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I could like this man, I thought. This could be something new and different. It could be the world I’d dreamed of as a child, rather than the cold, heartless world I’d stepped into. Maybe everything I’d once believed wasn’t a lie.
* * *
I wason some sort of adrenaline high as I got off the subway and headed in the direction of my apartment, and it didn’t even crash when my phone began to ring and I saw it was my sister. I debated about sending her to voicemail, but I’d been avoiding her since the yoga asshole because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep my temper in check.
But right now, I felt too good.
“Hello.”
“Are you busy?” she asked.
“Just got back from a meeting,” I told her. I intended on saying where I had been, but the words fizzled at the end of my tongue, and I realized I was too afraid to jinx it. And, oddly, the only person I trusted to know that I was actually going to try was Forrest.
And I doubted Joy would understand that.
“Is everything okay?”
“Apart from your silent treatment?” she said, and I sighed softly, slowing my pace.
“I wasn’t giving you the silent treatment. It’s been busy, and—”
“And you didn’t want to tell me what Ever did,” she finished for me, her voice soft and apologetic.
I came to a stop, leaning against frigid brick, out of the way of people trying like hell to get to where they were going. “What’s his real name? I know it’s not Ever.”
She laughed. “I think it’s something like…Mike, maybe?”
That figured. “So he told you, then?”
“Actually,” she said slowly, “he’s apparently got kind of a reputation. I guess the only reason he said yes was because he thought you had money. The only photos I had of you were from back in London.”
Ah.Well.
“I figured when I didn’t hear from you,” she went on, “it either went really well or really awful.”
“He took me to some high-end restaurant, then ghosted the date right before they dropped off the bill,” I told her. I braced myself as a particularly cruel gust of wind hit me full in the face, and I turned my collar up against it. My lips felt frozen, my words slurred by the winter air. “I didn’t see it coming. Maybe I should have, but he was nice. The entire time…he wasnice.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Her words were so soft I had to strain to hear them, and a small part of me wanted to assuage her guilt, but I was so tired of doing that. I was so tired of sacrificing my comfort and my dignity to make others feel better when they fucked up.
“You don’t have to say anything, but I’d appreciate you not setting me up again.”
She let out a tight laugh. “Yeah. I don’t have a great track record, do I?”
That made me smile just a bit. “No. But it’s okay. Like I said before, I don’t need to be with someone. I’m still, you know, raw inside. Things still hurt.”
“I get that. I just…I don’t understand why,” she told me. “That guy treated you like shit since you were a teenager. Then he just threw you out. How can it still hurt?”
“Because I don’t get a say in how it made me feel,” I said, trying not to let my anger get the better of me. “Just because he was a bad person doesn’t mean I didn’t spend six years of my life trying to love him. It doesn’t switch off just because it’s over.”
Her silence told me she didn’t get it, and her history told me she never would. Before she met Georgie, she’d dated casually. She’d never felt heartbreak. She’d never experienced the soul-crushing sensation of having her entire life rearranged against her will. At least, not since our parents died, and that grief was not the same.
“Look, Jules…”
“Can we talk about this later?” I said in a rush. I didn’t want to spiral. I was still feeling little bursts and tiny sparks of the courage I thought I’d lost when Nicolai torched my life. I didn’t want to lose it. I wanted to take it home and cradle it, to use it to find the soul I knew was hiding somewhere in the shadows.
I wanted to create something big and beautiful and worth hearing.
“Yeah, I…that’s fine,” she said, sounding slightly annoyed. “I just wanted to see what day you were coming over so I can get things ready.”
