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I have to get as far away from here, from him, as I can. I have to…find a new place to live, find a new job, oh God, I have to find a new life. One that doesn’t include Murphy. I can’t take the pain of watching him fall in love with someone. I can’t live here with him and pretend everything is fine when he’s making love to some other woman in the room right beside me.
I can’t have him in my life at all. If I’m going to keep myself from doing something earth-shatteringly stupid like begging him to see me as something other than a friend or sister, then I’m going to have to break all ties. Leave completely and start all over without Murphy in my life.
I was so stupid to think I could just tag along with him and Dillion for the rest of my life and never expect him to bring a woman into the group. He’s…beautiful and smart and funny. Of course, he’s going to have girlfriends and eventually a wife. I’m the only loser who was saving herself for my true love - Murphy.
An image of my heart being in a little wind-up car hurtling towards a cliff and only speeding up flashes through my head. Then seeing the little body part going over the edge and crashing at the bottom in a fiery ball of despair and depression replays over and over in my mind. It would be funny…if it weren’t so fucking painful.
If I’m lucky I’ll just drift off in a dream of what we could be and not have to face the fact everything I cherished, everything I held most dear, is gone. I have no place to live, no job, no friends, no nothing all because I put this crush, this stupid silly crush, above everything else. I don’t even have a bedframe - I donated mine when Murphy helped me order a new one, a new one I can’t take with me since Murphy bought it.
I dissolve into a ball of tears and sobs as the sound of water drowns out everything else around me. Starting all over again when I never really began.
Chapter Four
Murphy
“Are you sure you won’t stay? We can raise your hourly wage?”
“No, it’s not…it’s closer to my new apartment.”
The voice stops me cold, and I unconsciously turn towards it. I would know that voice anywhere. Avery.
She told me she was turning in her two weeks’ notice because she had found a better job and needed an apartment closer to it. Now she’s telling Mom the opposite.
I would love to figure out what the fuck was up with her. At first, I thought it was because she saw me with Tiffany. My mom already raked me over the coals for that one, telling me how fucking stupid I was that I had the girl I loved in a room in my home, and I brought another woman home right in front of her. Even my excuse wasn’t enough to block the disgust in her eyes.
I did it because I couldn’t take the fucking stress anymore. I was trying to move past my stupid crush on Avery so we could ‘live’ together, and I wouldn’t always be tempted to take her to the floor. If I hadn’t tried something to move on, I wasn’t going to be able to keep my hands off her another fucking day. Thus Tiffany. I had no idea she was going to jerk my shirt off and straddle me like a fucking stripper dancing on a chair.
I was sure Avery saw her when she came to me two days later and told me she was moving out. Moving the fuck out! She told me she had found a job opening that she just couldn’t pass up, but she needed to be closer to it, so she was going to rent a room in an apartment. Which only pissed me off more since she had a fucking room close to work when she was living with me.
She moved out without even saying anything. I was at work for fuck’s sake. She left the key on the kitchen island and was just gone.
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to make you stay?”
“I have to go, Hetty. I’ll call when I settle in and everything.”
“Alright, sweetie. We’ll get together soon and talk.”
She doesn’t say anything back and instead, I catch her walking to the elevator but don’t get to her before the doors have already closed. I take the private elevator down to the lobby in time to see her step out of the other one. Her face…it takes me a second before I catch myself and school my features.
She has a little box of personal things that she brought here when I gave her a desk in my office and hired her to be my personal assistant. Under the fluorescents, she looks…tired and I have to wonder what -or who- has been keeping her up.
“Avie…wait up.”
I run to catch up with her and take the box from her. I hate to see her holding it and a part of me just wants to turn right back around and take it back to my office.
“Murphy, I…wasn’t expecting you here.”
I bet she wasn’t. Running away like she ran out of the apartment - when I’m somewhere else.
“We could have given you a moving-on party or something.” I laugh but it sounds hollow to even my own ears. “How have things been? Since you left?”
“Good. Really good.” She takes the box back from me and starts walking towards the door.
“You start the new job yet?” She nods. “You like it?”
All I get is another nod but before I can ask another awkward question she meets my eyes, hers looking tired and worn out like she hasn’t been sleeping. “I have to go…I’m meeting a friend for dinner.”
“A friend?”
