Page 21 of Secret Baby for My Brother's Best Friends

I release a sigh of relief. It's not him.

It's my best friend in the whole world, Jenna, and the only other person who has the key to my apartment.

She comes out from the kitchen in my favorite ratty t-shirt with a pint of ice cream in one hand. "Do I need to kick your ass for you to forget about him? Or maybe I should kick his ass?"

"No ass-kicking necessary," I sigh as I put down my bag. "I'm over him. I was just dreading that he might be here for some reason."

She makes a face. "Why would he be here?"

"Maybe to take the rest of his stuff that he's refused to come collect, which I currently have waiting for him in garbage bags in the closet."

"I don't know why you still have it," she says. "If I were you, I would have torched that shit already."

"Yeah, but we both know that's not my style."

"Yup. Always too kind for your own good."

She sits on the couch and pats the seat beside her. "So come on. Tell me how your vacation was."

"You first. Tell me how Milan was." Jenna's a model, a really good one, practically a supermodel at this point, and her agency flew her out two months ago for fashion week and some other shoots.

She wanted me to go with her, but I turned it down at the time, knowing that it was too critical for me to be at work.

I can't believe I stayed like an idiot, supporting Eric's business, instead of going out to Milan with my bestie.

It would have been fun, though now that she's back, exhaustion streaks her face.

She's gorgeous regardless. She's so beautiful that I was surprised she wanted to be my friend back in high school. We got put on a project together, and I thought maybe she was being nice to me just because she wanted me to do the majority of the work on the paper, which I didn't necessarily mind doing at the time.

But even after that, she said, "You're really cool, let's be friends."

And that was that. We stayed friends throughout high school, although we ended up going to different colleges, Columbia forme, and a fashion school in California for her. We still kept in touch though, she visited often, meeting Claire and Eric, who had become my closest friends and support system in college. Jenna never really liked either of them. She thought Eric was a little too smarmy and Claire was weird, although she could never fully articulate what ‘weird’ meant.

Nevertheless, she tolerated them well enough until they decided to fuck each other behind my back.

"So," she says, scooping some ice cream into her mouth. She always eats like a pig the first week after fashion week. "Tell me how your vacation went. I can't believe I missed you dumping that asshole and having a hot month in Miami."

"It wasn't hot," I tell her, laughing. "It was...fulfilling."

"I bet. So who's the guy?"

"What guy?" I squeak instantly.

"Please, don't even pretend. I can tell you've had some recently. You're a lot more relaxed about the breakup than you were, like a switch flipped."

"Yeah. That's because I realized how much of an asshole he was."

"No, it's not just that. You also got your back blown out and realized how shitty he was in bed."

"Jenna!"

"What? It's the truth. The only people who could possibly like what he has to offer are girls too nice or too desperate to know better.”

“Gee thanks.”

“No, you’re the ‘too nice’ one. Claire’s the ‘too desperate’. And crazy. I told you there was something up with that girl, but I didn’t think she was stupid enough to pull this shit.” Jenna makes a face and I shake my head.

I don’t disagree with the anger, but I don’t like the fact that she calls Claire crazy and stupid, almost like she blames her for Eric’s cheating. “Well, she’s not the one who made the promises to me. Eric did.”