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I open the door and turn around without a word. I wait until Kayden follows me in, seeming to fill up the entire house with his presence, before I grab the pizza box, open the lid, and shove it temptingly in Kayden’s face.
“Look,” I say in a syrupy voice. “I ordered pizza. Do you want a piece?” I know full well that Kayden doesn’t eat pizza. His eyes search my face, then flick to the box before coming back up.
“That shit goes straight to my hips,” he says in the kind of high-pitched old lady voice that he sometimes likes to use because I wasn’t kidding about Kayden and drama. He’s a very good actor. Or at least he was, back in college.
Well, two can play at that. I’m supposed to be happy and comfortable in my life. That’s the new plan anyway, so I set the box down on the table and grab a slice. I bring it to my nose, sniff hard, and sigh like the slice could produce a spontaneous orgasm. Or, well, more like a foodgasm because they are a real thing, and nobody should underestimate the power of a delicious pizza as a foodgasm inducer. Then, I bend the slice in half, so it resembles a mouth, and I make it talk with my hand.
“What? Denying me?” I squawk. I kind of sound like a sick parrot. “How dare you? I’m sooooo yummy! You won’t be able to hold out for long!”
Kayden rolls his eyes. “You probably laced it with arsenic.”
“Yeah, totally.” I lick the piece slowly, running my tongue along the greasy surface. “Arsenic never tasted so good.”
“You probably only laced a few of the pieces. Just the ones that were meant for me.”
With a grin, I grab the box and run my tongue over the whole thing in a circle. “Nope,” I say, setting it down. “No arsenic.”
“Well…”
“You know what? I’ve changed my mind. You snooze, you lose. And I’m not entirely sure what you’re going to cook with no groceries in there.” I bat my eyes charmingly. “Enjoy your shower,” I gloat as I take my pizza box and go waltzing off down the hall.
I don’t slam my door. The new Rea, who is ultra-happy with her life and has zero room for regrets of the Kayden variety, does not slam doors. Instead, the new Rea sits on her bed and has a foodgasm or three as she eats the entire pizza. It’s medium-sized, and the medium from this place is small. So, I don’t need no judgment from nobody for eating the whole lot. The new Rea does not do that, and the new Rea also doesn’t care that the shower starts up a few minutes later. The new Rea doesn’t imagine Kayden in there, wet and naked, nipples tight, abs tight, buttocks tight, other things…well…um…the new Rea doesn’t go there. The new Rea also doesn’t go running out of the bedroom the second she hears Kayden’s steps heading out and the front door closing tightly. But the new Rea does still check her phone before sighing with both annoyance and a strange amount of satisfaction when she sees that another two thousand dollars just got deposited into her checking account. Double for the shower and none for the dinner because there was no cooking.
That’s right. I’m the new me, and Sadie’s plan is going to work. I’m going to rock my life the way I’ve never rocked it before. I’m going to rock it so hard that I might just attract a geologist or a band. Yeah, that’s right.
The new me doesn’t exit the room and go straight to the bathroom. Oh no. The new me is NEVER going to sniff the towel Kayden may have just used to wipe his entire body down. Heck to the no. I mean, that would just be creepy, right? The old Rea didn’t do that either, but the old Rea might have been tempted, though.
I make it as far as the kitchen before I sink down into one of the chairs and let out a sigh that’s large, long, and breathy enough to blow out the window right in front of me. I honestly really don’t know if I’m up for this, as it’s hard to think about myself in the third person. It’s tough to divide myself into my old self and new self, and it’s not easy to implement a plan my heart isn’t in because my heart is still trapped somewhere in the past to the tune of eight years ago.
I can only imagine what Kayden would do if he found out the real reason I had to break up with him. I can also just imagine what would happen between us—flames. Think lab explosion with toxic chemicals, uncontained fire, and epic burns down here. That’s what would happen. Not because we’re toxic for each other. In fact, we were always amazing together. I knew right from the start that Kayden was the one person in the world I could see myself spending the rest of my life with, doing all the sappy romantic stuff and all the hard stuff, maybe even having some babies one day.
