Alexis kicked me hard in the crotch just as Mom came back into the living room with clean hands. I actuallywoofedout loud.
“Alexis Rosalie Stone,” Mom scolded.
I pointed. “Get her.”
Mom settled in her favorite armchair, the floral one by the window. She’d moved two hours away to Houston a few years after the divorce, to be closer to my grandparents and her sisters. The house was smaller than the one we’d grown up in, because Mom was down to only her income from her animal-welfare nonprofit. But the nice part was, everything inside the house was my mom’s exact taste. It was all flowers and soft, muted colors. It was her nest, like I had mine. Our little spaces to ourselves, that no one could take away.
“Don’t think I don’t know you’re the instigator,” Mom said to me with a look. “Wherever there’s trouble, you’re behind it.”
That reminded me uncomfortably of Ben, so I changed the subject. “Weren’t we talking about Alexis and Chris before the great bread-making adventure?”
“Ugh,” Alexis said, flinging her head back against the couch. “Why can’t I get over him? He’s out there dating another woman and I swear I’m still in love. Is that pathetic?”
I nodded vigorously, but stopped at my mother’s sharp look. “You’re allowed to feel however you feel, hon. If you still love him, you still love him. We can’t talk our hearts into feeling anything they’re unprepared for.” Mom swung her eagle eyes back to me. “Speaking of. Alexis says Ben moved back to Austin and the two of you are working together. How are you handlingthat?”
Alexis, the loudmouth. I shot her a treacherous look, and she had the good sense to sink into her corner of the couch.
“It’s fine,” I lied. “We broke up five whole years ago. He’s just my campaign partner now.”
Alexis snorted, the witch. “Yeah, right. Something happened last week that made you come home and listen to Frank Ocean for forty-eight hours straight in your room. The smell of the—” she glanced guiltily at our mom “—sagecoming from your door was enough to get an herbal contact high.”
“You’re evicted,” I said. “Effective immediately.”
Mom crossed her legs. “You never told me how the two of you broke up in the first place. I mean, you told me dribbles, but I want the whole story, from the beginning.”
I looked between her and Alexis. They both wore identical expressions of eager expectation. Two lifelong romantics, looking for a hit. This was the problem with my mom: unlike my little sister, whom I could manage, my mom had an uncanny ability to get me to open up whenever she sniffed deeper emotions. It was why I normally worked to keep my tone light and casual around her. This time, however, I’d stepped in it.
I sighed. All right,fine. If they wanted to hear about the Fourth and Final Major Heartbreak, aka the saga of Ben Laderman, aka the last tragedy before I gave up on love, I’d give it to them in all its glory. Hopefully they wouldn’t judge me too harshly. Unlike the man in question.
“You know I met Ben a few months into grad school,” I said to Mom, and she nodded. “At that point in my life, the last thing I wanted was a boyfriend. Then, of course, I met Ben and threw all caution to the wind.”
“That’s always how it goes,” Alexis said dreamily.
“We had a good year together. Kind of a perfect year. I...” For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“You loved him very much,” Mom supplied, and I nodded, grateful.
“So much I started to freak out, I guess. I worried he’d find someone else or get bored with me. Leave me. All the inevitable things.”
“That doesn’t happen ineveryrelationship,” Alexis protested.
I waved a hand at the three of us. “The proof is sitting in this room.”
“What’d you do when you started to have those feelings?” My mom held her chin in her hand, studying me the way I suspected Annie did to her clients in therapy sessions.
I squirmed. “I knew I couldn’t fight inevitability. Relationships end, no matter how you feel about it. I prefer to cut to the chase.”
Both Alexis and my mom gave me blank looks.
“I started looking at Ben’s phone when he wasn’t around, searching for proof he was cheating. Or at least thinking about it. One day, I found these messages from a girl named Clarissa. She was in law school with him, and I knew her—she was really pretty. The messages were so flirty, all about needing him to study and how important he was to her GPA. I figured the texts were proof.”
My mom clucked. “Did you ask Ben about them?”
“No. In my defense, though, I’d never been wrong about a guy cheating before. I thought if I at least initiated it myself, it wouldn’t hurt as bad when our relationship ended. So I kind of went out and found someone—”full truth, Stoner“—hisrival, and slept with him. Ben found out, and things blew up from there.”
I’d been studying in Ben’s apartment when he’d come home that night, and the instant I looked up from my books, I knew he knew. Ben sat stiffly next to me on the couch and asked me, point-blank, if I’d slept with Connor Holliday. The rumors were flying at the law library, started by students who’d been at the bar the night I’d left with Connor. Ben had dismissed the talk as jealous bullshit from classmates who were angry he was going to graduate at the top of their class, but then he’d run into Connor. And Connor had delighted in confirming the truth in front of everyone.
Instead of answering, I’d demanded to know the nature of his relationship with Clarissa. Ben was stunned and pulled up Clarissa’s Facebook profile, which had recently changed toEngaged. So it turns out they really were nothing more than study buddies.
