AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Oh, yeah—she’s a lawyer. A super-successful lawyer on partner track with her own office and an assistant to do all the crap I’m stuck doing as my actual job.
“That’s amazing,” I manage to reply.
“So,” Nadia says, gesturing at Henri. He wags his tail, even though I told him the entire story last summer. “You’re still… ?”
“Working as a personal assistant. Yep.”
“That’s great,” she says, in the exact tone of voice that someone would say, ‘Poor thing.’
I flinch. The problem with your boyfriend leaving you for your best friend is that both people know the worst of you. They both knew that I couldn’t seem to find my way out of this maze of never-ending PA jobs. They’d both seen me vent, cry, retrace the steps of how I ended up stuck here.
“So, listen,” Nadia says, at the same moment I say,
“Well, I better—”
She’s adjusted her hands to discretely hide the condoms, and something glitters in the overhead light. A square-cut diamond, specifically.
They’re engaged?
The shampoo aisle starts to spin, and I’m hit with a sudden wave of gulping nausea.
He proposed. Miles, the man who told me that marriage was an archaic social construct. The man who took a full year to so much as clear me a sock drawer at his place. The man so cynical that he became a divorce lawyer—has asked Nadia to marry him. After less than a year?!
Nadia sees me gawking at the ring. “I know, right?” She gives a trilling laugh, waggling her fingers. “Miles surprised the heck out of me with this whole big to-do. My parents and brother flew in! They were waiting at the restaurant where we had our first official date, and… yeah! Whirlwind!”
I’ve been a personal assistant in Manhattan for six years. Believe me when I say my career has prepared me to poker face my way through some truly horrifying interactions. Still, it takes super-human effort for me to plaster a smile to my face. “I’m really happy for you,” I say through gritted teeth.
“That issosweet. You know,” Nadia says. “One of my girlfriends told me you wouldn’t take the news well. And I was like… You don’t know Grace. Shegetsit.”
I get that the line between cheating and rebounding is paper thin, and I’m not convinced it wasn’t repeatedly crossed.
I get in the grand, whirlwind love story of their lives, I’m just roadkill on the side of the street.
“Oh, mhmm.” I swallow back the bile. “Definitely get it.”
“I know!” Nadia says, breezing past my sarcasm. “Like, clearly you and Miles weren’t a fit. But he and I both had so much in common that it led us to you, and then that led us together!”
I’m still amazed that after everything, this is really the story in Nadia’s mind. It’s probably on her wedding website. “Yeah.” I agree grimly. “You two are quite a pair.”
She presses one diamond-encrusted hand to her heart. “Thank you, Grace.”
If I have to stand here a moment longer, my fake-happy act will slip into full-on sobbing, so I start to back away. “I should get going. Places to go, people to see!”
Better hexes to devise.
“Have fun!” Nadia calls after me. “Let’s do lunch!”
Outside,I make a beeline toward the Bassingers’ place, trying to shake the horror of that surprise reunion. I mean, I understand that even in a city of millions, a meeting was inevitable one of these days, but did it really have to be tonight?
I’ve been telling myself I’ve moved on from Miles and Nadia, and I mostly have, but that doesn’t mean seeing that ring wasn’t salt in the wound. What I need right now is to shampoo a dog, drink half a bottle of wine, and ponder the state of my existence, but I’m right outside the townhouse when my phone buzzes. I check the caller and wince. Bret, the Bassingers’ miserable tech-bro son.
“Hello? I answer reluctantly.
“Yeah, I’m gonna need a cake delivered to my dinner tonight,” Bret says, instead of hello. “Gluten- and dairy-free.‘Kay?”
Not‘Kay.
Technically, I shouldn’t even work for Bret. But he moved back in with his parents after drinking his way through business school and set about treating everyone like his own personal staff. He has his laundry sent out, and then he complains about the way his shirts are starched. He eats meals from their personal chef and complains that the Tuscan Roast Pork doesn’t taste like it did in Tuscany.
