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Chapter Two
Astoria, Queens, New York
Gwen swore viciously as she stomped out of the subway station, earning a stern look from an older woman passing by on the sidewalk. She wasn’t usually prone to outbursts of profanities. At least, no more than the average resident of New York, but this day—this whole damned month!—was testing the limits of her sanity.
With another grumbled curse, Gwen shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and stalked down the street. For weeks she’d been plagued with the same vivid dream, again and again. Over-the-counter sleeping pills had done nothing, and she’d gone so long without a whole night’s sleep she was starting to feel loopy.
Gwen couldn’t take any time off work, not with her project due at the end of the month, so for the last two weeks she’d dragged her half-comatose body into the office, hoping autopilot would be enough to get her through. She’d been so out of it this morning that when she was called into her boss’s office, she’d actually been delusional enough to think she was finally getting promoted.
As if she could be so lucky.
They were terminating her employment contract due to company-wide downsizing. Effective immediately. What a load of crap.
Gwen let out a heavy, overwhelmed sigh. What was she going to do? Hunt for another job, she guessed. The very thought made her insides warp with anxiety. There was a reason she’d stayed at the same boring, terrible job for all these years. It was predictable. Reliable. Or at least it had been up until today.
What made it worse was that she was still thinking about that stupid project on her computer. Her work computer, which was now probably sitting on some IT guy’s desk, waiting to get wiped.
All those weeks of work for nothing. All those stupid mornings she’d dragged her sleepless, zombified body to the office, worried about finishing her project when she could have been at home, sleeping like the dead.
Sleep. Gwen took in a deep breath and looked up at the sky. Gray clouds swirled overhead as a crisp fall breeze swept down the street. She loved the cold. Even during the worst winter blizzards, she savored the bite of the air and the freshly fallen snow. But she struggled to enjoy it at the moment.
Anxiety had settled firmly in the pit of her stomach like a giant rock, and it wasn’t budging. So she dipped into her bodega and headed straight for the one thing that always seemed to make her feel better when things got this hellish. Chocolate.
Gwen snatched up three bars of premium, gold-foiled goodness, and already she felt her stress start to melt away. As a semiresponsible, pushing-thirty adult, she typically tried to ration her chocolate consumption. But in the last several hours, her self-control had entirely evaporated. She’d decided that she would eat one bar on the walk home and the other two probably before she even bothered to take off her shoes.
Gwen got in line, eagerly waiting to sink her teeth into one of the bars, when her ears perked up at the sound of a familiar voice. She immediately tensed.
“I know! I couldn’t believe it either!” Vivian chimed into her phone.
Damn. Gwen tried to bury herself deeper into her jacket as she stepped up to the counter. If she was lucky, she might be able to escape unnoticed. It wasn’t that she dreaded seeing Vivian, per se, she just wasn’t in the mood to catch up and make small talk. Not that she was ever in the mood to catch up and make small talk.
Gwen paid quickly and tried her best to slip out as a few other people came in. She would have succeeded, too, if not for the acrobatic maneuver she had to do to avoid the toddler who nearly face-planted right into her knees.
“Gwen?” She cringed. So much for luck.
“Oh, hey, Vivian,” Gwen chirped, trying her best to look pleasantly surprised and not totally annoyed. She thanked the invisible powers of the universe that at least she wasn’t carrying a cardboard box full of belongings from her cleared-out cubicle. The pathetic remnants of her desk were all securely floating in her purse.
“I can’t believe it. I haven’t seen you in—forever,” Vivian remarked, her eyes wide with genuine surprise. It had been six months, to be exact. At Gwen’s ex-boyfriend Nathan’s birthday party. “You look—great,” Vivian added awkwardly, looking her up and down. It was clear she’d been looking for something specific to compliment and had come up short.
Gwen’s clothes were wrinkled and dirty, her dark brown hair a frizzled mess. She couldn’t even remember if she’d showered this morning, let alone bothered to put on mascara. On the other hand, Vivian looked perfectly manicured, with her blown-out platinum-blonde hair and bright crystal-blue eyes. Even dressed for a run, she was annoyingly glamorous and beautiful.
Even on her best days, Gwen never looked a fraction as good as Vivian. How they’d become friendly at work all those years ago, she had no idea. Though it was hard not to like Vivian, Gwen had to admit. She was just one of those bubbly people everyone liked. Full of seemingly effortless social grace that had always baffled the hell out of Gwen. She couldn’t get people to like her when she tried, let alone when she didn’t.
A little self-conscious, Gwen pulled her faded jacket tighter around her to hide the crappy black t-shirt she was sporting underneath. There was no hiding the dark raccoon circles under her eyes. “Thanks. How are things with you? You look super tan,” Gwen replied with the best fake smile she could muster.
“Oh, yeah,” Vivian said, looking over her sun-kissed arms. “I just got back from Fiji. I basically lived in the water. It was so beautiful. Have you ever been?”
Gwen almost snorted but managed to stifle the urge. She’d never been outside the northeastern United States. She’d never even been to Canada. Clearly, Vivian had forgotten she didn’t travel. And that she was chronically broke. “No—but it looks amazing.”
When Vivian shifted to talk about work, Gwen started to feel a weight of guilt. She didn’t mind the occasional white lie, but bald-faced lying made her uncomfortable. Thankfully, Vivian liked to talk about herself, so it was easy to pivot. “Work is interesting. How are things with your new job? You’re still at that start-up, right?”
Apparently, the start-up wasn’t much of a start-up anymore, and Vivian was already a VP of marketing at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. The company had gone public last fall, and the stock was soaring—hence her lavish trip to Fiji. Meanwhile, Gwen had been working the same dead-end analyst job at the same crappy agency for almost six years. Until today, that was. Her stomach turned, and she prepared her excuse to slink away so that she could begin licking her wounds in the comfort of her quiet, tiny apartment.
“Hey, look, I’m really sorry about that whole thing with Nathan,” Vivian said with a look of disgust. “I meant to text you, but things just got so crazy at work. I just want you to know I’ve totally boycotted all of his parties since I found out about him and Lauren. I still can’t believe it.”
Gwen’s stomach twisted into a knot of dread. Lauren and Nathan?
Vivian scoffed with exaggerated anger. “I always knew he was a piece of work,” she bit out. “But I can’t believe he cheated on you like that. I’ve already told everyone I’m not going to the wedding.”
