Page 53 of My Favorite Bad Decision
I force myself out of bed. I know ending things with Blake is the correct choice, but in the cold light of day I also wonder what I’ll have left in his absence. I’m about to be single and potentially unemployed, and home is no longer this apartment or even NYC but instead, a dusty sleeping bag inside a dirty tent I share with Miller…and I can’t buy it back.
Since Maren is already on the doorman’s list and has a key, she lets herself in while I’m in the shower and is curled up in one of my leather chairs when I emerge, with the New York City skyline framed behind her by the floor-to-ceiling windows. The sun is barely peeking out beyond the skyscrapers in the distance.
My apartment is everything I once wanted...but I no longer want it.
“What’s your passcode?” she demands, unabashedly trying to unlock my phone. “I want to see your pictures.”
“We need some boundaries,” I reply, tying my robe and snatching the phone from her hand as I take the chair across from her.
She pushes a cup in my direction across the glass coffee table. “Tell me everything.”
I take a sip, stalling. Somehow, I just assumed I could skip the part where I admit that the love of her life was on my expedition, but that’s ridiculous—Dad knows. Miller knows. One of them will say something to someone, and it will lookreallybad that I omitted the information. “Yeah, so did you hear who was on my trip?” I ask. I hope that the fact that I cannot meet her eye just looks casual and not nerve-ridden.
She frowns. “To Kilimanjaro? Who on earth would be on the same tripthere? SomeoneIknow?”
My laugh is tinged with misery. “Someone you know all too well. Miller. Miller West.”
Her mouth falls open. “You’re kidding.”
I’m about to sayI wish I were, as if he’s still my nemesis, but I can’t bring myself to do it. “Nope. I had no idea he’d be there.”
She leans in, eyes wide, but also gleaming with excitement—and that’s what I was worried about. She’s already growing hopeful about the fact that he was there at all. “So, did you see much of him on the way up?”
She’s picturing us just randomly on a mountain at the same time. She can’t begin to understand how intimate it all was. “It was hard not to. There were only eight of us.”
“Eight,” she says, shaking her head. “Was he there with that girl he’s seeing?”
Now it’s my turn to be surprised, and holy shit, what an unpleasant surprise it is. If my stomach could literally drop from my body, I’d be picking it up off the carpet right now.
It shouldn’t matter to me if he’s with someone—hell, I’m still almost engaged—but if he was taken…he shouldn’t have done a lot of the things he did. I suppose that’s hypocritical, but at least I was open about my relationship status.
“No, he was there alone,” I say, struggling to ignore the pit in my center. “He never mentioned anyone else.”
She rests back in the seat, pulling a designer blanket over her lap. “The last I heard, he was dating Cecilia Love.”
I like that even less. I know who Cecilia Love is, and she’s exactly the kind of girl he might want to end up with—beautiful, but also smart and ambitious. If I were a better person, I’d want that for him.
“I don’t know,” I say quietly, “but like I said, we were climbing for eight days, and he never mentioned anyone.”
“Did he ask about me?”
I sigh. I knew that this was coming. No matter what I said, she was going to find a way to turn this into something she could pin her hopes on. Maren would never in a million years cheat, but Harvey is a dick, and I think she just enjoys daydreaming about a different life—one she won’t actually pursue.
“He asked about everyone,” I say with a shrug. “Apparently, he’s been having lunch with Dad every month for ages. I couldn’t believe it.”
“WithDad?” she asks. “What on earth would they need to meet about?”
“I don’t think they’re meeting about anything,” I say. “I think they just legitimately enjoy each other’s company. I was as surprised as you.”
Now, of course, I am no longer surprised. My father is brilliant and entertaining and so is Miller. I honestly can’t think of two people I would rather share a meal with than them, so it makes complete sense that they’d have sought each other out.
Maren does that fidgety thing with her fingers—tapping, tapping along the side of her disposable cup—which is what she does when she’s excited and trying to be cool. She wants to hear more about Miller but knows her obsession is getting weird.
“So, how was it?” she asks.
“People were nice enough,” I tell her. “There was an annoying chick and her boyfriend, who was older than Dad and obnoxious as hell, but otherwise everyone was great.”
Better than great. So much better than great.
