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“I mean, what is going on?” he said, still behind me because I wouldn’t look at him. This lovely, uptight rant was making my hangover headache pound in my temples. “This isn’t you. Gina thinks you’re doing this just to get back at me, and I think she’s right.”
That made me turn around. “I do not,” I said, my voice low and more dangerous than I’d ever heard it, “give a shit what Gina thinks. Is that clear?”
Josh looked startled, but he shook his head. “I’m sorry about what happened,” he said. “I already said that. But Evie, there’s no reason to go around putting on an act—”
“Maybe it isn’t an act.” The microwave beeped, and I turned around and yanked my mug from it, throwing my tea bag into the hot water. I had no lunch with me, so this would basically be my sustenance for the day, as gross as it was. “Maybe this is the way I am. You just never saw it.”
“Evie, come on. We dated for four months. I know you pretty well.”
I thought about the girl who’d been so eager to go out with him, so happy she’d been picked. It had been a sign, I was sure, that I was putting my past behind me. That I was finally worth something. I thought about that now—only four months ago—and it made me feel faintly sick. Why had I thought that? That a clean-cut guy, a nice boyfriend, would change who I was for the better? How completely deluded had I been?
“No,” I said to Josh. “I don’t think you know me at all.”
He was watching me, his expression hard to read past the bruises on his face. But it looked a little like disdain. And I wanted to use my newfound fighting skills and punch that expression right off him.
“Evie, come on,” he said. “Get real.” Like he knew everything. Every fucking thing.
“This is real,” I said. “You saw that text. I am…” I forced the words out. “I amsleeping withNick Mason. What do you think of that?”
Technically, it was true. We’d slept. Quite comfortably. Me, and Nick, and Nick’s gorgeous butt in his boxer briefs. And the other parts I’d felt when I’d jumped on him this morning. Because when I was in bed with a hot bad boy, that’s what I did. I slept, because I was too chicken to do what I wanted.
“Since when?” Josh snapped, his cheekbones going red with anger.
Oh, now I had him. “Since that first night,” I lied, inspired. “When I left with him. And every night since. We can’t keep our hands off each other. We’re in bed all the time. I have so many orgasms I can barely stand it.”
“So that’s it?” Josh said. “You just jumped into bed with some dirtbag? You think you’re that kind of girl?”
The hypocrisy of it—the absolute, utter hypocrisy of Josh disapproving of my fictional sex life after cheating on me—made me gape at him for a second. I always knew there was a double standard, but I’d never seen it this close. “What kind of girl do you mean?” I said. “Sexy? A girl who likes hot guys? A girl who picks her own sex partners? A girl withspark?”
“I hope you don’t think he’s marriage material,” Josh said. “Ask any of the girls he’s dumped. He’s the farthest thing from it. You’re fooling yourself, Evie.”
“I am not looking for marriage material!” I shouted. Dimly, I thought that everyone in the office could probably hear us. But I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“Are you kidding?” Josh shot back. “It’s written all over you. I had to meet your mother the first week. We were practically picking out venues and rings. I had to go looking just so I could feel alive again. And the next day you meet Mason, and now you come to work dressed like a slut.”
That was when I threw the tea cup at him, and watched the hot water splash all over the wall.
ELEVEN
Evie
They sent me home.Take some personal time,my manager said.Take next week off. Rethink things, Evie, before you come back.
It was said like they cared, but I knew what it was—a warning. I was almost-fired.Get your shit together, or don’t come back.That was the message.
They didn’t send Josh home.
Tears burned behind my eyes. I swallowed them. I went home to my apartment, stripped my clothes off, and took a long, hot shower. Then I put on a cami and a pair of boxer shorts and crawled into bed. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling and thinking.
You fucked it up, Evie. Again.
This was exactly like the first time I’d screwed up my life. The first two times, actually. The first was when I’d crashed and burned in high school, failing so many classes that I had to go to summer school my final two years to barely scrape by. The second time was when my mother had scrimped and saved to send me to college, and I’d promptly flunked out after two semesters. Yeah, that was my stellar past.
I had no college degree, no nothing. After the second flame-out, I’d worked a menial job in a bakery for three years, getting up at four a.m. to bake before the place opened at six. It didn’t matter that I actually liked baking—it wasn’t a career job. It was minimum wage and demeaning. Other people my age were doing things, traveling, getting degrees, finding partners, putting their lives together, and I’d just baked while striking out with boyfriend after boyfriend. Worse, I’d thrown my mother’s hard-earned money down the drain, and I’d probably disappointed my dad from the grave, too. If there was a poster girl for going nowhere fast, I was her.
The bank job had changed that. It had been my big break, when they took a chance on me. Nice people, regular hours, high heels, more money. Possible promotion, even. And then, once I started working there, I’d met Josh, and he’d changed it, too. A good job and a good boyfriend—the new, improved me thought I’d finally been on track.
Now I’d lost both. The boyfriend, for sure, and I wasn’t an idiot. I knew that if I still had my job, it wouldn’t be for long.
