Page 138 of Suite 7

Two missed calls. Six unanswered texts.

The timestamps tell the whole story. Starting at six-thirty. Escalating. The gap between messages getting shorter. And then the resignation — the pivot to the second option because the first had gone silent.

Never mind, I’ll call Kane instead.

“Oh god.” Her voice breaks. Hand pressed over her mouth. “Oh god, she needed me.”

“Yeah.”

“I told myself it was about work.” A tear rolls down her cheek as she’s staring at the messages. “But that’s a lie. I turned it off because I knew she’d call and I couldn’t listen to her plan your future with someone else and act like that was fine. I was protecting myself.”

She looks up at me. She doesn’t look away from what she’s saying. That’s the part that gets me. “I chose an uncomfortable conversation over being there for my best friend when she actually needed me. What kind of person does that?”

I pull her up onto the couch, into my arms. She comes without resistance, curling against me, and I hold her while she cries.

“This is the cost,” she whispers. “This is what we’re doing to her.”

“I know.”

We sit in silence.

“Lisa called me at the bar,” I say after a while.

She goes still. “And?”

“She asked if I was actually interested or if she should tell Sloane to stop. I told her the truth — that I’m seeing someone. That I should have said something sooner.”

Vera pulls back to look at me. “How did she take it?”

“Graciously.”

She wipes her eyes and looks back at the screen. At Sloane’s texts sitting there, the timestamps a quiet record of what tonight cost.

“So when?” Her voice is small. “When are we going to tell her?”

“This weekend.”

Her eyes widen slightly.

“This weekend,” she repeats.

“Yes.” I hold her gaze. “You go to Sunday brunch with her like any other week. I show up an hour in.”

She goes still. I watch her take the weight of it — the real day, the real table, the real face across it. Then she nods.

“Okay. This weekend.”

The silence that follows settles between us.

“We both know how badly this is going to hurt her,” she whispers.

“Yes.”

My hands tighten on hers.

“Yes.”

She closes her eyes. Leans into me. I press my lips to her hair and hold her, and we sit together in the dark with the weight of what we’ve done and the knowledge that it ends this weekend.