“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” More sniffling from Jenna.
“Yeah, me neither, Cupcake. I do not give a shit about you or your terrible decisions.”
“I’ll take you back to RDC. We’re done for the day. I need to go to the office and…” She makes a helpless gesture.
“Pack up your things and say goodbye to your coworkers? That sympathetic tone in my voice? It’s false, by the way.”
The tears well up in Jenna’s eyes.
“You cry like a comic book character. Now, don’t feel bad, Cupcake. You weren’t going to last the week. Failure was inevitable.”
I pick up her phone to type in an address.
“What the… Hey!” She snatches it from me.
Nathan is calling. On the screen, his profile picture shows a pale man—young, beer gut, thinning hair. His shoes and off-the-rack suit scream finance start-up bro.
The ring is delayed, but then it blares through the car speakers.
Jenna answers the call, her voice catching on her fiancé’s name.
“He wasn’t dead.” She lets out a sob then slaps her hand over her mouth.
“You know I don’t like it when you get so emotional, Jelly Bean.”
The man’s voice is nasally. Probably snorts Adderall.
“Sorry, Nathan.”
Something in me hates the way she makes herself smaller for him, shrinking in on herself in the driver’s seat.
“I’m glad I didn’t waste my time on the funeral, then.” He sounds uninterested that his fiancée is a wreck in front of him.
“Did you want to grab dinner?”
It kills me how hopeful she sounds.
“Nah, can’t, Jelly Bean. Just wanted to see when you were planning on being home.”
Jenna gives me a wide-eyed look.
I point at the map on the screen telling her to turn right.
“I’ll be late. Are you picking up dinner?”
“Uh…” Nathan seems offended that someone would dare suggest he bring a meal to his fiancée, who works late. “Why can’t you get dinner at your office?”
“It’s fine, never mind,” Jenna says, quickly backtracking.
It’s decided. I hate Nathan. Nathan has to go.
“He’s not calling you Jelly Bean because of your clit, is he?” I ask her when the call ends.
“You are the worst human being I have ever met.”
“Please. You have a menagerie of exes that are worse than me.”
“Just order whatever you want,”I tell Jenna when she follows me into the restaurant. I hand her Salinger’s credit card, which I stole from his study a few days ago.
