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I stepped up and ordered a latte for myself, and a mocha and chocolate croissant for Brooke. She was supposed to meet me down here, so we could enjoy a break away from the office, but she was finishing up. I craved her presence now.
I found a spot toward the back that wasn’t overrun with people. I tried to get past pictures of her and her new husband, mostly because I wanted to see something else. But it was wall-to-wall photos of her and congratulation posts. Stephanie had loved posting about our relationship online. I always let her do it because it seemed to make her happy, and this new man was no different.
I can’t believe I married my best friend in such a beautiful place, one of her captions read.I love you, Darren.
I scoffed at the gushing post despite myself and fell down a rabbit hole looking up Darren, purely out of curiosity. He looked a little like me and worked at an investment firm. He was older than her by a few years. Stable. Boring. They looked happy, but then again, so did we back when we were together.
Stephanie had deleted all the photos of us, including all the posts she made about our engagement, but I could have sworn she’d reused some of the captions from those posts for the ones with Darren.
“Hey,” Brooke said, planting a kiss on my temple. “Thanks for the coffee. Oh, and the croissant!”
She sat down and got a good look at me, the good nature falling from her face.
“My ex got married,” I said before she asked. “Eloped. On the beach.”
“Oh, Chase.” Brooke’s shoulders sagged. “I’m so sorry. That’s the worst feeling.”
“That’s the thing. I’m not upset at all.” I put my phone face down on the table. “I expected to feel worse. I’m just confused about how fast this happened, given how things were between us when we were engaged, and grateful that I never ended up marrying her.”
“So it was sudden?” Brooke asked, taking a sip of her coffee.
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Now I’m getting way more of her than I ever want to see again. Either everyone else I follow is slacking on their posts, or she’s going absolutely insane posting. My feed is all her. Or at least it feels that way.”
“Can I see them?” Brooke asked. She always managed to sound so gentle, and it made me bend to her will every time. I pulled up Instagram and showed her Stephanie’s profile.
I could have blocked her. But I wanted to take the high road, and so I decide to separate from her amicably with no drama.
Her eyes widened as she scrolled through the pictures, her eyebrows creeping up, too. What was going through her head? Finally, she put the phone face down again.
“Well, that’s obnoxious as fuck,” she said. Her blunt tone made me snort. “Those captions! It’s like she played Mad-libs with a cheesy Hallmark card. I feel like anybody who posts that much about how happy they are is usually hiding their deep-seeded unhappiness. Sorry. I’m being harsh, aren’t I?”
“It’s fine. I felt the same way. Creativity was never her strong suit.”
“If it makes you feel any better, Dane did the same thing with his new pregnant fiancée, except his posts had typos all over the place, and the photos looked like they’d been taken on a flip phone from 2007.”
She laughed, but the undercurrent of pain was still there. I took her hand in mine and squeezed it. I fucking hated her ex for continuing to hurt her like this. I’d dealt with that same pain of seeing the person you used to love being happy without you, and it wasn’t something I ever wanted to revisit.
“I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s block our exes on social media. We can forget about the people that made us unhappy, and only focus on the people in our lives that bring us joy.”
“I love that idea,” she replied, and kissed me with a soft brush of her lips against mine.
My feelings for Brooke were entirely different than the ones I’d had for Stephanie years ago. They were much more intense and real, like we were connecting as who we actually were instead of the artificial front we put up. But that didn’t mean that we couldn’t end up in the same place as I ended up in with Stephanie—abruptly splitting because I’d missed every flag Brooke was putting out there. I wasn’t sure if that was ever going to happen, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to find out.
I didn’t want to feel the same tumultuous storm inside of my gut ever again.
I glanced at Brooke, who was still holding onto one hand while she sipped her latte with the other. I cared about her a lot. I truly did. But I couldn’t let myself fall any more than I already was. I had to create some space, at least subtly. It was the best choice for all of us.
CHAPTER23
Brooke
Lucas’s dining table had become as familiar as my own apartment’s over the past few weeks. I was almost always at Lucas’s at this point, except for a few random days during the week, especially when we got caught up with work. It was addictive, having more responsibilities. Being an executive assistant was far from easy, but I’d never been in charge of so much before.
While I loved it, moments like tonight were overwhelming. I looked at the big file that Chase’s private investigator had sent over, my head spinning at its sheer length. The PI had dug up a lot on Trevor to the point where it was a little terrifying. Even though we’d gotten rid of all the security staff who were working alongside Trevor, we wanted to get to the root of why he was doing what he was doing.
“This is going to take a century to go through,” I said to Lucas. The other two had plans—Hunter had them with his mother, and Chase had to meet with a contractor who was going to do upgrades on his house. “I wish we had the others.”
“We can get through this,” he said with his usual smile. “Think of it as a soap opera.”
