I waited for Ezra to fight me. It was his usual way, to respond to my boundaries with petulance. In retrospect, it was amazing how often I’d let him walk all over me. Now that he finally had me on the line, he’d probably use Ashley as a hostage to keep me talking—
“Okay. I’m coming. Don’t go anywhere.”
He hung up.
I smiled queasily to myself. Of course Ezra was coming right away. Of course he hadn’t missed me enough to fight to keep me on the phone, to bring me back into his life. This was Ashley we were talking about. He’d already chosen her before. And me? Once more, I’d managed to convince myself that I was stronger than I really was. That by shutting Ezra out, creating distance between us, I was giving myself space to heal from a decade ofpining. But a few seconds on the phone with him had called my bluff. What I’d really wanted, all along, was to hurt him with my absence.
Pathetic.
My vision cleared, and I looked up to find Dahlia staring at me with round eyes. She was a smart girl, and I realized that she’d probably put two and two together.
“You okay?” she asked. My eyes darted to her hand, still on a now-slumped Ashley’s back, and something ugly surged inside me, not quite hatred, not quite envy, but the slimy, familiar feeling of knowing that, even after all this time, I was not quite enough.
“I’m fine,” I said sharply. “Ezra’s coming to pick her up.”
Ashley perked up suddenly. “Ezra?” she said. I recognized her despondence; I’d seen it on the faces of Ezra’s girlfriends before. “Noooo. Don’t call Ezra. He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” I said plainly.
“No, no, he does,” Ashley insisted. “Because I wasn’t nice to you. His most precious person in the world. No way was I ever gonna compete with that.” She sighed with her entire body, sagging onto the counter. “Karma’s a bitch, I guess. I finally find a guy who’s rich, hot, and not a douchebag, and he’s in love with Jungle Jo.” She paused. “I can’t believe I used to call you that. That was hella racist.”
“See?” Dahlia said. “Even your ex’s ex thinks I’m right.”
“Do you know how many of Ezra’s girlfriends have said that?” I said, frustrated. “Ezra isn’t in love with me. Ashley’s just feeling insecure right now. Anddrunk.”
Dahlia gave me a devilish look. “Lots to unpack here, huh,” she said, snickering.
“The understatement of the century,” I said. Ashley hiccupped, a single, errant tear trailing down her face, and for a moment, I felt sorry for her.
Not enough, however, to oversee her nap.
“Is she snoring?” Dahlia said.
“Yup,” I said.
“You want to make yourself scarce until he shows up? I can watch her,” she offered. I opened my mouth to refuse, and she held up a finger, tutting me. “Don’t consider this altruistic. I’m just conning you into getting the bill.” Her smile flickered. “I’m kidding, by the way. That was a joke. Obviously I’ll split—”
I laughed, touched by Dahlia’s offer.
“No, no, I’m the one who got us into this. I got it.”
“Okay, but I got you next time,” Dahlia said with a wink. “Try to flag someone down. It’s getting busy.”
I did. I was unsuccessful. In the last thirty minutes, the tables at Early Bird had filled with real brunch aficionados. From our table, the bar was in clear view, and I sat and watched, looking up hopefully at every passing waiter and busboy, a voyeur in my own story. The scene in front of me played out like a clip fromOne True Kiss. The woman with the buzz-cut blond hair and sleeve tattoo is eye-catching, but a side character, hanging on to the hot, blubbering, blond female lead. She tips a glass into the female lead’s mouth, dabs it when water dribbles down her chin. Then the door to the restaurant opens, and a man enters. He’s tall and strikingly good-looking, even dressed as he is in a Batman graphic T-shirt and heathered gray sweatpants. Even before he approaches the blonde, it’s clear that he is her counterpart. His hand delves into his hair in exasperation, but the viewers know that the movement is intentional, that it will lift his shirt justenough to reveal the crisp V of his hips, and he hands a credit card to the bartender, settling her tab. But then he turns. Looks right through the screen. The fourth wall shatters, and suddenly the man is walking forward, jaw clenched, a hundred thousand teenage girls’ dreams coming true before their eyes, because all along he was coming forthem—
“You’re still here,” Ezra said, like he expected me to be gone.
Then he pulled up a chair.
Chapter Nineteen
Mal
“Who do we have here?” Kieran said from his doorway, hands on his hips, bags under his eyes. With Kelechi’s due date three months away, he’d been working overtime to get his team of software developers to the end of a project before he disappeared for his six-week paternity leave. Chasing after his toddler was not helping. “You decide you bit off more than you could chew, fraternizing with these celebrities, and now, the moment they stop paying you attention, you come crawling back to us normal people.”
Mal rolled his eyes just as a pair of small feet pattered across the wood floor.
“Uncle Mal!” Harvey shouted, holding out his arms to be picked up. Mal chuckled, placing the plastic bag full of apology beer on the floor before bending to lift the kid into his arms. It had been only a few weeks since he’d last visited, but Harvey was already heavier, his annunciation clearer (last time, he’d been “Uncuh Mah”). Nothing like small children, he thought, to clue you in on how long you’d been neglecting your friends. As usual, Kieran’s ribbing had a kernel of truth to it: he really had disappeared once things with Jo had gotten serious, and also equallytrue that he’d come crawling back to them the second things got rocky.
