“Why on earth would you bring her with you knowing Cara didn’t know anything about us?!” I yelled. “You know what, it doesn’t matter now. It’s done. Just leave so I can be alone.”
“Drea, please talk?—”
“I said leave, Kaia! I don’t want to talk, especially not to someone who couldn’t keep a secret if you paid them!”
I must have been really drunk, because I could have sworn I heard Kaia curse at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You heard me. I said fuck you!” Nope, I definitely heard it that time.
In the five years I’d known Kaia, I had never, and I did literally mean never, heard that woman say a bad word about anyone, and certainly not those words.
“First of all, I don’t know if you forgot that I have been keeping your secret about whatever you two were doing even long before you asked me not to tell anyone. Do you not realize these walls are thin?” A slight blush appeared on my face. No, no, I had not realized…
“I heard everything, but I kept quiet because I respected you and it wasn’t my business to tell. But that doesn’t matter anymore. You aired your own dirty laundry.”
“We may be friends, Kaia, but I am still your boss, and you will?—”
“Oh, don’t play the boss card… God, I am so sick of this, Drea! I cover for you when you are hungover after your random hookups. I hear you bitch and bitch and bitch about Blair for months, yet you still work with her and make all of us deal with the tension between you two. I had plans with a friend, but I canceled them to help Blair while you were out getting drunk and insulting her! Rylee called me to come get you and said you two were yelling in the bar, and Blair insisted on coming. She told me what you were saying about Blair, but I didn’t tell her because I was loyal to you and I would never do that, even if she deserved to know what you really think of her.”
“Excuse me? You don’t get to?—”
“I have canceled plans to be here for you when you needed me the most, and you don’t appreciate it! You have never once shown you give a shit about me, Drea.”
I had never seen this side of Kaia, and any other night I would have been taken aback. But tonight was just a never-ending shit storm, and I was not in the mood to be disrespected in my own store.
I stood up. “Then leave! Just like everyone I care about in my life, fucking leave! I don’t need to take this, and I don’t need you!”
“They leave because you push them away! You pushed Skylar away because of your selfishness, and now you’ve pushed Blair away. Are you that blinded by your own self-importance that you can’t see the hold you had on that woman? She is devastated over you, and you don’t care. Did you even care about her at all, or were you just using her to get over Skylar because she was convenient and?—”
“That is enough, Kaia! I will not stand here while you question me about my relationship with Blair, which is none of your concern, by the way!” I wouldn’t stand for her talking to me that way. She had no right.
“What relationship? You don’t have one anymore, and your friendship with Cara is certainly not doing any better. You did this to yourself, Drea, and now you have to live with the consequences, alone, because I’m done.”
“With what, this conversation? Good, shut the door on your way out.”
“No, with all of it. I am done being your punching bag. I’m done being your servant you think you can call at all hours, and I am done being a witness to your self-destruction.” She dropped her keys on my desk and walked out, slamming the door behind her.
She was right, and I had no right to be angry with her. She’d just happened to get caught in the line of fire. I wasn’t blind to Blair’s feelings for me. I should have told her how I felt. I should have done a lot of things, and now I wouldn’t get the chance. I really fucked up, but I did this to myself?—
Something I said earlier gave me pause. My relationship with Blair…
Relationship. In my twenty-nine years of existence, I had never once so casually referred to a situation I was in as a relationship. But I had said it toKaia without batting an eye. Without even so much as a thought. Blair had integrated herself into a part of my life, my heart, and I had so willingly accepted it.
But that was what we had… what we used to have. I had been in a relationship, and I’d ruined it. I was so undenyably in love with Blair, and I’d driven her away.
Not three seconds after the door closed, the sound of glass breaking filled the room as I picked up the wine bottle we had bought for Blair and threw it against the door.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Blair
Walking into Cara’s office at ten on a Monday morning was not my idea of a good time.After everything happened, we still hadn’t spoken. All my calls and texts had gone unanswered. Drea’s messages had been the same.
I refused to talk to her. I didn’t even want to think about her, but I didn’t have control over that. From the second I woke up to a text from Drea?—
Drea: Good morning, beautiful. Please call me. I’m so sorry.
