Page 83 of Room 4 Rent

A zero on the scoreboard.

SYDNEY

Anxiety attack.

What are the symptoms? I think I have it. Google it for me and text me the link because I don’t have time to look it up. Thanks.

Crying.

I’ve been doing a lot of it lately.

But it’s time to bitch up. I’m upset but not surprised.

I’ve been avoiding Remi for weeks now. She’s called, stopped by, and I pretended not to be home. Then she started texting me.

Ignored.

All of it. Now I need closure. Now I need to buck the fuck up.

Honestly, in those days after I found out about her and Colin, I couldn’t deal with her too. At least not until I was forced to.

Because the name on the accidental life insurance policy with his bank?

Remington Anne Livingston.

The girl, all of twenty-one, he was trusting his future in while hers was just beginning.

And for that reason, I needed answers. I, 100 percent, believed Collin instigated the relationship with her and told her all kinds of lies about me to get her to believe him being married was a minor detail.

Still, I didn’t know.

It’s time to put my big girl panties on and bitch up. All those details I was so terrified to know, I needed now.

So I called Remi and asked her to meet me for coffee after I left the bank, knowing Cason could handle Tatum for the afternoon.

Ten minutes later than the time we agreed on, I walk into the small café in Tempe to find Remi waving me toward the far wall. “I got you an iced white mocha with caramel. Cason said it was your favorite.”

Of course he did. I smile, that familiar lump permanently lodged in my throat rising again. I don’t think I’ve prepared myself enough for what I’m about to do, but I need to. “Thank you.” I sit down across from her and draw in a deep breath.

She reaches across the table, her smile so sincere. “Hey, girl, I missed you. I’ve been thinking about you and Tatum.”

I want to hate her, but I can’t. I don’t know why that is. With a deep breath, I stare into those beautiful golden eyes of hers. “I need to know.”

“Know what?” Her brow comes together, but there’s a crack in her words I notice.

“When? Why? How it happened?”

Her face pales as she fidgets with the straw in her cup. Pulling her curtain of blonde hair aside, she blinks rapidly. “Why would you want to know that?”

“I don’t want to,butI have to know, or I can’t move on.”

She nods and darts her eyes from mine to her coffee. She’s fragile in this moment, fearing what I might say next. “It wasn’t about you. It was never you.”

Stupid emotion takes my words and makes them broken and needy. “Then what was it?”

Remi thinks about her answer for longer than I would have thought. “I think it was a challenge for him to see if he could get me. We met at a bar. He wasn’t wearing his ring. It wasn’t until later, months in, he said he was married. He threw money around like it was nothing, fancy restaurants, and hotels with penthouse suites and champagne.”

With our fucking money!

---