Page 24 of The Do-Over

“Because I didn’t argue with you?” I asked my salad in a quiet voice. “Because I’m not fun? Because I’m boring?”

Swallowing, he wiped his fingers on a napkin. “I didn’t think you cared all that much about this whole relationship.”

I paused, dissecting his words. Was that true? I’d cried more than once since the break-up. But had it been over Brent? Did I miss him? Did I miss us? Or were my tears because of how he’d embarrassed me? Or because this relationship was another failure in a long list of my failures? Was it because I didn’t like how he’d done it and the words he’d used?

Worse, was it because everything he’d said was true?

The sounds of the café—forks scraping against plates, the rise and fall of chatter—echoed loudly in my head. My eye caught on an older couple sitting in a corner booth. The woman, her hair in tight, steely-gray curls, was reading a paperback novel. She pushed her half-eaten plate across the table to the bald man buried behind a newspaper. Without looking, he pulled the plate closer and touched her hand, their fingers tangling for the briefest of seconds. I couldn’t be sure, but from my seat, it didn’t look like they’d spoken a word to each other.

An overwhelming urge to cry settled in my throat.

I pushed my food away without taking a bite. A salad would not fix this sadness; that required chocolate. “I cared about you, Brent.” Maybe not the way a girlfriend should care about her boyfriend, but I’d expected better from him. “And how does that make it okay to embarrass me on the radio? For concert tickets? Did you think about me having to tell my parents and how it would embarrass them?”

He pressed a hand to his forehead. “It was because of your mother…” Clamping his mouth shut, he shook his head.

“My mother?”

“She came to see me a few weeks ago when you were out of the office and asked me when I planned to propose.” He spread his hands out in front of him. “She asked me if I needed help picking out a ring. I guess I panicked.”

For a moment, my vision grew hazy.

“I caught the radio show and…” His brow creased, the corners of his eyes pulled down. “Look, I’m sorry. Perhaps I didn’t handle this in the right way, but I’d like us to look past this. People break up every day. We can still be professional at work.”

Part of me didn’t want to be professional. Part of me wanted to go to my father and demand he fire Brent. But I knew how that would turn out. It wasn’t that he loved Brent more; it was that he always did what was best for the business, and Brent was good at his job.

But a bigger part of me couldn’t stand one more second sitting across from him. “Whatever you want.”

He exhaled in relief. “I appreciate it.”

I flagged the waitress. “Can I get a to-go box for this?”

Her gaze darted between us, first at Brent eating his fries like a starved man at a church potluck, and then at me as I gathered my purse and slid to the end of the booth. “Sure thing. Need anything else?”

A pillow to scream into? A million gallons of ice cream? A backbone to tell Brent exactly how I felt?

“My treat,” Brent said. “Order whatever you want.”

“You know what? I’ll take a banana cream.”

“A slice?”

My eyes skipped again to the window and the homeless man. “I’ll take the whole pie.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

I snatched a menu from the table next to us and thumbed through it. “And I’ll take a double cheeseburger, an order of fish and chips, and a milkshake. Chocolate. As big as you can make it.”

Grinning at me, the waitress slipped her notepad in her pocket. “I’ll meet you up front with your to-go bag.”

On the walk back to the office, I handed over the pie, the cheeseburger, the fish and chips, and the salad to the homeless guy. The chocolate milkshake I kept for myself, even though my appetite, like any feelings I might have harbored for Brent, had fizzled entirely.

TEN

“Never look a gift horse or a politician in the eye.

Both of ’em usually want something you aren’t willing to give.”

—MIMI