AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do you?” Holli demanded. “Do you really know it’s a shitty time? Your fiancé has eighty bazillion dollars in the bank, but yeah, you really know why I’m stressing out about my girlfriend losing her entire fucking career!”
I tried, and I tried hard, to keep from letting myself go where I always wanted to go in fights. I liked to pick out the things that had always annoyed me about a person and magnify them by a thousand. Then, when the fight faded away, those things stuck out in my memory, and I couldn’t shake them. So, instead of focusing on the fact that Holli could be astoundingly self-centered at times, I decided to take a different approach.
“Look, I know you’re angry, but I’m not the person who created this situation. Deja knew she was putting her job at risk when she started hanging around Gabriella.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong! She’s ruined, professionally. Do you know what your super great boyfriend said to her?” Holli demanded, and inwardly, I cringed. Neil was a nice guy who could be ruthless when it came to his business. “He told her she was never going to work in New York again. Do you have any idea what this is going to do to us?” A mascara-tinted tear rolled down her cheek, and she wiped it away with a curse. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?”
She wasn’t going to the like the answer. I didn’t like the answer, myself. But she was going to figure it out, either way, because it was obvious. “I had to make a choice. I could keep it a secret and have it blow up later and hurt Neil, or I could go to him and tell him. As much as I love you, Holli… I love Neil more. And I chose him.”
“Great. I should have expected this.” She folded her arms, her wide, hurt eyes narrowing to a bitter scowl.
My brain scrolled over all the possible ways I could interpret that statement. None of them were complimentary. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, come on. Your entire life revolves around Neil and his fucking money. How many zeroes are you wearing right now?”
That blow struck me hard.
She saw it, and I thought I saw a flare of regret in her eyes. It vanished, though, when she continued, “I knew it was just a matter of time, and you’d cash in your life for his. You always talked a good game about how independent you were, but you’ve never made your own decisions about anything. You always had to have someone holding your hand.”
She was angry, and she knew how to hurt me. I pushed out of the booth, startling the server who approached with a laminated menu for me. I glared down at Holli, wondering how it was possible to hate someone and miss them so much already. “I made my own decision about this. And it’s been very illuminating.”
I was about three feet from the door when she called after me, “It wasn’t your decision. It’s what you’re getting paid for.”
The glacial cold outside helped freeze my sob in my throat until I made it into the car.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I couldn’t pull it together to go through our building’s lobby—and the last thing I wanted was to become gossip fodder for our apparently weird neighbors—so we rode to the alley with Tony and went up in the service elevator.
Neil had said damned little in the car, something I was both grateful for and resentful of. Was he giving me my space? Did he think I was overreacting? What the fuck was going through his mind?
“You can’t distance yourself from this, you know. You’re a part of it,” I snapped at him as we stepped into the back hall of our apartment.
“I-I’m, um…I’m aware of that.” He looked so confused, and that broke through my misplaced anger.
Whatever I was feeling now, I had to remember that he hadn’t fired Deja to spite me. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know who to be mad at right now.”
“There’s no reason to be mad at anyone.” He didn’t meet my gaze, choosing instead to stare at his shoes. “It’s just a genuinely shit situation. In more ways than one.”
“You liked Deja.” I hadn’t considered how it would affect him. “You’re probably feeling kind of…”
“Betrayed?” He shrugged and gave me a gentle smile. “But there is one bright spot to all of this.”
“That it’s the first time I didn’t try to hide something important from you?” I tr
ied to laugh, but I just started crying again.
Neil took me into his arms and pulled me close.
“What am I going to do?” I bleated into the lapel of his wool trench coat. “She’s my best friend. She’s my only friend.”
At this point in the conversation, I would have expected anyone else to say something like, “I’m your friend,” or “you’re a nice person, you’ll make more friends,” words to insulate themselves from my discomfort. Any other romantic partner might have taken my grief as an indication that I would have rather chosen my friend’s side. All Neil said was, “I know,” and that was all I needed.
We went into the kitchen and I kicked off my shoes and dropped my coat on the table. I wasn’t usually messy while Sue was still on duty, but I was exhausted and beaten down. I headed to the bedroom, shedding my clothes on the way to the master bath, where I pulled my hair into a ponytail and scrubbed my face clean of makeup and tear tracks. When I emerged in my baby blue yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt, I found Neil on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning his sleeves. His jacket was tossed across the duvet His tie dangled around his neck. He looked up and offered me an encouraging grimace. “Why don’t you take a bath? That always makes you feel better.”
“No, I don’t feel like it.” I sat on the end of the bed and listened to the rustle of his shirt as he undressed. It was a calming counterpoint to the turmoil in my brain.
There is a small, fractured piece of me that is always waiting for me to fuck everything up. The only area of my life I never doubted, for one moment, was my friendship with Holli. Was that why it had all shattered around me?
