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“What did he say to you?” Jane asked, her eyes narrowed. It was annoying sometimes how well she could read me.
“It’s not important, okay?”
I lifted my eyes to Grant quickly before I took a sip of the drink Jane had handed me.
“Do you want to know what it looked like from the outside?” Hollis asked.
“No. But I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway,” I said.
“He was manipulative and controlling, Theresa. Always telling you what to wear and policing where you were all the damn time. You couldn’t even come over to my house for an hour without him texting you five or six different times.”
“I know,” I said.
“And remember that time when I finally got you out of the apartment?” Jane asked. “When we went dancing that night at the studio?”
“I do,” I said.
“Yeah. Ike made you change your outfit three times because he didn’t like what you were wearing, and he wasn’t even going with us, Theresa. It was insane.”
“He did that?” Grant asked.
I groaned as I threw back the rest of my drink. “It wasn’t that he made me, it was that I didn’t want to fight about it,” I said, hating how pathetic it all sounded.
“He’s abusive, and I’m glad you’re finally away from him,” Hollis said.
“Yeah, well. I’m going to have to find a new place to stay. And I’ll have to separate our phone bills and divvy up credit card debt with him. We were together for eight years. Our lives were intertwined,” I said.
“And we’ll help you with all of that,” Jane said.
“Yeah, and if you need to, you can move in with me,” Hollis offered.
“You guys must think I’m completely incompetent when it comes to taking care of myself,” I said.
“No, but you did stay with a man who openly manipulated and controlled you for eight years,” Jane said.
“And if I recall correctly, you were in his corner all throughout high school,” I said bitterly.
“Because he wasn’t an asshole in high school,” Jane said.
“Can we just stop? Look, I’m sorry. Grant, it’s great you’re back in town. But I didn’t realize you were coming to this little pow-wow of ours. And I’m not—”
The waitress set another drink in front of me. I gulped it down before she even left the table.
“So can we talk about something else? Anything else?” I asked. “I feel like an idiot for not doing something about this sooner. And since Grant is here, we should find out what’s been going on in his life since Dad chased him out of our house.”
I knew the bitterness was heavy in my voice, but I didn’t care. The alcohol was loosening my lips, and I had no intentions of playing down how good it was to be in Grant’s presence again. If this was a fresh start, then I wanted to keep moving forward.
“Why are you here anyway?” Jane asked.
“Hollis invited me,” Grant said.
“No, I mean why are you back in town?”
“He needed a break from his business,” Hollis said. “Apparently, running your own bajillion-dollar construction conglomerate gets rough.”
My eyes fluttered up to Grant’s, and he panned his gaze over to mine.
“You have your own business?” I asked.
