“Yeah, we all know him. You better leave.”
“I want him out,” I said. “I want him gone. I don’t want him and his dumb sunglasses in my apartment again!”
“You broke those, so you don’t have to worry about it.”
“I want him out,” I repeated. “I’m done. It took me this long but I finally see what everyone else did. My parents hate him. My ninety-six-year-old grandma once said that she wished for his death and she meant it, too. My friends in college, my friends in law school—”
“You’re a lawyer?” He sounded doubtful. “Sweetheart, you’ve got to get out of here. Now.”
“Don’t call me that! I’m done with being anyone’s sweetheart,” I told him. I shook my head and tried to think of what I should do about this, and I did come up with an idea…it involved this large bouncer. “How much for your services?” I asked.
He eyed me. “For you, no charge. I’m off at two. You said you have an apartment, but I don’t want to deal with that asshole bothering us. Once I strip, I’m not in the mood to fight.”
“Strip…” I stared at him.
“I can keep my shirt and shoes on, if you don’t mind that. Most women get offended.”
“What…oh, no! I wasn’t asking you to come over for sex. I’m not going to have sex with you!”
“No? Then what the hell do you want?”
I told him, and he did agree. And as for Dax? I wiped more tears from my cheeks. Those were the last ones, because I was going to stop crying over him. He wasn’t worth it.
Chapter 2
Ihad to stop crying. He wasn’t worth it.
“That’s all I have for the Four-Squared project,” Octavia stated, and I snapped to attention.
“What about zoning?” I asked. “What’s happening there?”
“I was getting to that, Camille,” she informed me, although she had just closed the file. “I’m going before the Kent County commission on…” She checked her laptop. “Next Tuesday at four. Rashelle, you’ll come with.”
Rashelle had been staring at her own laptop but now she looked first at Octavia, and then at me. “Next Tuesday?” she echoed. “It’s not on the calendar.”
Octavia stopped typing and also looked up. “Is there a problem?”
“Yeah, I have a wedding dress fitting that afternoon,” our paralegal answered.
A wedding. Rashelle was getting married, but as for me? Oh, no. I had to stop this! I was at work.
“If I drive out to West Michigan with you, I’ll miss it,” she explained.
“You can change your appointment.” Octavia went back to typing. She did it by pecking one key at a time so it took forever.
Rashelle turned again to me and I unclenched my teeth from the inside of my cheek, which I’d been biting so that the pain would distract me from thoughts of my ex. He really was my ex, and as my mom had told me a hundred times already since the ring return, he really wasn’t worth it. I repeated her words in my mind as I tried to pull myself together. He was not worth it and I was not going to cry at work, not here in this staff meeting and not in my glass-walled office where everyone could see. I was not going to cry!
“I feel like you should already know this, Rashelle, but your job comes before shopping,” Octavia mentioned as she searched for a letter on her keyboard, and I finally did step in.
“No, she’d not going shopping. This is a dress fitting,” I said, shaking my head. “Her wedding is too soon to reschedule. It’s fine,” I told Rashelle.
Octavia’s lip curled. I was already aware of what she thought about weddings, as were the rest of the people in this office. When she’d first seen Rashelle’s ring, she had told everyone that our society’s obsession with couple-hood resulted in a colossal waste of time and money. She lectured about how traditional marriage had been invented by the Founding Fathers as a way tosuppress women’s rights in our new country, and she’d refused to believe that her argument was historically inaccurate. She had advised us all that it was a better move, both emotionally and financially, to remain single.
My fingers clenched in my lap. I was single. My ring was gone and so was Dax.
“Well, I guess that Munir can come with me instead,” she said, and he raised his hand like he was in elementary school. “You’ll drive, and just FYI, there’s no compensation for gas,” she told him next, but when he also looked over at me, I shook my head again. We would figure it out later.
After our meeting ended, we all went back to our offices. Rashelle followed me into mine and shut the glass door behind herself. “Thank you,” she said. “I thought that Octavia would make me miss my fitting.”
