“I’m sorry.” She reads my silence correctly. “I know this thing with Alex got you down. You love him, and…”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I jump up from my seat. “Who said anything about love?”
“Uh, you…”
My eyes widen in anticipation while my heart is literally jumping out of my chest. Well, not literally, but it sure feels like it. I can’t wait to hear how she’s going to explain this to me.
“You’re going through all this trouble to make Alex jealous,” Elizabeth says. “Why would you do that if you were not in love with him?”
I press a hand to my head, feeling like it is about to explode. Maybe if that happens, I don’t need to worry about any of this anymore. Unless it follows me into the afterlife. That would really suck.
“I’m doing it because I don’t want him to think that he won.”
The words don’t make sense to me even though I’m the one who said them, so I’m assuming they won’t make any sense to her either.
“What would he be winning?”
I really miss the days when it was Elizabeth who was coming to me with her relationship problems. I could set her straight and send her on her way. This really sucks.
“I think you’re looking at this the wrong way,” she continues. “Based on his behavior toward you for the past four years, he might not even care at all whether you’re there or not. And what are you going to do if you show up and Alex is there with another woman? It’ll all be a wash.”
The thought of seeing Alex with another woman is a knife to the heart. In all these years, even though he discarded me quite a few times, I never saw him with someone else in between us getting back together. I never even considered that he might be sleeping around before coming back to me, just like I never considered me being with another man.
“This is crazy.” My throat hurts with the effort I’m making not to cry. “I saw him tonight at the restaurant, and I…”
“Wait, when did you see him? You didn’t say!”
I take a deep breath in and let it out. Alex’s face flashes before my eyes as I relieve our encounter at the restaurant all over again.
“It was at the restaurant where I went to meet with the guy from the fake dating app.”
“Alex was there?” She lets out a breathless gasp of surprise.
“He literally walked over to my table. I prayed for the other guy to show up, Em!”
“Wow! What did he do?”
I let out a long puff of air. “He sat down and bought me dinner.”
Elizabeth busts out laughing. “No, seriously. What did he do? Unless this was a McDonald’s, then I’ll believe you.”
I smile at the giggles she lets out, like I just told her the funniest joke. It’s because I had told her before about what a cheapskate Alex was. He would not buy me dinner unless it was at a cheap place.
“Was it really McDonald’s?” she asks when I don’t say anything.
I prepare to blow her mind. “No, it was at this restaurant in Manhattan…”
“No!” I swear she just slapped her hand against a table. Either that, or she fell off her chair. “Everything is expensive out there!”
That says a lot coming from her considering she’s never hurt for money a day in her life.
“He walked over, sat down, then told me he’d buy me dinner.”
“What did you do?” Elizabeth’s voice is breathless with excitement, finally invested in my situation one hundred percent.
“I told the waiter that I wanted the most expensive steak they had on the menu.”
“Shut up!” She’s laughing so hard, she can’t speak.
