
your morals, everything you stand for—when you ruin
two people, you ruin yourself twice as bad.
I hated myself for what I’d done to Jade and Lacey, and
no matter what, I couldn’t forgive myself. My five best
friends—Carter Campbell, Mattie Clarke, Jace Wright,
Graham Parker, and Duke Anderson—stuck by me through all
of. Our group became known as the group of a.ssholes that girls
shouldn’t even think about if they were actually looking
for love. But if anything, that reputation made even more girls
want us, so was that really a problem?
When I started things with Kelli Carson, I was so unbelievably
happy that I’d found someone who I could truly love. But
that all changed when her best friend, Brooke Cooper, came into
play. She’d been in the picture all along—hell, it
was her picture, and everyone else was just painted
around her. But I never could have imagined everything that
would happen because of her, because of one simple mistake,
that dragged me back into my old ways that I was
desperate to redeem myself of.
And that leads me back to the question if the saying
‘history repeats itself’ is actually true. I knew
the consequences that came from the Jade Lawrence and Lacey
Steele situation that I pretended never happened. So why did I
do it again with Kelli Carson and Brooke Cooper? Maybe instead
of history repeating itself, a person is
repeating himself; his actions, his morals, his
reputation—one destructive, inevitable, unavoidable cycle
that he cannot break out of.
Pretending something never happened isn’t going to cause
history to not repeat itself. If anything, it leads you right
back to the same path you started on, making sure you relive
every moment again until you learn your lesson.
A lesson that Kelli Carson and Brooke Cooper would be
finding themselves to provide for me.