Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
I sit up, shoving the sheets away. My former therapist’s reminder floats up into my thoughts: You don’t have to deal with it right this second, but you do have to deal with it. I’ll give Felicity Chen the same courtesy. She doesn’t have to deal with me this instant, but eventually, she will have to face this.
With deliberate patience, I shower again and get dressed. As much as I can, I put the room back together, ignoring the way images flash into my head as I straighten the sheets—the long plane of her neck as she throws her head back and cries out—as I hang up our towels—water dripping from her lips as she stares between us and watches me fuck her—as I put the champagne bottle in the recycling bin—the view of her lips kissing down the length of me.
And then I sit in the chair by the window and slowly count to one hundred and then back down to one. The entire time, I think she must be on her way back.
She must be—just now.
Maybe now. She’ll walk in and I’ll put aside this anger and we’ll talk it out, one word at a time.
But when I leave just after four, the hallways are empty; the bar downstairs is predictably dark and silent. I have no idea where she went but am not going to chase her down with a text message or a call. Fuck this. The sleepy valet takes my ticket and pulls my car around. What a bloody mess.
thirty-eight FIZZY
I need you to say that again,” Jess says, cupping her warm mug of tea and tucking her feet under the blanket. “I want you to hear how insane it sounds.”
“I admit I have feelings for him,” I repeat robotically, pacing my living room floor. “We proceed to have the best sex of my entire lifetime. For hours. Twice. Then he tells me his marriage ended because he cheated. So I bolted.”
“Yes, but specifically the next part.”
“The part where I went and sat on the floor in an empty hotel ballroom for an hour?”
She nods, and then lifts her coffee to her lips to take a sip, letting my words ricochet off my silent living room walls. I did do this. I left Connor naked in my hotel bed while I bolted downstairs and hid in a dark ballroom for an hour, my mind spinning wildly out of control.
I sent up the bestie bat signal at five this morning and told Jess she had to come over as soon as she landed from Costa Rica and as soon as I got home from the Sunday post-wedding brunch. But given how much stuff there was to pack into cars, how many people there were to pay, and how many family members there were needing rides to the airport, it’s now nearly ten o’clock at night. I feel panicky and nauseated, but I’m not sure if it’s regret, resignation, or sheer exhaustion from a lack of sleep.
“He was trying to talk it out with you,” she says over the steaming top of her mug.
I don’t need reminding. Every regrettable, overreactive moment of my meltdown is imprinted in my brain like a bad, drunken tattoo.
I reach the end of my living room and turn to pace in the other direction, for the five hundredth time. “I know he was. And I know this all happened like eight years ago, and he was upset, and he’s older and wiser, but the fact that he decided to not just end his marriage but explode it…”
“Fizzy, we are all dumb when we’re young. I mean, you must see the parallels here: I got pregnant because Alec and I had unprotected sex in a bathroom at a party. Connor messed up, but then he stepped up. He went to therapy; he moved here to be present. Juno barely sees Alec once a year.”
An ache passes through me, and I stop my pacing to wince over at her. “Shit. I know. I’m a dick for venting about this to you.”
“No, come on, I’m the exact right person to vent to. Being hurt, being betrayed? It does weird things to us. I know this is your button and nobody would blame you for how you reacted.”
I resume my stride, turning to walk to the other end of the room, feeling her eyes on me.
“But we have to believe that the people we care about are conscious, accountable people,” she continues. “The fact that he told you, that he’s really done the work to grow… I mean, most men aren’t that evolved at thirty-three, let’s be honest.”
I groan, turning and heading the other direction again. “I know.”
“If you were the same person you were at twenty-four, you’d have a different guy every week and wouldn’t even be considering finding a soulmate, on a show or otherwise.”