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“So that’s it?” The bitterness in his voice made her stomach churn painfully.
She looked down at the floor and swallowed. “We can still be friends.” She hated herself for saying it, because it was so obviously a lie. They’d never be able to go back to the way things were.
“Wow. Really?”
She glanced up at him and immediately regretted it. He looked like she’d just kicked him in the stomach. “I don’t have a choice.” She wished she could go back in time and erase the last twenty-four hours. Back to when she and Jonathan were just friends, and Jinny was still speaking to her.
His eyes narrowed with contempt. “Of course you do.”
“I don’t! Because of Jinny, you and I—”
“That’s bullshit. Jinny doesn’t give a crap about me. She never did.”
“She cares that I lied to her about you. About why you dated her.”
He shook his head. “That doesn’t have anything to do with us. It’s just an excuse. What’s really going on is that you have feelings for me and you’re scared.”
Esther thrust her jaw out. “That’s not it.”
“Of course it is. You’re fucking terrified of letting yourself care about someone.”
A memory of the night before forced its way into her consciousness—the way his hand had trembled when he’d touched her face—and she looked away, unable to meet his eye. “You don’t understand.”
“I think I understand better than you do.”
She couldn’t keep debating this with him. He was never going to see her side of it or be okay with her decision. Talking it through more wasn’t going to make either of them feel any better.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, feeling miserable. “But if I have to make a choice between you and Jinny, then I pick Jinny. Every time. She’s my best friend.”
He didn’t say anything.
Esther’s stomach did another twist, wringing itself out like a wet washcloth. “Do you understand? Please tell me you understand.”
His gaze locked on the floor, like he couldn’t even look at her. Just like Jinny hadn’t been able to look at her. “I do,” he said. “I get it.”
“I don’t blame you for hating me.” She already hated herself. He was entitled to get in on the hating train.
He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I don’t hate you. That’s the problem.” His voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper. When his eyes found hers, what she saw in them cut her to the bone. “I feel sorry for you.”
When the door banged shut behind him, Esther let out a choking sob. She hugged her knees to her chest, and the tears she’d been holding back burst through the floodgate.
See? She knew it would end in disaster.
Chapter Twenty-One
Esther stared at her computer screen. The 3-D render of the part she was supposed to be designing looked like one of those Escher paintings that seemed to have an extra dimension.
It wasn’t a complicated part, she was just having trouble concentrating today. Every time she tried, the lines on the screen would drift in and out of focus until it looked like a bunch of gobbledygook instead of a simple wireframe drawing.
Jinny hadn’t returned any of the approximately eleventy-hundred texts and voicemails Esther had left since yesterday. Esther had considered seeking her out this morning when she got to the office, but decided work wasn’t the best place to hash out their friendship drama. If Jinny didn’t want to talk to her, forcing a confrontation in front of her coworkers wasn’t likely to win Esther any brownie points.
On top of that, she couldn’t stop thinking about Jonathan. She honestly wasn’t sure which she felt worse about—hurting Jinny or hurting Jonathan.
So here she sat, feeling helpless and miserable as she tried fruitlessly to concentrate on work. All she had to do was make two small adjustments to the design. It was a simple fix. It should only take ten minutes.
She’d been staring at it for an hour, and hadn’t gotten anywhere yet.
Yemi kicked her chair. “What are you doing?”
