CHAPTER 1
“Are you breaking up with me?” My voice was laced with incredulity. Not anger or sadness or heartache. Just pure shock, disbelief. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and spun a full circle, sure I’d find him standing by his car with a wide smile on his face, ready to tell me it was just a joke.
Nate wasn’t there. Instead, his voice in my ear said, “Yes, Sutton, I am.”
“Over the phone? You couldn’t drive here and say this to my face?” That sounded like a threat. I hadn’t meant for it to, but he was supposed to be here. I hadn’t seen him in two weeks. We were going to go on a date, relax, laugh. I needed to laugh. I had gotten us a hotel room, called in a caretaker for my mom.
“Now you’re going to tell me how I’m allowed to break up with you?” Nate asked.
I bristled. “I’m not telling you how to break up with me. It’s just common sense.”
“You’re more than four hours away. This had to be a phone call.”
Apparently, I, and our two-year relationship, weren’t worth a four-hour drive. “Was there anything else you wanted to say, or does a phone call five minutes before you were supposed to be here cover it?”
“I should’ve known this would be how you’d handle it.”
“How’s that?”
“Like you’re conducting a business meeting, going over an agenda. Very lackluster.”
My entire body tensed at the word he deliberately used. It was a quote from the food critic in theLos Angeles Timesabout my recently opened restaurant. I had the longer version memorized:Good food, well run, but lackluster atmosphere and dining experience. I feared that was as much a description of me as it was of my restaurant. Review of Sutton Scott by any boyfriend she had ever dated:Good heart, organized, but boring as hell.Lackluster in my restaurant was fixable. In myself, probably a lost cause.
But Nate was the one who was breaking up with me, so why did he have to deliver such a low blow? “Now who’s the one trying to dictate how this should play out?” I asked.
“I never dictated anything in our relationship, Sutton.”
“I guess that’s why you’re breaking up with me.”
“I’m breaking up with you because I am number four in your life. After your business, after your mother who doesn’t even want you there, after your apartment.”
It was a nice apartment. I wasn’t going to leave it to move into a bigger place with him after only two years. I had the best rent in the cityanda brick fireplace.
“Are you really telling me you didn’t see this coming?” he asked.
I really hadn’t. Had I not been eleven months into openinga restaurant with my best friend that I was now trying to help run from three hundred miles away. Had I not been taking care of my mother who, after a major car accident, had both a serious concussion and a shattered tibia but who still insisted she didn’t want me here. Maybe then, I might have seen some signs. But I figured the distance between us was a result of our busy schedules… and the literal distance between us. It obviously wasn’t.
A couple brushed by me on the sidewalk, hand in hand.
“Are we done here?” I asked.
“Done,” he said, and without another word, the phone went dead.
I was twenty steps from the front door of the fancy steakhouse where we were supposed to meet, but my legs felt like rubber, standing there in my high heels. I had gone all out for him: put on a slinky black dress, slicked my long waves into a high pony, painted on lipstick, shaved everything… twice!
My eyes stung, but I bit the inside of my cheeks, not allowing any emotion to rise to the surface.
The closest door to me was a cowboy-themed bar. I didn’t care about themes at the moment. I stepped inside, needing a drink. Fast.
A neon decoration of a man tipping his wide-brimmed hat over and over glowed on the far wall as I headed to the long bar. I took the closest empty seat, a low-backed barstool, beside two guys who seemed too preppy for the surroundings—both in pastel polos and too-tight jeans. The bartender, a woman wearing a leather vest and a studded belt, approached me right away. Maybe she sensed the urgency in my expression, or maybe nobody else needed her at the moment.
“You look like you should be next door” was how she greeted me, her eyes traveling over my attire.
“I should be,” I said, but didn’t elaborate.
“What can I get you?”
“Something strong,” I said.
