“Yeah, that’s exactly what you’re doing. I’m sorry, I can’t pull off my usual love-and-hard-truths sandwich so you’re getting the raw-dog truths. Daddy Bread Baker is right. You’re hedging so you don’t get hurt and disappointed.”
“I have a lot going on,” I argued. “More since the ex has resurfaced and I had to explain another one of my disasters to Noah.”
“Okay. All right. Tell me what that cockwobble has done now.”
I dropped my head against the panel of the door and stared up at the pair of chandeliers. “He said we need to talk immediately.”
“Fuck him,” she replied. “Seriously, fuck him. You don’t have to answer simply because he calls.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Are you though? Because it sounds like you’re letting this asshole corrupt your happiness. You can—and should—block his number. Why didn’t we do that to begin with? I don’t know how that slipped through the cracks but do not allow the utter chaos and disrespect of that man to infiltrate your nice, stable situation. Exit him from your life, Shay.”
“I just—” I stopped, pressed my lips together as a dozen justifications burned my tongue. I hated this feeling. I’d hated it last night too. It made me feel small, like I’d crawl for any crumb the ex tossed my way. At the same time, I couldn’t turn him down. “I need an explanation. I need to know what happened.”
“He outed himself as the pissypants bitch we always knew he was,” she replied. “That’s what happened. I hate it and I hate him for it but he isn’t going to float in on a bubble and beg you to believe that he got cold feet. He’s not going to apologize because he isn’t sorry. I don’t think he has the capacity to recognize the harm he did.”
I uncapped my water bottle and drank deeply. Then, “When did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That he was a cockwobbling pissypants bitch.”
She didn’t respond for several heavy seconds. “Tell me what you want me to say here.”
“Just…the truth.” I took another sip. “You don’t feel well enough to hold back anyway.”
“I liked him when you first started dating,” she said. “I mean, I liked him enough. He’s a real estate developer. He’s like all the other guys who make deals. Massively inflated ego, no self-awareness, and an inability to participate in a conversation without dropping a name or dollar amount for no logical reason whatsoever. It was fine.”
“That doesn’t sound fine,” I said with a bitter laugh.
“He’s funny and he could take a joke at his expense,” she conceded. “I could tell him to shut the fuck up and he’d do it but he’d also laugh about him being a pain in the ass. And he’d pick up the bar tab. I had no trouble with any of that.” I heard her open the fridge. “But that was it, you know? That was the whole story. There was nothing else there. Or that was all he’d let anyone see. And that didn’t sit well. You know this because we talked about it a few times.”
I chugged more water.
“There were a few other times when you listened to me about the strange vibes I got from him but there was a point where you decided those weren’t issues for you. And there was a time right after you got engaged when I tried to tell you that I was seeing some major red flags. I remember that chat so clearly. You told me that you’d heard my concerns but you weren’t breaking off the engagement because you knew him better than I did and I just didn’t understand your relationship.”
“We didn’t talk for five days after that.”
“Five days,”she repeated. “I thought we were broken up.”
“That will never happen.” I glanced from the left parlor to the right. It seemed like I hadn’t been here in years. “How…how did you manage being my maid of honor?”
“I did that for you. I wasyourmaid of honor. Foryourwedding. It had nothing to do with him.”
“You were going to let me go through with it.”
She huffed. “It wasn’t my choice to make, doll. If I’d beaten you over the head with criticisms of him, you would’ve stopped talking to me. You would’ve shut me out. So, I chose to stick by you.”
“I don’t deserve you,” I said.
“Of course you do. Don’t tell yourself that sort of bullshit. You deserve me and your Daddy Bread Baker and all the other good things in this world. You don’t deserve that cockwobble intruding on your time, especially if that time involves that man of yours.”
“Noah said the same thing.” I drew in a deep breath, blew it out. “And I know all of this but I feel like I need to do it. I need to find out what he wants and then I can set all the baggage associated with him on fire and push it out to sea.”
“I don’t have the energy to talk you out of this,” Jaime said. “I want to. I probably should. But it feels like there’s a blowtorch in my bladder and I don’t have any convincing words.”
We were silent for a minute. I didn’t want to repeat the cycle of Jaime seeing the situation while I ignored her warnings but I needed to know. I needed an explanation.
