Page 179 of The Exit Strategy

I take another small sip.

“Are you okay? And remember, I said no bullshit. I don’t want a manufactured answer. I don’t want what you’d tell Nana Mae, your brother, or those man-children all trying to outmaneuver the cunts in your life. I want the honest, broken, real answer, Junie. Areyouokay?”

As far as best friends go, I could have seriously done worse. I have done worse, actually. Way. Way. Worse.

For all of Katie’s quirks, she’s only ever tried to be there for me. And she’s never once asked for anything in return.

I’ve never had a friendship where I wasn’t carrying all the weight of it.

That’s the only reason I have for opening my heart and telling her the truth. “I don’t know.”

She nods like she understands. Like she’s been there before and knows what it’s like to feel lost.

And she doesn’t judge.

She simply allows me to…be.

Katie just might be the friend I never wanted but have always needed.

Numbers have always made moresense to me than people. But by two that afternoon, even numbers need a translator.

Somehow, instead of the Q3 spreadsheet I was trying to get lost in, I end up following a rabbit hole of small business owners who have all been taken advantage of.

Many of them are from women-led companies.

Most of them simply trusted the wrong person—which focuses my anger and sadness into something almost productive.

Because I know how that is.

The deeper I dig, the more alive I become.

Variance analysis.

Pattern recognition.

Reconciling figures that should match and don’t.

This, I can do.

There’s something deeply, unfashionably comforting about a spreadsheet that doesn’t require me to have feelings about it. The spreadsheet doesn’t care about welcome baskets, or windows, or lamps that remain on. The spreadsheets have columns and the columns have rules and the rules always apply, which is more than I can say about any other system in my life.

What ifIhelp these people?

Before I can go full Juniper Mercer and create a complete business plan, there’s a musical knock at my door at the same time that my phone rings. Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me” blaring from my phone speaker can mean only one thing—Fenway Jones gained access to my phone.

And the irony of the song he chose isn’t lost on me either.

“Fen.”

“Hi, Spite-Berry.” His tone is off, and my hackles are officially raised. “Since you haven’t left your apartment, I figured I’d come over to give you an update. You gonna let me in?”

With the Berry Brigade of Meddlers, it was only a matter of time before one of them found their way over here. Today, I’m glad it’s Fen.

When I open the door, he’s chuckling, and I put down my phone. “Yeah,” he says. “You look about as good as Cole does.”

“Thanks. I think. What’s all that?”

“Don’t say no until you’ve heard me out.” He pushes past me into my kitchen and sets his stuff down on the island. “This is iced coffee with two sugars and a splash of oat milk.”