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“Devin?”
She bolts upright, shock on her face. “Hey. Sorry, the door was open.”
Ritz moves around her legs, rubbing and zig-zagging all over the place. You’d think he was happier to see her than me.
“I was just taking out the trash. What are you doing here?” Anger momentarily moves over me, despite her calm demeanor compared to the last time we talked.
“I can’t find my parents’ spare house key. I think I may have left it here.”
I stare at her for a hot minute—she should have realized she didn’t have their key when she moved out. Her face seems to twist in some kind of guilt. Finally, I point to the junk drawer behind her where I keep miscellaneous tools, sauce packets from fast food joints, and all my spare keys.
“Thanks,” she breathes out hard, like the weight of this world has been lifted from her shoulders, then tugs open the drawer, sorting through the items. “I wouldn’t have come here if I knew you were home.”
“I’m usually home on Saturdays.” She should know. Saturdays were our days for vegging out and watching movies.
“Right. What I meant was that I saw pictures of you in Malibu. I assumed you were still there.”
“How’d you—? I only posted a few pictures on my Instagram. Where you blocked me.”
Deer in the headlights. “Yeah,” she mutters. “Then I unblocked you.”
Curious and doubtful, I walk around to the bar and check my phone right away, Dev going back to the drawer and the task at hand. When I search for her name, it still says user not found. I hold up my phone.
“I’m still blocked.”
Her eyes seal shut and she pushes the drawer closed, holding the key she came here for. “So maybe I viewed your profile from an alt account. I don’t remember.”
“You’re watching me from an alt account? Why? What’s going on with you?”
Pressing her hands to the counter and dropping her head, Dev is clearly going through something. “I messed up, okay? I handled everything all wrong.”
“What happened? Did Swain dump you?”
She clicks her tongue. “No. Not exactly.”
“You dump her?”
A shake of the head. Silence between us. Then, “I shouldn’t have done what I did, said the things I said.”
“You cheated on me.”
“I didn’t cheat. Not technically.”
“Oh please,” I groan, rubbing my temples. “Don’t feed me this ‘technically’ garbage.”
“Okay, technically, I cheated on you,” she says, flopping her confession right there on the counter between us while also using air quotes. “But … in my heart, we were already broken up. So it didn’t feel like cheating.”
I stare at her dumbfounded. It’s like having a conversation with a ten-year-old who refuses to have any sort of accountability.
“Well, when I learned on a third-party app that you had been cheating on me, it felt very much like being cheated on.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. But you have to understand how much I was hurting, how isolated I felt from you, how lonely it was living with you at times. And you refused to address the problems we had. My feelings are valid.” Her voice ramps up on the last sentence.
“I’ve never said your feelings weren’t valid. That’s completely unfair.”
With a quick wave in my direction, Devin reverses. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to fight.”
“And to top it off, you called me toxic then told me to fuck off anddie.” I watch as her lips tighten into a straight line and she lowers her head. I wait for whatever shit she’s about to sling my way because I’m not having it.
