Hoping she’ll somehow text.
Hoping she left her number somewhere I haven't found yet.
Hoping by some miracle I’ll run into her again in a city of millions.
The elevator doors close, and I force myself to stop hoping.
She's gone.
And I need to accept that last night was exactly what we both said it would be—a moment out of time that's already over.
Even if some stubborn, stupid part of me wishes it wasn't.
Chapter three
~EMMA~
"You're doing it again."
I look up from my laptop to find Sasha standing in my kitchen doorway, arms crossed, wearing the expression she reserves for when I'm being an idiot.
Which, to be fair, is an expression I've seen a lot over the past three weeks and six days.
Not that I'm counting.
"Doing what?" I ask, even though I know exactly what.
"Staring into the distance like you're the tragic heroine of a Nicholas Sparks novel." She walks into my shoebox apartment—sorry, "cozy studio"—and plucks my coffee mug from my hands. Takes a sniff. Wrinkles her nose. "How old is this coffee?"
"Today."
"Emma. This is from yesterday. Possibly the day before." She dumps it in the sink, as if it’s a biohazard
Dammit, I knew it was a mistake to give her a key to my place.
“You mind? I’m working.” I gesture at my laptop, which is open to the Titan Industries employee portal I've been refreshing obsessively since I got my offer letter. "I'm being productive. I'm preparing."
"You're freaking a bit.”
"I'm not—"
"Riley!" Sasha calls toward the front door. "She'sfreaking out again!"
"I can hear you," Riley says, stumbling into my kitchen with a bag of bagels and the judgy energy of someone who's known me since college and has zero patience for my bullshit. "And yes, she's absolutely freaking. She did that thing where she reorganizes her coffee mugs by color and then gets mad at the colors for not being aesthetic enough."
"I did not—Okay, I did that once. But that was a completely different freak-out. That was a 'Josh is a dick’ freakout. Totally different.”
The name still tastes like battery acid in my mouth.
Josh.
My ex-fiancé who I supported through law school while working two jobs and doing my own MBA.
Josh, with his sandy-brown hair, lopsided grin and lying mouth.
"How is this different?" Sasha sits on my bed—which is also my couch, because studio apartment—and levels me with a look. "Convince me."
I slam my laptop shut. "Because this time, I'm not sad. I'm focused. I'm excited. I start my dream job in two days, I'm moving to New York City, and I'm finally getting my life together."
