AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’s not wrong. I swallow the ibuprofen down and finish the rest of the water. She kneels on the foot of the bed so gingerly, as if she needs to have her feet free to dash off at any moment. Or, perhaps more likely, to visit her new husband.
“You should be with Dar right now,” I say, nodding at the door.
She flaps her hand. “He’s golfing. He stopped by for coffee and then went out on the course with Andrew.”
“Don’t you have a honeymoon to go on or something?”
She lifts a shoulder. “Not until next weekend.”
I frown and shift up the bed, leaning against the headboard. “I thought you left today so you could be toes in the sand by Monday morning?”
She shrugs again and presses a tight-lipped smile to her face.
“There are better places to be right now.”
“Edie—”
“Faye.” Just like that, her sweet, lilting tone flips on its head, brokering no argument. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
We’re quiet for another moment as the phone in her hands, my phone, buzzes. She looks at it and puts it right back where it belongs.
“Do I even want to know?” I ask.
She hesitates. “You have a voice mail—”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“I know.”
“I’m sure he’ll have excuses, but even if there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for what I saw—”
“Which there very well could be—”
“I don’t want to hear it. Not yet. I just… withher?” My stomach churns, reliving the moment I saw them together last night. “He knows about her. It’s such a betrayal, I…”
She sighs and nods. Her hand curves around my knee and she squeezes.
“I know, love. I understand.”
I let my head fall back against the curve of the headboard, relishing in the way the wood digs into just the right spot along my tense neck. But still, even though I thought we were done talking about this, Edie watches me, as if waiting for me to ask her what else she wants to talk about.
“Well?” I ask, arching an eyebrow.
“You had a voice mail—”
I raise my hand, but she shakes her head.
“It’s not from him.” She doesn’t say his name, and I feel my heart crack just a bit more, that so quickly he went from consuming my heart to causing its ruin.
“Who, then?”
“Lou-lah? Is she your boss?” She chews on her lower lip and I widen my eyes.
“Lule? Yeah,” I say, reaching for the phone. She hesitates. “Is she okay? She knows where I am and that I’ll be back to work on Monday.”
She nods and then passes me the phone, screen down.
“She’s okay, everyone is fine. But it seems there’s been a fire.”
