Page 43 of Third Time Lucky

You know what? Screw that ballplayer, this shirt is comfortable.

“Stupid lightning bolt.”

“Stupid what? Why do you sound so upset?”

“Why do you sound irritating?” That was weak and beneath me. “I’m sorry. I’m dressed now.”

She takes one look at my face and her expression tells me all I need to know. I look like shit.

“What happened, Joey?”

“Rough night.”

She made a tsking sound, but her concern is the long-distance hug I didn’t know I needed. “Is it Bellamy House? I worried when you made volunteering there another condition for distributing the workload. When we take those cases on, I know they always hit you hardest.”

She’s referring to the clients who request nannies with the backgrounds required to care for victims of sexual abuse. And she’s right. They do. “It’s hard for most people. But I’m glad I went. It’s a positive place and I need to be a part of it.”

“We need to.”

I nod in agreement. “We. On the whole, it was a positive experience though. I’m good.”

“You’re not good. But if it isn’t that, we only have two options left. Either you panicked and already canceled the date JD set up for you, or something happened with the neighbor.”

I told you she knows me.

“I didn’t cancel the date.” I want to. Not because of Elliot’s growled demand during our disastrous make-out session, but because I don’t think I’m in the right mental space for it. I might show up at the restaurant and make a scene, demand that he prove his sexuality with gratuitous public displays of affection. Or worse, spend the evening comparing him to Elliot.

“Is your brother still there?” I say, buying myself time from her interrogation.

“No, thank goodness. I distinctly remember you promising to help me bury a body when we were thirteen. I might be calling in that chip soon.”

I try to smile as I walk out of my bedroom with her in my hand. “I always keep our pinky promises. You know that. I’ll buy a shovel today. Now what’s the gossip you were talking about?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you before your date. You already look too skittish.”

I stop midway down the stairs and glare at her through the phone. “Now you have to tell me.”

“Fine, but this is insane so you might want to sit down.”

“Tani.”

“Vampire Hippos 3 has been canceled,” she says in a relieved rush, as if holding back the information had physically pained her. “And so has the wedding.”

My knees turn to water and I sit down on the steps with a thump. “What? Why? What?”

“The bride-to-be caught the groom with her male costar. In flagrante, according to the tabloids. So much flagrante, they dedicated five pages to it.”

“No way.”

“Way. There are pictures with scandalously placed black boxes. They’re comparing it to that old Stewart/Pattinson scandal. Only the vampires are gangs of roaming hippos instead of sparkly matriculators, and no one is that attractive. I thought you’d like to know that karma is real and he got himself a big fat helping.”

I drag a hand over my face, genuinely stunned. It’s hard not to replay that dramatic scene he decided to have with me as he packed what little he’d had left in my apartment. The speech about how he wasn’t gay, but I’d dazzled him with gifts and attention. At first. How he’d earned the money he’d taken from the bank account for all the times he’d waited for me when I was working late. How the love of a good woman had brought him back to the light, making him see that he never really wanted me. How I’d used him.

He went that extra mile to make it worse than casual. He tried to make it ugly.

Asshole.

“He couldn’t even last until the wedding?” I ask out loud, still flabbergasted.

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