Dear Brenden,
This'll be a short letter, since I'm in tears writing it...your last letter tore me apart.
I know I'm making it hard. And it's not that I'm doing that completely on purpose, but at the same time, I'm not upset that I'm doing it. Don't you think this is hard for me too? You don't think that it was
hard when I got a text from Emily saying that she was worried about you and didn't know what to do, you think it was
easy sitting there and waiting by my phone for hours while your best friend talked me through what happened? I gained such an insane amount of respect for her while simultaneously losing all respect I once had for you. Brenden, you broke my trust. You promised me that being in college wouldn't affect you, and yet it did.
You lied, that was the biggest thing. You told me that the only thing that was happening at all those dorm parties was a bit of drinking and a lot of laughing. You didn't mention the girls flirting with you that you didn't turn away, you didn't mention how you left Emily and Andrew at one of the parties to go and hang out with a group of senior girls. You didn't mention how you "didn't technically cheat", but still flirted with and gave little pecks on the lips to those girls. You didn't mention how you changed my name in your phone to plain old "Aria Hall" without the heart after your first week so that girls didn't know you were taken. And in your head, I guess you weren't
really taken, huh? You just had a girlfriend who was pining away for you on the East Coast, waiting with baited breath for that text message telling her that you loved her and would always love her.
Emily said she felt terrible for taking so long to tell me, but she had to wait until she was sure. She told me everything, Brenden--and don't take that as her not being a good friend. She's a great friend to you because she cares about you and about you doing the right thing. And she realized that no girl deserves to be sitting in her room thinking that her boyfriend is the most wonderful person on the planet when he's really the scum on the bottom of her shoe.
For all your talk of "not technically cheating", you're right--what you did was worse. Generally, cheaters know that what they're doing is wrong, and they have some kind of remorse. But you defended your actions till the last second, and you thought that everything you did was perfectly fine.
So I'm calling bull on all your talk of remaining "loyal" for so long. You can't flip a switch and suddenly be loyal to me. It has to be a constant thing.
And another thing? The worst thing, actually. The worst part is that I'm still totally, madly, deeply in love with you.
Love,
Aria
