Page 23 of Words We Didn't Say

A woman. Blonde hair. I squinted. It was impossible to tell if her eyes were blue or hazel, but that was her. The homewrecker.

Michaela.I twisted the lid off the ice cream tub, dug in the spoon, and kept reading.Macintosh.

I snorted. What kind of name was Michaela Macintosh? It sounded like a pair of sensible shoes marketed to grandmothers for wearing on their weekly shopping trips. Was that what attracted Zach to her? She was the sensible shoes you could wear every day, and I was the designer stilettos that pinched your feet so much you only bothered with them on special nights out?

My phone was yanked from my hand.

I whipped around. “Hey!” An incriminating spoonful of chocolate ice cream hovered at my lips.

“I left you alone for two minutes,” Andie said. “What’s all this?” She waved a hand at the disgrace I’d created on her sofa.

I tipped my chin and smiled sweetly. “I’m wallowing in self-pity, thank you very much. I’m told it’s a rite of passage for betrayed women like me.”

“Told by who, exactly?”

“The caring folks of the internet.”

“And this?” Andie flipped around my phone. Michaela’s black and white mugshot glared at me. “You’re stalking his side piece? It won’t make you feel better to learn a single thing about her.”

“I plan to learneverythingabout her.” A bitter edge cut through my voice. I jabbed my finger into the back of my phone.“See her hair? Didn’t I tell you? Whoever did that balayage should be blacklisted!”

Sighing, Andie flopped on the sofa, manspreading like she always did with a lazy arm stretched over the backrest. “You, ah…” She slid an uneasy glance at me from the corner of her eye. “You wanna talk about, um, how you’re…feeling?”She grimaced.

Emotions had never been Andie’s thing. Lucky for her, tonight, I was more than happy to ignore the advice of every therapist I’d ever seen and bury mine.

“Nope.” I dug the spoon into the ice cream and wrenched out an even bigger scoop. “I want to stay angry. I’m going to make that man wish he was never born!” I stuffed the spoon in my mouth. Big mistake. With one eye screwed closed, I choked out, “What is this?”

“Vegan ice cream.”

I forced myself to swallow. Mud, with the hint of twig and the crunch of disappointment. “Boo, whatever this is”—I jiggled the tub—“it ain’t ice cream.” That didn’t stop me from digging out another spoonful and shovelling it into my mouth. The second bite went down just as rough.

“So, how long does the rite of passage last?” Andie asked.

“Um.” How the hell would I know? Before Zach, I’d been the one doing the dumping. Sydney wasn’t exactly short of new dicks to bounce around on if a man turned out to be a disappointment—and they always did. “Tonight? Maybe the weekend? I dunno. How long did it take you to get over the girl with the hair?”

Andie lifted a shoulder. “A few months.”

“A few months! Sorry, no.”

“Ed, you can’t rush this.”

I scoffed.Please.“When have I ever rushed anything?”

Andie scratched her chin, one brow slowly lifting.

Okay, maybe she had a point. Sometimes, I rushed into things blindly. When it came to the salon, I was a machine, planningand executing every detail to the last love heart I used to dot my i’s. But my personal life? That was a well-travelled road to chaos.

“Zach isn’t the only man out there,” I said, my voice pitching up, more defensive than strong.

“True, but that doesn’t mean you need to find his replacement straight away.”

“Can’t hurt.”

Andie chuckled. “You’ve got a lot to learn about relationships, Ed.”

“I think I’m officially retiring from relationships.”

“Yeah?”

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