Pain, anger, and resentment painted in Susie's hazel irises when our gazes met. Her eyes were turning bloodshot while her nose and cheeks had turned into a color of furry. She stopped for a brief second before resuming storming out of the door.

"Of course you would be here," she said. "He's all yours now." With that, she strode past me and headed to the driveway.

"Who are you talking–" Dean stopped at the kitchen door. The color drained from his face once he saw me. "Jen...how long did you..."

Still trying to recover from the shock myself, I nodded weakly at his unfinished question. "Longer than I should've."

Panic flashed across his face as he leaned into the door frame, rubbing his face in frustration. "Fuck."

I didn't know how to respond to him. My brain couldn't make sense of what I just heard but at the same time, questions began to bounce in my head. Did he tell the truth? How long has it been going on? Why did he hide it from me? Or is it just his attempt to end his argument with Susie?

Susie.

"I have a lot of questions, though, but first, I do need to talk to Susie." Before Dean could react, I added, "alone." I turned on my heels and hurried to the front yard.

Susie was standing next to her driver's door when I caught up. Leaning forward, her elbows were on the car roof while both her hands were covering her face, her shoulders shaking lightly.

Not wanting to disturb her, I stood on my spot and waited until she was done crying. Witnessing Susie break down pulled on my heartstring because I'd never seen her this vulnerable. Even when she broke up with Dean during our first year in university, she still held her head high.

When her faint sob started to die down, she wiped off her tears using her shirt sleeves. She turned her head sideways while her hand dug into her leather bag, probably looking for her car key. It was when she noticed my presence.

"What do you want, Jenny?" she croaked. She managed to pull out her keys but she rummaged through her bag once more. "Goddammit!" she muttered under her breath.

I fished my travel-pack tissues from my jeans pocket and extended them to her. "Here."

Susie was hesitant at first but she took it eventually. "Thanks." She pulled a few layers out and blew her nose.

"Are you okay?" I asked carefully.

Susie threw her head backward and took a deep breath. "Are you seriously asking me that? But the answer to that is no, I'm not okay. But I will be soon. That jerk doesn't deserve any more tears from me."

"I'm sorry, Susie."

"What for? It's good that I finally got the answer that I'd been looking for. Now I can move on," she replied, glancing in my direction. "So, why are you here?"

After Dean, I was probably the last person she wanted to deal with right now. Yet here I was, worrying about her for some reason. "I just wanted to check on you," I replied, earning a frown from her. "I mean, I know that things between us have been a bit rough lately, but I believe we're still friends...sort of. Also, maybe we can clear the misunderstanding between us."

"What misunderstanding? If anything, everything is crystal clear now. Dean and I are done. He chose you. You win."

"Nobody is winning because this is not a competition, Susie."

"Well, nothing is stopping you now," she sneered. "You heard it yourself, he loves you. Finally, your forever crush is returning your feelings. Yay. A fairy tale is in the air. Let's just hope it's the happily-ever-after one this time."

I closed my eyes, not sure how to handle this. Susie was hurt now, tremendously, and no matter what I was going to say, it would come off bitter for her.

"Dean was my crush when I was ten. Fine, I love him. I always do because I grew up loving him but I'm not pursuing a relationship with him."

Susie raised her eyebrows as she leaned back into her car door, a cynical smile tugging on the corners of her lips. "Are you saying you don't want to be with him?" She snorted. "Yeah right."

"No, I don't." I breathed in as much air as possible, trying to keep my patience in check. "I'm seeing someone now."

"Then it's time to break up with...whoever the unlucky guy is. Your big daddy is ready for you."

"Too bad, I love that unlucky guy. The kind of love you had for Dean, I guess. The kind where you're ready to give up a lot of things in your life just to be with him."

My reply shut her up. The bitterness gradually left her gaze, replaced by amusement as she raised her eyebrows. "Well, shit for Dean then." She chuckled almost ominously. "Karma is bitch, huh?"

Slowly, I took a few steps closer and leaned on her car hood. I wasn't sure if she wanted to talk more, but she didn't seem to mind my gesture. We stood side by side at a noticeable distance, but the tension gradually left us.

"I honestly wish things worked differently for you and Dean," I said.

"Well, I don't. This is bound to end. It was all messy from the beginning anyway. I just wish I listened to myself from the very start." She let out a loud sigh as she kicked the gravel around her feet. "I wasted five years of my life on someone who doesn't give a fuck about me. How sad is that?"

"You two were very much in love in the beginning. He did care about you, and I believe he still does." I ignored her when she scoffed at my words. "Anyway, this is the risk of being in a relationship, isn't it? People fall in and out of love. And when it happens, we never know if we're going to be the one who leaves or the one who is left behind. But we can't say that we wasted our time even when our relationship hits the road end. We learn from failure and it changes us for the better."

Susie's lips curled into a reluctant smile, almost cynical. "I almost forgot that you're always this positive person."

I smiled back at her, brushing aside her salty remark. "Another positive thing about you being with Dean is we met and became friends."

Susie's expression went rigid. "I kept you around because you were useful to me, Jenny, not because I wanted to be your friend," she replied flatly but it was enough to blow a punch in my face. It stung. She then turned her head to me, and to my surprise, her gaze turned slightly softer. "But you were so oblivious and sweet. Enjoying the friendship with you was never my intention."

I blinked. "I didn't know that."

Susie shook her head, chuckling. "Lea's right. You're so dense sometimes. This must be one of the reasons Dean has been so overprotective of you. There were times that I tried to find any signs of insincerity in your eyes, and of course, there were none. And I hated it that my feelings for you weren't mutual."

I gulped. This conversation took a turn in the direction I wasn't prepared for. Was Susie telling me the truth or was this just a part of her bitterness in trying to get back at me?

"Do you hate me now?" The question slipped through my lips before I could stop it.

Susie shook her head again. "No. God knows I wanted to, but no matter how hard I tried, you've stubbornly grown in me, Jenny."

I forced a smile. "I'm glad. I liked you from the beginning, though. You're confident, smart, and fierce. You're the only Dean's girl who treated me nicely. Well, at least that's what I believed back then. I was just so tired of those girls who constantly accused me of stealing Dean from them."

"Oh, I was nothing different, trust me. I was just better at covering it up," she laughed bitterly. "That made the two of us, huh? Caught up in this weird situation Dean created. I should've been myself from the start; we shouldn't have made friends. A brief and honest relationship is better than a long but deceitful one."

"True that." I nodded while staring down at my feet.

The silence enveloped us as we rooted to our spots, drowning in our thoughts. Surprisingly, Susie's blunt confession didn't hurt me as I thought it would. On the contrary, I admired her bravery in telling me what she truly felt and thought of me.

"So, the guy you're seeing, does he treat you well?" Susie inquired, her fingers fiddling with her car key ring.

"Yeah, he's good to me."

"Cool."

Another silence crept in, and I knew that that was it. Our friendship had hit the road end. I felt a soft tug in my chest when I thought of all those happy moments we shared. We used to spend hours talking and joking about boys and their stupidity, or went out shopping, drinking, and doing girls' stuff together. Apparently, they weren't real even though I still hoped that some parts were.

And now we were back to before it began: no friendship, no hatred, no debt. We were just two people who happened to know each other.

"I gotta go now." Susie propped herself up, followed by the sound of her car beeping.

"Okay." I propped myself up and took a few steps away from her red Hyundai. "Thanks for the talk by the way. And I wish you a good life, Susie."

Susie nodded as she opened her driver's door. "Likewise. I hope the best for you too, Jenny. Goodbye."