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Her eyes found mine like homing missiles. “That’s none of your business.”
“It is too my business. He lives here, Kiki.”
“You’re so selfish,” she said, shaking her head and dropping her eyes to the basket between us. When she lifted her face again, she looked desperately hurt. “Why can’t you just be happy for me?”
“I am happy for you,” I lied. “I just don’t think I should have to pay for your boyfriend’s Pop Tarts and electricity.”
She scoffed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”
“Jealous?” My face twisted. “Of what?”
“That you don’t have what we have. That you don’t have a person.”
I locked my eyes on hers. “He’s a user, Kiki. He’s using you.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, fuck you,” I said. “Because you’re letting him use me, too, and that’s not fair.”
“Call him a user one more time,” she said, her eyes daring me.
She looked a lot more pissed than hurt now, and I regretted the sharp nosedive our conversation had taken. “Look, I don’t want to fight with you.”
“You just want me to fight with my boyfriend.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “I want you to be happy, and I want you—us—to not get taken advantage of.”
She glared at me.
I softened my voice, hoping it might help de-escalate the tension between us. “To be honest, if the thought hadn’t already crossed your mind, I don’t think you’d be acting so defensive right now.”
“I don’t think this is working out.”
I drew my neck back and stared at her. “What?”
“Us living together,” she said. “I think we should go our separate ways.”
My mouth fell open.
“And by separate ways, I mean it’s time for you to move on.”
“Are you…kicking me out?”
She crossed her arms. “Isn’t that what you want? To not live with my boyfriend anymore?”
“What I want is to work this out like adults. Can’t you at least ask him if he’d be willing to help us out financially? Just for a little while?”
“Why? So you can play intern with a bunch of snobby fashionistas?” she asked. “Can you even hear yourself? And you’re accusing him of being selfish?”
Clearly, she wasn’t going to invite reason or rationality into this conversation.
“I’ll give you a week to find another place.”
“No need,” I said, bluffing my ass off. “I’m sure I can excuse myself from your happily ever after before that.”
Her lips twisted like she had a bad taste in her mouth.
“But for the record,” I said, picking up a stack of folded towels. “I think you deserve better.”
“I know,” she said, looking me up and down like I was talking about myself.
I walked away without another word, my innards knotting so aggressively I couldn’t tell if I was going to puke or burst into tears. Hell, maybe I’d puke on the hall carpet and dig it in with my foot so the whole apartment would smell like vomit for weeks after I left. And I’d make sure there wasn’t a single free floss floating around before I went, too. That would show ’em!
Except I wasn’t a vindictive person. That much I knew.
Unfortunately, I was starting to suspect that it wasn’t enough to know the kind of person I wasn’t. I needed more than that. I wanted to understand what made me special, what made me deserve happiness. Because surely it was that kind of self-awareness that gave a person strength in hideously awkward moments like this.
Instead, I felt shitty and hopeless. And when I realized I was just another dumb girl who wished she had Quinn Draper’s phone number, I felt less special than ever.
