Bea
Cold feet are supposedto be reserved for weddings, bungee jumping, and picking majors in college, yet here I am with cold feet about a simple Saturday night.
“I changed my mind,” I tell Daphne as I stare at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of her white bathroom door. Hudson and I are living here in her apartment with her this summer. Possibly longer for me, depending on if the family renting the house I bought for us after the fire decides to renew their lease.
“About what?” she asks.
“Going tonight. You know what’s going to happen when the first picture gets out of me looking like this while on a date with Simon Luckwood? And youknowIzzy at the boutique will let it slip that he ordered me a dress. And shoes. And this ridiculous—what even is that bag? I don’t care what kind of NDA he’s using with her. She’ll let it slip. And then everyone will say—I don’t know what they’ll say, actually. But a man doesn’t buy an outfit for a woman without it meaningsomething. You know?”
Daph adjusts a strap on my slinky, glittery red dress. “You don’t have to go. You can cancel.”
I could.
She wouldn’t judge me for it.
Wouldn’t throw anything back in my face or call me a chicken later.
That’s the thing about Daph—she’s great with plans, good and bad, but she doesn’t always have to have her way or insist you’re making a mistake if you don’t do what she wants you to do.
“And then Jake wins,” I sigh.
“He doesn’twin. He lives his life. You live yours.”
I smooth my hands down the gown Simon sent. It hugs my hips and breasts and the evidence in my belly that I like chocolate chip cookies. “And if I don’t go, I spend the next eternity obsessing over how I had this chance to show him what he lost out on and I chickened out.”
“I’d pick binge-watching baking shows over going out to a fancy restaurant.”
“Is JC Fig the fanciest restaurant you’ve ever seen?”
She snorts. “God, no.”
“So it wouldn’t be a great sacrifice for you to skip it.”
She grins. “Let’s try another angle. You like running your burger bus?”
I meet her gaze in the mirror. “More than I expected to.”
It was honestly a revenge plan. Scrounge up enough money to buy and convert the bus so that I could run a more successful food truck than Jake could run a whole-ass building. I’d quit the job I had working in the mayor’s office to be his admin assistant when we started dating, and then we were building a restaurant together. It was going to be our thing.
And then it was gone.
Everythingwas gone.
Job. Restaurant. Home. Future.
Now, despite my cold feet, I know I have to do this. For me.
I need to get even.
You could say my revenge era has started. But I’m having second thoughts because I don’t want to spend my life ruled by a need for vengeance.
Even if I still want Jake to suffer.
If it weren’t for Simon’s massive tip for the party that wasn’t, and then the attention he attracted when we were already giving away the food for free, this month would be firmly in the red. Even with his payment, I’m barely able to afford my own meager salary.
Running a burger bus is a little bit more of a financial stretch than I thought it would be. Plus, my socials haven’t taken off the way the socials for JC Fig took off.
It’s likely a combination of changing algorithms on the platforms and a lack of the extra attention that we got for doing interviews about Griff, but part of me wonders if Jake has the right contacts to get my accounts suppressed somehow.
