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“I don't read gossip sites,” I deny, though it isn’t strictly true. The click-bait of Thea’s name is usually too tempting to resist.
“Then let me show you.” Taking out her phone, she taps furiously at it before a harsh, victorious smile overcomes her face. She holds the screen out to me.
I can't explain what happens to me then. The way my heart plummets like a wrecking ball of lead into my stomach. The bitter rage that seeps into my bloodstream and turns it septic.
My jaw is clenched tight in a useless attempt to mask my reaction, my fists white-knuckling at my sides. India's face lights up like a kid on fucking Christmas morning, triumphant and cruel.
“See? It's sad, isn't it? You've spent the last six years pining over your high-school girlfriend and she doesn't think about you at all.”
It takes everything in me to keep my head, to not let the simmering anger inside me swallow my inhibitions and make me do something I'll regret.
Through gritted teeth, I grind out, “I think you should go now, India.”
“I was leaving anyway.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and smirks. “But now you know how it feels to be runner-up in a race you didn't know you were running. The difference between us, though, Cole, is that I know when it's time to move on.”
I watch her as she sashays across the shop, hips swinging from side to side, iced coffee in hand. Confidence has never been a struggle for her and I marvel at how, even in the face of rejection, it doesn't wane even a little. Say what you like about India, but her self-assurance is admirable.
“Oh, I left you some pastries on the workbench. Consider it a parting gift.”
Her exit barely registers. I'm too busy reeling from the conversation that just took place. I'm not sure what it says about me that I'm more affected by the article she showed me than I am about the breakup, but it is what it is.
The ball of rage the headline ignited in me burns hot and furious. So much so that I pick up the wrench I'd been using before and hurl it at the concrete wall. It makes impact with an unsatisfying clink before skidding across the floor somewhere far out of reach.
I'm so blinded by red mist that I don't hear the clicking of feminine footsteps across the shop floor.
“Need this?”
My head snaps up, finding Thea standing in the doorway with the wrench in her hand.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I snarl, the mental images of her screwing that fucking Hollywood prick clouding my judgment and making me lash out.
Thea flinches, one miniscule flicker of shock before she recovers, a mask of composure settling over her infuriatingly beautiful face.
“Came to thank you for the coat,” she says simply. “Evidently, now is a bad time.”
I snort. “No time is a good time when you're around, princess.”
“Right back at you, asshole.” As if she has every right to, she walks farther into the room, running her finger over the surface of the workbench until she reaches the box of pastries India left there. “What are these?”
“Pastries.”
She rolls her eyes. “I see that.”
“Then why ask?”
“They've got raisins in them.”
“And?”
“You hate raisins.”
That one statement, correct as it may be, makes me inexplicably angrier. “What the hell do you know?”
She pulls her shirt—my shirt—around herself and shrugs. “Not much anymore.”
Her voice would sound steady to anyone else in this world, but it doesn't to me. I hear the twinge of pain in it. The sadness. But I don't call her out on it. I don't care enough to.
Some part of me buried deep under my resentment and bitterness snorts and says,yeah, keep telling yourself that, but I ignore it. Denial is more comfortable than admittance. Familiar. Like an old friend who gives crappy advice confidently enough to actually make you take it.
