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“Maybe you should ask her yourself?” I answer his question with a question.
In the last five years, Jude hasn’t once brought up his ex-girlfriend. I refuse to believe he suddenly gives a damn about her feelings in this whole equation.
“I doubt she’d want to hear from me,” he says, pausing as if he hopes I’ll disagree.
“A little late to start giving a shit about her, don’t you think?” As his oldest and closest friend, I’ve always reserved the right to be brutally honest with him. Then again, I don’t tend to mince words with anyone. Only telling people what they want to hear involves mental gymnastics that I don’t have the time or energy for.
It’s one of the reasons I spent the entire three years of their relationship opining about how wrong they were for each other every chance I got—which wasn’t often in the grand scheme of things. They were together twenty-four-seven, three-sixty-five, minus a handful of days here and there. The three of us even lived together our senior year in a two bedroom off-campus apartment Jude’s father rented for us. Every day I’d come home from class, there’d be a flickering floral candle on the kitchen island, fluffed and carefully arranged sofa pillows, and some soft music playing from a Bluetooth speaker. I never admitted it to either of them, but I didn’t hate that part of the arrangement. It beat the spilled-beer-and-gym-bag scented bachelor pad we had the year before.
“What, just because I dumped her means I can’t still care about her?” Jude asks.
“That’s exactly what that means.” I opt not to go into detail about the way it all went down. I already went for a jog this morning; no need to take another one down memory lane. “Anyway. I’ve got a meeting in ten. You need anything else?”
Before he can respond, Stassi’s nasally whine fills the background.
“I gotta go,” he says, his voice low. “Let me know if you talk to her again.”
Jude ends the call without giving me a chance to remind him once more that Jovie and I didn’t talk—we messaged. And only because I was asked to. Huge difference. And had Jude not hung up so quickly, I’d have also informed him I have no intentions of continuing that—or any—conversation with her. The tag has been removed and the short-lived incident will be forgotten about soon enough.
Life goes on. It always does.
A knock at my door steals my focus from this nonsense.
“Come in,” I call out.
A second later, in waltzes my law firm’s newest junior partner—Becca. A sultry smile plays across her full mouth as she locks it behind her. I know what she’s thinking. I know what she wants. But now is not the time. That and I’ve been planning to end this fuck-buddy arrangement for weeks now—I just haven’t gotten around to it thanks to a heavy workload.
Becca struts to my side of the desk, perches on the edge, and reaches for my tie.
“Stop.” I lift a hand and lean back.
Her megawatt smile disappears and her vivid emerald gaze turns a shade darker. “What’s wrong? It’s Monday … you said you always like to start your work week with a—”
“—I know what I said.” I slide open my top left drawer, reach inside, and pull out the two items I brought from my apartment this morning.
Lacy crotchless panties the color of midnight.
And a purple toothbrush.
“You left these behind last week.” I slide them toward her.
She laughs through her nose, like she thinks I’m being cute.
“Yeah,” she says, brushing her inky black hair over her shoulder and crossing her legs. “So?”
“The week before, you left a pair of running shoes,” I say. “And the week before that, you left some mascara, hand cream, and a box of tampons.”
She wasn’t even on her period—and I’d have known given the kinds of things we were doing on my kitchen table, my washing machine, and lastly, in my shower.
“You know my rules,” I remind her. I made myself perfectly clear before Becca so much as set a red-bottomed stiletto inside my apartment.
“Oh, come on.” She runs her palms over my shoulders. “You’re so tense … you just need to lighten up a bit. You need a release.”
“I’m good.”
“I thought we were having fun?” Her pretty face tilts to the side as she feigns a pout.
“We were,” I say. “Until you started leaving your shit all over my place.”
Becca wastes no time rising from my desk. She smooths her hands down her blouse before tugging her skirt back into place.
“I guess you weren’t lying,” she says under her breath. “You really are a coldhearted bastard.”
I lift my palms in a sorry-not-sorry sort of way as I watch her move for the door.
“I tried to warn you,” I say as she leaves in a huff.
And I did.
