Page 4 of Heart to Heart
“Noted.” I took the phone, immediately wishing I’d listened to her. On the screen, contained in a circular photo amonga list of circular photos, was Guy’s profile. Except the picture that had been there a mere twenty-four hours ago had changed, morphing from Guy, standing with a beer in his hand at a Red Wings game, to Guy with an arm around a blonde who could pass for Margot Robbie’s somehow prettier twin sister. The worst part? Either she’d traveled home with him, staying back at his parents’ house while he broke things off with me, or I had been right as I’d suspected. He’d been cheating on me. “That douchenozzle,” I growled like a wounded animal, a mixture of anger and pain lacing my voice.
“Right?” Kiki threw her hands up in the air. “Now give me the phone back.”
Ignoring her, my finger hovered over his profile picture, an internal war brewing between self-preservation and self-destruction.
“Avery,” Kiki’s voice had a stern edge to it that was sharpening by the second, “step away from the phone.”
Self-destruction won out in the end when my finger tapped Guy’s picture, taking me to his profile. My stomach dropped like a stone, straight down to the pit, when the first entry on his timeline proudly displayed his new relationship status.
“In a relationship with…Liz Bennet.” He had officially dumped me on social media.
“Excuse the hell out of me?” Kiki snort-laughed. “Well, you have nothing to worry about, because Mr. Darcy he sure isn’t.”
Liz. Annoying lab partner, Liz? The same Liz who’d made her way into casual conversations because he just couldn’t stand her?
As if I hadn’t punished myself enough, I scrolled down to see that his post had already garnered a dozen likes and four comments.
Congratulations, read two of them.
About damn time, man, read another. About damn time? How long had their littlePride and Prejudicefairy tale been going on?
It was that last comment, though, that truly went in for the kill:
A real upgrade, buddy.
Before reading those comments, I hadn’t thought there was a level lower than rock bottom. I’d been wrong. When it came to heartbreak, the rocks were just the first layer. “Here.”
Kiki took my phone from my outstretched hand and stole a glance at the screen. “Oh, screw you and your comment, Jason Ludwig. Keep hiding behind that pick-up truck, as if we don’t all know you’re overcompensating for your lack of a stick shift elsewhere.”
“It’s fine. You know what? I’m happy for him. She seems lovely. A woman in STEM. We need more of those.”
“Okay, so if it were, like, two months in the future, I’d be all proud of you and your female empowerment stance, and all. But the fact that your breakup can still be counted using hours, your tone is more one-straw-from-breaking-the-camel’s-back-away-from-starring-on-an-episode-of-Killer Women.” She snaked her arm around my waist, pulling me to her side, which was as close to a hug as Kiki ever got. “It’s okay to not be okay, Avery. Scream, throw something—just don’t break anything so we can get our security deposit back. Hell, I’ll let you borrow Ethan if you just want to take your frustrations out on a man. Pain is meant to be felt for a reason. Let yourself absorb it, acknowledge it, and then let it go.”
As if on cue, the rattle of the doorknob heralded Ethan’s return, a pizza box wedged between his stomach and his arm. One whiff of the greasy disaster housed in that cardboard box and my stomach began to grumble.
“Thank you.” Ethan gaped at me dumbfounded as I ripped the box from his hand and plunked down on the couch, placing it on the cushion next to me.
“Or we could just eat our feelings,” Kiki acquiesced to my silent invitation by grabbing a slice and taking a seat on the couch.
“Okay, then,” Ethan muttered. “You know, I was doing some thinking downstairs.”
“Oh God, we’re in trouble,” Kiki muttered.
“I was just thinking,” he continued, undaunted, “that one of my buddies just broke up with his girl, and he’s pretty cool, so…”
“No!” Kiki and I both exclaimed at the same time, promptly high-fiving each other without tearing our eyes away from our double cheese, pepperoni, and mushroom slices of heaven.
“He may wear a fanny pack, but he’s a good guy,” Ethan grumbled.
“Oh—oh, crap! What time is it?” Kiki asked, searching for something buried in the couch cushion.
I checked my phone. “Eight o’clock. Why?”
“It’sHeart to Hearttime, baby.” She beamed as she triumphantly pulled the remote from the depths of the couch.
“Ugh,” Ethan groaned. “First, you take my pizza and now you make me watch this shite.”
“Agreed.” I closed the lid to the box and handed it over to him as I tucked my feet underneath my body, resting my head on my arm propped on the couch.Heart to Heart, and all its foolishness, was basically the only demand Kiki had when it came to who had control over the remote and when. Not one to care for television, it was an easy concession on my part. “I thought you said that Logan…Larry…”
