“You’ve been with Leo the entire time?” I say, my body filling with a warmth and a sick satisfaction that I definitely don’t deserve. “Not with the guy you brought to the bar?”
“Adam? No. He was kind of skeezy. He wouldn’t stop touching my ass that night.”
I reach down to grip hers possessively in response, squeezing a little too hard,definitelynot deserving to be feeling this way.
“I can feel you stewing in rage,” she tells me. “But I kind of like it,” she says, pulling her leg up and resting it across my body. “Yeah, I’ve been staying with Leo. I made a Mourning Nest on his couch.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, not able to say it enough times.
She looks at her phone again. “He says he’s going to be home all day in case I need to go back. So if you really want to talk to him, you could just go there. I could come with you if you want. We could do it together.”
I consider this for a moment. “I think that would be kind of a cop-out. I need to talk to him myself. He’s been my other half my entire life. He deserves a one-on-one.”
“Okay,” she says simply. “I think you should call him out, though. Use your Hot Girl energy.”
“For what?”
“For not taking you seriously. For making you believe that you weren’t good enough for me. Or at least for punching you in the face like a child.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of us makes any effort to move, instead gluing closer together.
Mia sighs, content. “Sometimes I wish I could unzip your body and live inside. Because I’m an unhinged psychopath.”
“Wow,” I say, pulling her on top of me and wrapping my arms around her, the closest we’ll get to doing so. “I’ve literally never thought that. That’s truly unhinged.”
A few hours later, I find myself in the lobby of Leo’s fancy ass Tribeca high-rise.
“Hey, man,” I say to his doorman.
“Hey,” he says. He signs me in without checking for my identification. He knows me well. “Sixteenth floor, right?”
“Yep.” I walk over to the elevator and punch the button.
“He know you’re coming up?”
“Nah. It’s a surprise,” I say, staring at the elevator when it opens into the lobby, my anxiety ratcheting up.
“You good?”
I blink. “Yeah,” I answer, stepping through the doors and pressing the16button.
I look at myself in the mirror on the elevator walls. The color on my face is starting to fade to a glorious canvas of lavender, yellow, and green. I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing for the conversation we’re about to have. Will it make him feel bad? Or will it make him feel like he didn’t hit me hard enough?
The elevator opens, and I walk down the hall to his apartment. I rest my forehead on the door before going in, trying to get my shit together. I can hear him playing this video game we play together all the time. Well, used to, at least before I started spending every moment of my life with Mia.
I sigh and knock on the door.
I hear him pause the game.
“Who is it?” he yells through the door. “Meems?”
“It’s Elias,” I say.
Silence.
Then, the door swings open, and my best friend of my entire life stands in the doorway, looking at me with a resigned sort of resentment. He doesn’t say anything.
