Page 57 of Apparently, I’m A B!tch

Chapter30

Nikki

Monday morning

I was not sobbing.I didn’t spend last night sobbing, and I wouldn’t spend this morning sobbing either. I might’ve screamed into my pillow and wrote angry texts about Tristan to my sisters, but I didn’t sob.

Frustrated, upset and overheated, I spent the night tossing and turning, wishing I could turn my brain off. Now I walked into L&K clad in my gray pantsuit, deciding to spite the pencil skirts and tight dresses Tristan said were “good looks” for me.

I refused to care about what he thought anymore. Why should I? He was just like Harvey. Just another man who treated women like they were tools to use.

No matter how many times Uncle Henry tried to reassure me that Tristan was the same good person he always was, and no matter how many times Lilly texted me with the groaning emoji face telling me to “come on,” I didn’t want to be with the man he’d turned into.

What I wanted was my best friend back, but given everything that happened between us the past few days, that didn’t seem possible.

The carpet shushed under my heels as I walked through our alleyway and into the kitchen. I wasn’t surprised to see Kelly already in there, holding an Extra Shot to-go cup, but I was surprised to see the half-smile she greeted me with.

“Hey boss,” she said, raising her coffee to her magenta lips. “How was your date last night?”

I stood transfixed, sweeping my gaze up and down Kelly. What happened to my hostile paralegal?

Reaching for the pot of coffee, I asked, “How do you know about that?”

“Lilly told me. The girl was all hyped up this morning. She said you finally said yes to Tristan.” She cocked her head at me, her painted smile widening. “I didn’t know he’d been asking you out for a while.”

I shrugged. “He hasn’t been. I think Lilly had it in her head that Tristan was trying to talk me into a date every time I came in, but it was never like that. Until he kissed me last Thursday, we were just friends. Lilly’s really sweet, but she tends to write fanfic in her mind, and then forgets its fanfic. We were supposed to go on a date though. She got that part right.”

Kelly was halfway through taking another drink of her coffee and gagged on it as my surprise fanfic joke made her laugh.

“Sorry Kel, I didn’t mean to make you choke.”

She cleared her throat. “It’s fine; I just wasn’t expecting that from you.”

I held my mug to my lips as a warm pleasure filled the hole of shittiness Tristan left behind. “But it didn’t go well. Actually, it didn’t go at all.” Kelly’s brows knit together and I tried to explain. “He’s with someone else, and I didn’t think… I thought his relationship with this other woman was over. It wasn’t.”

“So, he was seeing someone else?”

I nodded.

“And he tried to cheat on this girl with you?” she asked, taking another drink.

I took a sip of my own, wishing it were a proper double shot latte instead. “I guess. And I should be pissed off about that, shouldn’t I?”

She made a sound and asked, “Aren’t you?”

“I’m angrier that he lied about it. Friends don’t try and trick the other one into a date, and they definitely don’t use other innocent women to get a gallery showing and then lie about it.”

Kelly’s face dropped and she stared down into her coffee. “So… wait. He was using this other girl to get his pictures into a gallery, but he lied to you about that because he was trying to get into your pants?”

I nodded.

“And you’re telling me this man, this evil mastermind, was your friend?”

“We used to work together at the coffee shop while I studied through college, and we were pretty close. But now it’s like I don’t know him anymore. He keeps lying to me and I don’t know how to handle it. What he was doing, using that woman, it’s gross, right?”

She took a breath and let it out. “It is pretty gross.”

I bit my tongue, deciding not to rant about how Harvey was doing the same thing to her. I didn’t need to. Something was shifting around inside of Kelly, and I believed she was starting to see the truth for what it was.