I stare back at the guy, who’s slowly unwrapping the muffin with an alarming level of focus.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe he’s just some regular guy who eats confectionery for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, not just for emotional support like the rest of us.
I blow out a breath and shift topics. “Was Damian up when you got up?”
“I don’t know,” Neve says, grabbing a croissant off the cooling tray and breaking it in half like she owns the place. “Didn’t see him. Place was quiet.”
I nod, pretending that doesn’t make something in my chest twitch. I haven’t seen him since I left him in bed this morning. I haven’t spoken to him either. That’s not the norm, which only puts me more on edge. He’s probably angry about last night. Or maybe he’s just not thinking about it at all. Maybe I’m the only one still stuck in this silence.
I glance back toward the window. The guy’s licking cinnamon foam off his thumb and reading a book, not looking my way at all. I’m just in my head, full of too many feelings I haven’t voiced. My silence is loud enough to make shadows out of nothing. I close my eyes for a moment. I’m being paranoid, that’s all. Everything is fine. It’s just my closest friend,Anxiety.
The afternoon rush hits hard. Orders fly in, and I’m sweating through my apron while still trying to keep an eye on WindowGuy. He’s still there. Same table. Same weirdly calm expression. Relaxing like a man on vacation with nowhere else to be. He’s working on that muffin like it’s a three-course meal—or possibly the last one he’ll ever have.
I’d be overthinking it more if I wasn’t elbow-deep in making a cake shaped like a bouquet of dicks. It’s a divorce party order. One of my best sellers. The customer requested them “elegant but threatening,” which honestly, I’m here for.
By the time I finish the last shimmering fondant vein and scrawl“Freedom never tasted so good”across the balls, I can barely keep my eyes open. My head throbs in time with my heartbeat, and my spine has given up its will to stay vertical.
I leave the rest of the day to the front crew. Jules can handle closing. Thank God I hired a great bunch of people. I trudge up the stairs, one slow, aching step at a time.
Upstairs, the apartment smells delicious. Neve greets me at the door with a smile like she’s been waiting for me all day. “You looked like you could use takeout and about twelve hours of sleep,” she says, gesturing toward the table. It’s covered in Chinese food cartons. This. This is my love language. Food.
But then she glances, not-so-subtly, at Damian—lounging on the couch with a beer and that stony look on his face. She looks back at me with the raised eyebrows of a woman absolutely about to abandon me to an emotionally loaded conversation. “So,” she says, far too casually, “Bridger and I are going to go out for pizza.”
I blink. “You don’t like pizza.”
She shrugs and grabs her purse. “I don’t like Chinese.”
Liar. Neve loves Chinese food. It’s literally all we ate all weekend.
Bridger stands up from the couch, looking confused and vaguely betrayed. “Wait, I kind of wanted Chinese.”
Neve plants a hand on his back and starts shoving him toward the door. “Cool. You can have some after. Let’s go.”
“But—”
“Out.”
The door closes behind them, leaving me alone with Damian, the smell of spicy sauce, and a thousand unsaid things hanging thick in the air.
He doesn’t say anything right away, and neither do I. I stand there, still holding my keys, trying to decide if I want to scream, eat, or sleep until tomorrow. All three choices sound plausible.
Damian stands from the couch without a word, stretches like he’s been sitting there all day, and heads into the kitchen. He pulls two bowls from the cabinet, grabs two pairs of chopsticks, and sets them on the table. Quiet. Methodical. Like this is just another night, not the one where I’m trying not to fall apart in front of him.
He pulls out a chair for me and sets a bowl in front of it.
The gesture, simple and steady, shouldn’t hit me the way it does. But it does. I sit down before I can change my mind and bolt. I pile some chicken and broccoli onto my plate, stomach grumbling even though I’ve felt like I’ve been dry-heaving since sunrise.
“I’m surprised you went in so early this morning,” Damian says, his voice low, like we’re trying not to wake the ghosts in the room.
I stab a piece of chicken, immediately enraged at him. “I had to,” I say. “Who the fuck is Reese?”teeters on the tip of my tongue, but I’m afraid if I give the words life they’ll come out shrieking. I shovel a heaping load of food in my mouth. If I say what I’m thinking, it’ll be ugly. Because I know in my gut, something is up. It’s not just jealousy about the possibility of him sleeping with someone else, it’s the hiding it, the ache of it in my chest. Damn it. The tears are right there, hiding just behindmy lashes, waiting for one crack to slip through. Why is it so hard to just say what I need to say? What—because I’m afraid of his answer? Because he’ll tell me yes, I slept with her, yes, she matters more, yes, you’re always too much or not enough or too broken? So what if he leaves? So what if he doesn’t love me back? I’ve survived worse. I’ve survived being my father’s daughter. I’ve survived blood and lies and silence that stretched for years. I can survive a stupid breakup. Right?
Except I don’t want to. Not with him.
I set my chopsticks down. My hands are shaking.No, no, no. Don’t do it, Lo. Just finish eating and get a good night’s sleep. I look at him across the table and all the words bubble up at once, “Who the fuck is Reese?” Yeah, I shriek it. Voice high-pitched and cracking.
He has the audacity to look confused. Brows drawn in, mouth parted like he genuinely doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “Huh?” he says.
I grip the edge of the table to steady myself, voice low and shaking. “Reese. There was a message on your phone. From someone named Reese. It said,‘Don’t worry, she won’t find out.”’
