The Trouble With Before by Portia Moore

her calls is because I was banging somebody, and I’d hate for her to scare the hell out of one of my Grams’s little bingo buddies unnecessarily.
    “I bet it’s one of the bimbos you’ve been having wild orgies with,” Hillary snaps as she hurries to the door.
    “Trust me, if I was having wild orgies, you definitely would have been invited,” I joke.
    “I don’t share, Aidan. I keep telling you this, and if you’ve been sharing what’s mine, I’m going to cut your dick off and flush it down the toilet,” she spits before swinging the door open.
    Lisa! Her eyes widen in shock as she looks at Hillary standing in front of me, who most likely looks pissed off and ready to pounce at any second.
    “So you’re the whore Aidan’s been fucking,” Hillary spits.
    “What are you doing here, Lisa?” I grab Hillary by the elbow before she pounces and goes to jail for kicking a pregnant girl’s ass.
    “I’m sure she wants some of your dick!” Hillary screeches. Her face is red when she whips toward me and attempts to grab my balls. Thank God I have good reflexes.
    “Hey! This is Lisa Lisa !” I tell her tightly, holding both her arms against her body.
    Hillary’s eyes are wide and her face balled up with anger until the realization hits her. She looks back at Lisa, who is soaked, her hair sticking to her body. She looks as though she’s had a bucket of water dumped on her, and she’s shivering
    “ That Lisa.” Hillary’s body relaxes enough that I let her go.
    “Can I come in?” Lisa asks quietly.
    I nod, and she reluctantly makes her way across my threshold. I close the door behind her.
    “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything. I just . . .” Her voice is shaky and low.
    Hillary glances at me.
    “You got caught in the rain?” I ask, and she nods.
    “I’ll go get you a towel,” Hillary says before disappearing.
    I have a thousand questions I want to ask her—what is she doing here, why does it look like she just went for a swim—but I can’t because she’s crying.
    “I didn’t mean to interrupt anything . . . I just . . . I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” Her voice is trembling and weaker than I’ve ever heard it before.
    Hillary comes back with a towel, a T-shirt, and pair of shorts. “You should change into this so you don’t get pneumonia,” she says, offering Lisa the clothes.
    “Thank you,” Lisa replies before going off to the bathroom.
    “Wow. So she’s back?” Hillary asks in a whisper.
    I grip the back of my head, eyeing the doorway. “I-I guess so.”
    Hillary lets out a sigh matching mine. She doesn’t know a lot about Lisa from me, but she knows more than enough from Chris and Lauren. Luckily, Hillary’s not the type to judge, and she doesn’t know that Lisa is pregnant. I haven’t told anyone that. I’ve been trying not to think about my former best friend’s screwed up life since I got back home.
    The thing is, I’m not the friend you call when you want to bitch and whine about how much your life sucks and need someone to tell you everything’s going to be okay. I’m the friend you call when you want to get shit done. I’m used to fixing things—whether it’s beating someone’s ass or driving across the country, I’m down—but in Lisa’s situation, or at least the state of mind she was in the last time I talked to her, I can’t deal with her. She’s in a situation she shouldn’t even be in, and it seems like her mind is in the same selfish place it was the last time she had this problem, and that pisses the fuck out of me.
    “What is she doing here? When’s the last time you talked to her?” she asks.
    “Last week. I went to see her in California. I don’t know what she’s doing here though.”
    “I thought you had washed your hands of all of it,” she says, shrugging. Her eyes dart between mine and her feet.
    She’s usually cool with almost whatever I throw at her, and we’ve been in our share of odd situations, but I think she