Page 4 of Justice & Liberty

Tanya sneered at me. “That thing’s a menace. I don’t want it in my apartment anymore.”

The blonde came back out, and...and suddenly that bothered me. I couldn’t keep calling her “the blonde,” not even in my head. I turned to her. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Lyndsay,” she said, bringing me a mug that smelled like heaven, and lowering herself onto the couch next to me. “And I can’t say how sorry I am. I never would have?—”

“Don’t worry,” I interrupted. “It’s fine.”

“Yeah,” Tanya said, smiling, wide and falsely bright. “Fine.”

Did she really think it was fine? She couldn’t possibly. She’d tried to hide the cheating. I was home two days early, so exhausted from planning and executing Mom’s funeral that I’d needed to be back where I felt comfortable. I’d caught an early flight, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to call Tanya and tell her.

She was supposed to be working.

I narrowed my eyes at her and continued. “It’s fine because everyone should want to know if their girlfriend is a cheating asshole.” I turned back to nod to Lyndsay. “But her behavior isn’t your fault.”

Tanya’s smile turned sour at that, and she sighed. “Look, Lyndsay, maybe you should go. We can get together some other time. I guess me and Jaycie need to talk.”

“Oh no,” Lyndsay said, shaking her head as she leaned forward, almost putting herself between me and Tanya. “I mean yes, I’ll go. But please, definitely do not call me. Lose my number. With prejudice. I don’t want to be cheated on either, and clearly that’s the kind of person you are. I’ll make sure all the other girls at the club know what you did too, so I wouldn’t count on being able to find anything more than a meaningless hookup there from now on. But I guess maybe that’s what you’re into.”

Sometime during Lyndsay’s rant, Bee stopped fighting to get at Tanya, turning back to me and shoving herself deeper into my arms. So I held her against me and took comfort in the fact that this creature, at least, would never betray me.

Lyndsay, finished dressing Tanya down, turned back to me, and in an instant, her gaze went from poison to sympathy. “Is there anything else I can do for you? I am so, so?—”

“Oh come on,” Tanya groaned, and no joke, Lyndsay turned and hissed at her, just like Bee had.

I wondered if the tiny blonde might also want to scratch my girlfriend’s—no, my ex-girlfriend’s eyes out, just like the cat.

“Thank you, Lyndsay, but I’m okay. I can...I’ve got this.” I wasn’t at all sure that was true, but what was she going to do? She didn’t even know me. She’d already been kinder than the situation expected from her. Heck, she probably thought I was crying over Tanya. No reason Tanya would have told her that “her roommate” had been in Iowa dealing with hermother’s death. She didn’t seem to have been honest about anything else, why would she have told the truth about that?

I tried to smile at Lyndsay, but no doubt it was pathetic and tremulous at best.

Across the room, Tanya huffed and stomped back down the hallway, leaving us alone. She returned a moment later with clothes in her hands, shoving them toward Lyndsay. “Fine. Then you should go, so me and Jaycie can figure shit out.”

Lyndsay, bless her, looked to me for my opinion.

I smiled at her. “It’s fine. I can handle her.”

Tanya sighed, like she wassoput upon by the woman she’d brought into our apartment daring to speak to me. She followed Lyndsay to the door, locking it behind her and immediately turning back toward me. “You can’t kick me out,” she announced. “My name’s the one on the lease.”

“Interesting you’d jump to the conclusion I would kick you out,” was all I could muster the brainpower to say. What other conclusion could she have come to, though? It wasn’t as though our relationship was strong enough to weather cheating.

Our relationship was . . . it was . . . heck, I didn’t know.

And Tanya was right, if one of us was leaving, it was me. And me? I had nowhere to go.

“So who will you follow now?” Tanya asked, a sneer in her voice. “Maybe you should have gotten Lyndsay’s number. That’s how you work, isn’t it? Path of least resistance? Always letting other people make your decisions for you, never having to act like a fucking adult.”

I had no idea how to respond to that. It was true, sort of. I’d gone to UCLA because my childhood best friend—and crush—had named it the best school in the country and waxed poetic about moving to Los Angeles. I’d majored in philosophy because my adviser told me it was a good pre-lawchoice. Then during college, I’d started dating Tanya, and since she hadn’t left LA after school, neither had I.

Never a single choice made because of what I wanted. Always following what people told me I ought to be doing.

Tanya huffed and rolled her eyes when I went quiet, then turned and marched back to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. So much for “figuring shit out.”

I sat on the couch, petted my cat, and drank my tea, thinking about my mother.

“You’re really staying with her?”My manager, Estelle, asked me the next day at the shop.

She looked some combination of annoyed with Tanya and disappointed in me. It reminded me of the expression Bee had given me when I’d curled up on the couch to sleep the night before. Tanya hadn’t much cared, just rolled her eyes and called me “melodramatic” as she’d passed me on her way to the kitchen.

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