Page 81 of Fight Or Flight

“Why wouldn’t it be? It worked last time.”

“But that was a different problem, right? You had no one. Ethan seems like someone.”

She paused and turned to Jess. “He was wonderful, and I’ll admit, I miss him. But it’s a lot more complicated than that. In Mapleton, I’m trash. Nothing more than Robert Monroe’s whore’s kid.”

“Natalie!”

Natalie shrugged as if it didn’t bother her. But she knew Jess would see through it. “That’s what they call me.” She turned and walked into the change room, then closed the curtain.

“Well, fuck ’em!” Jess yelled from the other side. “You’re allowed to exist.”

Natalie smiled for the first time in almost three weeks. She hadn’t realized how similar Jess and Chelsea were. But the smile was fleeting. She pulled her yellow dress over her head, kicked off her gold sandals, and slipped the purple dress on. “I’m better off alone than surrounded by people who make me feel like shit.”

“True. But being alone is hard. And you’ve been doing it for longer than I thought possible.”

Natalie pulled back the curtain and did a turn.

“It’s stunning,” Jess said.

Natalie went back into the room and changed into the orange to show Jess.

“Gorgeous.”

Another couple minutes, and she came out in the magenta.

“Perfect. They all look good.”

She looked at herself in the mirror, then at the dresses hanging in the room. “I don’t want to choose one.”

Jess nodded. “Maybe you should think about renting an apartment in Sydney so you have a home on your days off. Then you can buy all the dresses.”

Natalie shook her head. “It would only make things worse. I don’t want to sit in an empty room all alone. Better off in hostels.”

“I’m worried about you, Nat. I had a friend once who was really down, and I never asked or did anything to help him, and he . . .”

Natalie took her by the shoulders. “Jess. I appreciate your concern. But you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to off myself. I’ve been through worse. I just need some time.”

She turned back into the change room. Stared at the dresses. A sadness washed over her, thinking of her dresser in Mapleton filled with all of her clothes.

She shook her head. “I’m taking the orange,” she said. She pulled off the magenta and hung it on the hanger just when a notification sounded on her phone. She pulled her phone from her purse and saw a new email from Speeler.

The breath left her chest in a fast whoosh. She plopped down on the small stool in the corner of the change room and clickedon the email. It was the final agreement of sale. She gave it a quick read-through.

When she got to the final sale amount and saw that it wasn’t five million dollars—it was five hundred thousand— her jaw dropped.

“What the fuck . . . ?”

“What’s wrong?” Jess asked.

She threw her yellow dress back on and pulled back the curtain. “There’s a problem with the sale of the house. Speeler emailed me last week and said the purchase agreement had been sent off. It was exactly what we agreed on. I thought it had all been taken care of. ”

Jess’s face split into a grin. “Oh, my God. Is it fate?”

“No. It’s fucking Anne Monroe.”

Jess narrowed her eyes at the name in solidarity. “I hate her. Who is she?”

“My dead biological father’s widow.”

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