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“I’m Lena,” she says.
He shakes her hand.
Lena.
I never actually got her name that day. I was too busy yelling at Robbie. And she was too busy wrapping the bedsheet around her naked body and scurrying out of the bedroom.
She turns to shake my hand. I offer her my limp hand.
“Tori,” I say quietly.
She lets go after a second and fiddles with the hem of her top, clearly uncomfortable. Good god, this is beyond awkward.
Tyler looks between the two of us. “I, uh, thought you two knew each other.”
“We do,” Lena says, right at the same time I say, “Sort of.”
Tyler frowns like he’s even more confused.
My brain scrambles to figure out a non-humiliating way to explain to Tyler exactly how Lena and I know each other, but I come up blank. Probably because there’s no way to talk about this without it sounding absolutely awful.
I glance back at Lena. Even in the dim, unflattering hallway lighting, she’s stunning.
She’s tall—taller than Maya, probably close to six feet in those heeled boots she’s wearing. And she’s got the hourglass figure of a bombshell.
I feel myself shrink. I look so plain, so unremarkable standing next to her.
“Um, we…” I stammer after getting out those measly words.
“Lena baby, you ready?” a familiar voice calls out.
Dread flashes through me like a lightning bolt. A second later, Robbie appears behind Lena.
His hazel eyes go wide in horror when he moves to stand next to her and sees me.
“Tori…” He sounds like he just got the wind knocked out of him.
He starts to clear his throat, but it sounds like he’s choking.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tyler glance between the three of us, confused as ever, but clearly understanding that we all know each other and have some sort of tense history.
I open my mouth once more to say something, anything, but I can’t. My voice has run off and hidden itself somewhere deep inside of me. It’s too shocked and too embarrassed at what’s going down right now.
Another beat of tense silence passes before Robbie runs a hand through his short-cropped blond hair and turns to Tyler. He flashes a forced smile.
“I’m Robbie. Tori and I dated.” He lets out a too-smooth chuckle that makes me want to vomit.
He’s trying to put a spin on our history, on our relationship, to make it seem less awful.
Tyler shakes his hand, but I don’t miss the slight frown he flashes as he looks at Robbie. Like he’s suspicious of him. A tiny part of me feels relieved to see him react that way.
Tyler breaks their handshake. “I see.”
Robbie straightens up and rolls his shoulders back, probably because he’s a few inches shorter than Tyler. I remember he did that around guys who were bigger than him. I always thought it was obnoxious.
“What are you doing here in Denver?” I ask. He and I were long-distance for the latter half of our relationship after he accepted a job in Salt Lake City.
“Work transferred me back here,” he says before smoothing his palm along the front of the jacket he’s wearing. “Tori and I were kind of a thing back in the day,” he says to Tyler.
