Page 33 of If the Suit Fits
Life, post-Nick, is supposed to be about soaking up the quiet and reveling in the knowledge the wedding is now behind me and the pretense of associating with the people from my past is over.
I’m supposed to like isolation and silence. But now it’s just… well, it’s lonely. And quiet.
I’ve spent countless hours in my office, day after day after day, working on my deadline, not even sure if Mr. Manson will allow me to step back in the building since my speech on Saturday. Butall the while, half of my mind has been on my office door. Waiting to be startled. Wondering if anyone besides myself will ever walk through it again.
So far, the answer is no.
I’m brutally aware that I gave explicit instructions for Nick to collect his things and leave me the hell alone.Don’t disturb. Don’t knock. Don’t interrupt. And yet, when I checked his room on Sunday afternoon to find it clean and his personal effects gone, my heart broke just a little more.
He was so near. But I didn’t get to see. To experience. To feel him.
Which is exactly what I asked for.
In all of my attempts to reclaim my power and give speeches about loving myself and living for me, I got caught up in dismissing the onlyrealman I’ve ever known. I sent him away and begged him to stay gone. And now that he has…
“It hurts.” I sit where he sat on the morning of the wedding, but I slump across the counter and ignore the bagel Anna sets down by my elbow. “I think I fell in love with a fake,” I groan. “He waspaidto say those things, but he had no business being so good at it, right?” Desperate, I roll my head and look up at my best friend. “He was really good! Which means I tricked myself into falling for a man who wasn’t actually available to me.”
“You should leave a one-star review on Google.Did a wonderful job,” she mocks. “Too good.Now I’m mad. Don’t recommend.”
“You’re being a jerk.” I stare at the dumb bagel, knowing I should eat it, but violently aware that if I do, I might puke on a boardroom of architects and a client waiting for herfinal design. “My heart hurts, even though my brain knows it shouldn’t. I hate it.”
“Well, wild idea, I know. But have you considered…” Crossing my kitchen, she sets a mug of coffee by the bagel and lowers herself to rest on her elbows, “calling him? Maybe he liked you, too.”
“He was paid,” I scoff, enunciating each word. “Paid. And besides, I called once. I was weak and sad and lonely, and it was nearly midnight. Which issoooooinappropriate.”
“You called him?”
“Yes.”The pain! So much pain!“He didn’t answer, and he never called back. He was probably with his next client, and now I’m humiliated. Imagine he’s there with his next fake date, and I’m blowing up his phone in the middle of the night! She’s there, in her cute little silky slip and sexy long legs, and she’s all: ‘who was that, Nico?’ And then he’s like: ‘No one, babe. She’s nobody.’”
“Good lord!” Anna cackles. “You just made up an entire scene in your head! She’s wearing a slip? Didyouwear silk while he was here?”
“Well… no.” But that’s because I’m weird and awkward and not nearly as pretty as that other woman. “But?—”
“But nothing, you donkey. It was midnight, so he missed the call. And then maybe he woke to a billion notifications the next day because he’s a whole ass human being and probably has work and stuff. Send the man a text and tell him you’re still thinking of him. If he doesn’t respond, then that’s the end of that and you know. But you’re not even giving him a chance because he has no clue why the hell you called. Now eat something.” She slides my bagel closer, smacking my elbow with the plate until a sharp hiss bursts along my throat.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry,” she giggles. “We have to be out the door in ten minutes if you wanna make it in time for your meeting with Anderson. Pull yourself together and be that chick youswearyou were at the wedding, though I’m yet to see evidence since no one filmed it, and you didn’t bring me as your plus one.”
“Goddddd…” I lean on my elbows and pick at my breakfast. “I made a whole speech.”
“And you kneed Tinky-Winky in the balls,” she cackles. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to have seen that.”
“I told three hundred people that Drew and Karla were the cheats and that the Taggarts are thieves. I told my parents never to contact me again.” A long, aching moan rolls through my chest. “And then I announced I paid my date to be there with me, which was literally the opposite of what I should have done.”
“Nah. You did fine. You hired a date so you could feel brave, and then you feltsobrave you revealed your secret. It’s not the outcome you went in there with, but it’s the outcome you needed.”
“They’re going to gossip about me for the rest of our lives.”
“So? Who cares what they think?And, I’m pleased to remind you that you survived. The homeless guy didn’t murder you or wear your skin.”
“Stop.” I pick at my bagel and place a morsel on my tongue. “He wasn’t homeless, I’m pretty sure. He was just… ya know. A normal person, who maybe was having a slow work week, so he grabbed a job on the side for extra cash.”
“And he didn’t kill you,” she repeats. “Let’s focus on that. And now we know you’re capable of wanting a relationship, too. That’s a good sign.”
“Ugh.” I wrinkle my nose and feel exactly how I did the lasttime we had this conversation. Relationships… withothermen? No thanks. “Kinda wish I met Nick like how I met Ms. Anderson.”
“At the club?” She reaches across and tears my bagel in half. “You owe me thanks for that, by the way. You didn’t want to go out, but I forced you. Drunk women in a club bathroom are like,” she beams around my breakfast, “best friends foreverrrr. When an architect, a lawyer, and an extremely wealthy developer’s lead assistant walk into a bar, they’re no longer three drunk chicks. They’re powerhouses who could rule an entire city.”
