I kicked the chicken and beans away from my boots and strolled down the stairs like I couldn’t care less.
I was good at acting like I didn’t care.
chapter two
Emme
Today’s Learning Objective:
Students will weigh the lesser of two terrible options.
My best friendpaced in front of me. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Not if I kill him first,” Ben, her fiancé, muttered.
I shifted the hot mug in my hands and stared at the marshmallows bobbing on the surface. Cocoa and Kahlúa, Grace’s wintertime cure-all. In the summer, it was vodka with cherries and pineapple juice. In more than a decade of friendship, these remedies had never failed. Even in the worst of cases, they always took the edge off just enough to get us through.
But a nasty voice in the back of my head said that much sugar wouldn’t do me any favors.
I’d never let myself care what anyone thought about my body before. Not in any significant way. I was short and round. Not plus-sized butsoft. Depending on the clothes, curvy. I’d always drawn a lot of confidence from my full hips and generous bust. I was built a little different from everyone else and I’d convinced myself that made me special.
I had an exquisite rack and I knew it. I loved the way I looked in V-neck sweaters and wrap dresses. I liked being short and I liked being soft, and I liked that I was more Renaissance cherub than anything else.
Yet somewhere in the past year, I’d chosen to accept Teddy’s pointless comments and started hiding in oversized button-downs and loose jeans. I’d allowed him to poke a finger into the squish of my belly and say, “A little less bread, babe.”
He’d snatched up every piece of that confidence and replaced it with…soup.
I groaned to myself. I didn’t think I could find my way through this one. I couldn’t even give myself permission to lift the mug to my mouth.
I didn’t remember driving here. Didn’t remember much after walking away from Teddy. All I could think about was hearing him through the wall, hearing him break me with every squeak of his bedsprings.
And her face. I couldn’t stop seeing her face.
I bet he’d lied to her about me. Called me an unhinged ex. Maybe I was just someone who couldn’t take a hint. He wouldn’t bother to tell her the truth, just like he hadn’t bothered to stop hiding shellfish in everything.
But it wasn’t a one-night thing. It wasn’t an accident. He’d had the ring in his drawer all this time and—how long had it been going on?
“Did you know?” Grace asked Ben. “Because if you knew, I’m going to kill you too.”
He stepped in the path of her pacing, his hands settling on her upper arms. “I know that’s not a serious question, but I want to hear you tell me it’s not a serious question.”
She met his gaze, her chin tipped up in the defiant way Grace met every demand that landed before her. “You never heardanything? No chatter around the firehouse? None of that locker room talk you boys are so fond of?”
His fingers flexed on her arms. “I would’ve told you and you fuckin’ know that, Grace.”
I went back to the mug, the dull heat of it warming my fingers and the shape of the bottom digging into my palm. I didn’t have the stomach to watch them know each other like this.
Once upon a very delusional time, I’d imagined the four of us together forever. Grace would marry Ben this summer, and Teddy and I would eventually get there too. We’d go on couples trips and take turns hosting parties and holidays. We’d find a place in the little suburban neighborhood where they lived and then Grace and I would get pregnant at the same time. Our kids would be friends and our husbands would argue over sports and everything would be good. We’d be good.
I stopped hearing their conversation and I drifted into a mental abyss where the only thing that existed was the mug, the cocoa, the marshmallows. I was alone here. Alone in this dark, deep nothing. And this was where I’d stay because any minute now, Grace would remember?—
“You’re going to have to find a new best man.”
There it was. The kink my hollow little hope of forever would put in her big day.
“I know he’s your friend, but—” She pushed her fingers through her long, dark hair. “He can’t be in the wedding.”
Ben dropped his hands to his hips. “Grace.”
