Thirty-Four
Of all the weekends for Josie to have zero evening work events, why’d it have to be this one? Instead of brandishing a clipboard and overseeing a chichi cocktail party or handing out oversized scissors for a cheesy ribbon-cutting ceremony, she was pushing her way through the crowd gathered near the entrance of the Wicker Park bar where she’d promised to meet her friends for a night out. Lucky her.
Bass-heavy music assaulted her ears once she was inside, and she was jostled by no fewer than four aggressively cologned men before she joined Finn and Tom at their booth. Her roommate took one look at Josie’s wan complexion and turned to ask Tom sweetly, “Could you grab us another round?”
He pressed a kiss to her palm and vanished into the crowd, and Finn shifted closer to Josie on the bench so she wouldn’t have to shout over the ambient noise. “What’s wrong? He still hasn’t texted back?”
Josie swallowed the crushing pain over her phone’s daylong, heartbreaking silence.
“So why not just show up at the bakery this afternoon?” Finn asked.
“I’m sure it was hard enough for him to get through. No need to introduce our emotional baggage too.” It had killed her to stay away though. She pulled her phone out and checked it one more time. The bakery open house had ended hours ago, which meant there’d been plenty of time for Erik to text back. But there was nothing, not even from Richard, even though she’d texted him a summons to join this barhop of despair.
Looked like she was well and truly dumped.
“I hope he had a few familiar faces there at least,” Finn said. “Tom and I were going to go, but his boss’s birthday party ran superlong and we missed it.”
“You two are a couple of Disney characters,” Josie muttered.
“Lady and the Tramp, right?” a new voice asked.
The women looked up to see that Jake had joined Tom while he was at the bar, so they shifted again to accommodate a fourth at the table. Once they were seated, the men started sharing highlights of that afternoon’s Cubs game while Josie stared moodily at the group occupying the adjacent table, who were laughing and clinking glasses and passing around a box of cupcakes. Everybody atthattable looked like they were having a great time, while Josie was suffocating under the weight of Erik’s absence. He might not talk as often as anyone else in her social circle, but she adored his quiet contributions: the upward tilt of his lips, the crinkle at the corner of his eyes, the well-placed, if infrequent, quip.
Had he not gotten what she was telling him with that new logo? She now understood that his wants were different from hers, but apparently it was too little, too late. She cut her eyes upward to control the burn of tears, then lifted her drink to her lips, tasting neither the gin nor the tonic inside but in need of some activity to keep herself from screaming.
“Okay, this is weird.”
Jake’s voice in her ear startled her, and she turned to find him with a beer bottle halfway to his lips, eyebrows raised.
“What?”
“You. Completely ignoring me tonight. So weird.”
Itwasweird. The demise of her relationship—the best relationship she’d ever been in—should leave her itchy and ready to explode. She should be pestering Jake and scoping out the best-looking guys in the club. She should be standing on the bar with a bottle of tequila in each hand, pouring drinks for everyone in the room. She should be picking a fight with a bouncer. Anything she could do to stop the buzzing in her head, no matter how bad the idea might seem the next morning.
Except her head was quiet. Erik had shown her what calmness meant, and he’d shown her she was capable of not giving in to each wild impulse. But right now all it really left her with was sadness.
Still, tradition was tradition. “You wanna get out of here, go someplace a little more quiet?” she asked indifferently.
“Sure. Let’s do it.” He leaned back in his seat and stretched his arm along the back.
Even though it was the first time he’d ever agreed to her jokey come-ons, she just sighed and rested her chin on her hand. “Nah. Thanks though.”
“That’s what I thought.” Jake shook his head. “Man, that baker really did a number on you.”
She considered denying it, but what was the point? “Yeah. He did.”
His thick brows pulled together in a scowl. “Do Tom and I need to beat the shit out of him?”
“As if you could,” she said hotly, coming to life for the first time all night and slamming her glass on the table.
“Tom!” Jake called over her head, forcing the other man to quit nibbling on Finn’s ear. “We could take Josie’s baker in a fight, right?”
“Absolutely not,” Tom shouted cheerfully over the EDM nightmare blaring through the speakers. “That guy’s a tank, and I want no part of whatever you’re planning.”
“Nobody’s beating up anybody!” Josie yelled, but Tom had already returned to exploring Finn’s neck with his tongue. “And he’s notmybaker,” she shouted at Jake.
But he was though. He was hers, as much as she was his, no matter how improbable a couple they might be. Unfortunately, she might be the only one of them who felt that way. Just as another wave of grief threatened to carry her away, she noticed two club kids strutting past their table with a cupcake in each hand. Weird. This place was known for high-end martinis, not baked goods. In fact, she didn’t think it even had a food-service license.
