I toss the candles into the trash. The sound of the door’s lock stops me. Bri walks in, the scowl on her face matching my mood.
“David called me,” she announces without a greeting.
The surprise quickly gets consumed by guilt. “I thought you had him blocked.”
“I do. He called from a different number.”
“Wh-what did he say?”
“Kelly must have told him I was still here,” she says. “He said he wants me to stay. That he wants me back.”
Shit. “What did you say?”
“I told him to fuck off and lose my number.”
“Good.” My tone suggests nothing is good, because it’s not. Even though she isn’t going back to him, I’m still the reason he went to her in the first place. I’m the reason she’s upset, and I’m about to upset her even more.
“Are you okay?” she asks. She must read it on my face. Setting her phone and leashes down on the countertop next to the wine, she comes to me. “What’s wrong?”
“My boss called.”
“Sai? What did he say?”
“I have to go back to Seattle.”
Her brow furrows. “When?”
“By Monday.”
“Monday?Why so soon?”
“It’s my company. Now that I got the contract, there’s no legitimate reason I can refuse going back to the office.”
“You got the contract?”
I guess I forgot that was supposed to be good news. Maybe because I’ve been lying about it since the first day I stepped into that office and found out who I was working for. “I did.”
“Congratulations?” She says it like a question, which seems apt considering it feels quite shitty. “What happens now?”
“I either look for a new job or I go back.”
“You can’t quit your job.”
“I could.”
“Youshouldn’tquit your job. As someone who just applied to six thousand jobs and heard back from two and a half, please, for the love of retirement plans, do not quit.”
But I don’t want to leave you.
“You can stay,” I say past the lump in my throat I clear away right after. “I won’t be able to find a place in time if I go back now. You can use my stipend and stay another month like we planned.”
“Absolutely not,” she refuses with a laugh. “I’m not using you for anything else, and I am not staying here when David thinks being a deadbeat dad is somehow more forgivable than being a cheater.”
“But you don’t have enough saved up yet.”
“This was always the plan anyway, right?” she asks. “We knew this day would come eventually.”
“I guess so.”
