Breakup Buddies

Chapter 1

Chapter One

GRACE

There were worse things than getting over a breakup.

Things like pestilence, earthquakes, and being dragged to after-work happy hours.

Grace Ortega, unfortunately, was nursing both a bruised heart and a dirty martini at once.

At least Miami wasn’t actively being rocked by a seismic tremor. Small victories.

Ivy leaned into Grace’s side, the roar of the crowded downtown bar making it impossible to hear if she didn’t speak directly against Grace’s eardrum. “She’s totally into you.”

Following Ivy’s incredibly obvious line of sight, Grace looked at the bartender.

Brunette, pretty eyes, femme with one of those dainty little gold hoops through her septum.

She was attractive, and when she smiled, admittedly in Grace’s general direction, she flashed a universally beloved set of dimples.

“She’s a bartender. Being friendly is literally part of her job,” Grace countered.

Ivy tossed back her long red hair. “Girl, get out of here. Why wouldn’t she be into you?

You’re gorgeous! Those sexy dark eyes would make Anne Hathaway jealous.

Hair like a blowout bar ad. An alluring I-make-grown-men-cry-behind-closed-doors vibe.

” She grinned at Grace as if to say Try and disagree.

Shifting on her barstool, Grace sought refuge in her martini. “Or maybe she’s facing securities fraud charges.”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “You know what they say: you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.” She picked up her wineglass like she wanted to give such wisdom time to settle.

Grace took a sip of her drink, letting her own pause linger. “Yeah, well, they also said eating carrots improved your vision, and that was British wartime propaganda to trick the Germans.”

Nearly spitting her half-price—yet still wildly expensive—Sauvignon Blanc back into her glass, Ivy laughed. “Jesus, Grace. I’m telling you to return an obvious volley from a cute bartender and you’re coming at me with World War comparisons?”

Grace replied with a little shrug and took another sip of her perfectly dirty martini. She looked at the bartender again. “She’s too young.”

“Are you doth-ing and protesting on a new level?” Ivy raised both eyebrows. “She’s in her mid-twenties at the youngest.”

The bartender was admittedly casting more glances at Grace than strictly necessary to keep an eye on the busy bar. But Grace felt absolutely no stir of interest. Not a flicker of excitement.

Grace shook her head. “If she’s twenty-five, at best, I’m still thirteen years older than her.” If she was grateful for any part of the huge secret she was keeping from her best friend, it was that Ivy didn’t know what a flaming hypocrite Grace was.

“So?” Ivy stared at her like an age difference wasn’t a barrier. “Why can’t you have a conversation with her? Maybe you’ll hit it off and I won’t have to drag you out of the office once a month to do anything other than work.” She narrowed her gaze. “What’s wrong with her?”

She’s not a sexy fifty-year-old lawyer with a dismissive-avoidant attachment style, commitment issues, so much internalized homophobia, and a dash of internalized misogyny.

“It’s not her.” Grace sighed and found a sliver of truth. “I’m just not ready.”

Ivy softened, awakening the guilt lurking in Grace’s stomach. Of course Ivy misunderstood. She only knew about the breakup with Melissa from five years earlier. Grace hadn’t told her about the Julie-shaped hole in her heart.

“Babe,” Ivy said gently. As gently as possible when talking over the roar of a thousand conversations. “It’s been years. I know breakups take as long as they take, but…”

Grace couldn’t continue listening or her guilt was going to manifest into a corpus of bone and blood. It was going to grow a skeleton and gnashing teeth and swallow Grace whole. The secret had grown so heavy of late. Now that she didn’t have Julie to talk to about it.

But even after their breakup, Grace had to admit Julie was right. The appearance of impropriety alone was worth the secrecy. A senior partner at the same law firm dating a rising associate? People would talk. Debate whether Grace had earned her place.

Then there was the inconvenient matter of the “gay thing,” as Julie called it. Gunner wasn’t the kind of firm where anyone shared personal lives, and the old-school partners thought everything non-billable was TMI.

If only Ivy didn’t work at Gunner too, then she could tell her about the last two years of her life. Explain why she hadn’t been dating. That she’d been in love and now it was over.

But Grace had promised Julie. And even if they’d broken up, Grace had never betrayed a confidence in her life. Even if having no one to talk to about it was rubbing salt in her heartbreak. Even if the secrecy cost her.

But the cost was worth it. She was thirty-eight, and so far the firm’s youngest partner had been promoted at forty-two.

If she wanted to beat the record, she had to work harder, bill more hours, and keep her reputation pristine.

She’d been chasing that dream since her 1L summer.

She couldn’t abandon a fifteen-year goal just because she was a little sad.

Besides, the secret wasn’t only hers to unleash.

“I think I’m done,” Grace said after they’d finished a conversation about Ivy’s new ceramics hobby. Grace had tried her best to sell enthusiasm despite the crippling pain in her stomach. She felt like such an asshole, she couldn’t stand herself. It was unfair to ruin Ivy’s Friday night too.

Ivy’s amber eyes were so full of empathy Grace didn’t deserve.

“Are you sure? I told Joe to make other plans, but I think he’s just sitting in his apartment waiting for me to feed him.

” She glanced at her phone. At the wallpaper of her on-again, off-again boyfriend’s NFL photo.

He’d only played half a season a decade ago.

“Yeah, go get him his three whole roasted chickens,” she replied, releasing Ivy from her friend duties.

“You sure you’re okay?” Ivy said when they were waiting at the valet stand a few minutes later.

“I’m fine,” Grace lied, kissed Ivy on the cheek, and slipped into her white BMW when it pulled up.

The drive nearly an hour north to her Sunny Isles oceanfront condo was silent. Silent in the car, anyway. Inside Grace’s overworked mind, an orchestra of constant thoughts clashed like too many cymbals.

The bartender had been very attractive, she thought in the same dispassionate tone she’d use to analyze the merits of a potential legal claim. Not just objectively. I found her attractive. So why wasn’t I, in fact, attracted?

Grace clicked the button in her visor and the garage gate roared awake.

It’s been five months, she said to herself, like that changed anything.

Like she was one of her white-collar crime clients serving a prison stint.

Like heartache had a presumptive release date and she’d been on her best behavior.

If only there was a parole board to sway.

On the seventh floor, Grace backed into her designated parking spot.

Crossing the walkway between the garage and the high-rise, she tried to solve the quandary of her love life.

New answers didn’t spring from the ground she’d been retreading by the time she opened the door to her twenty-first-floor condo.

Immediately, and with deafening gusto, Icarus and Sheila bolted toward her.

Her Siamese cats greeted her with a cavalcade of complaints.

Given that the open concept two-bedroom smelled overwhelmingly like Fabuloso and Pine-Sol, Grace was sure that Naomi had only just left.

Her housekeeper wouldn’t have forgotten their dinner. The pair wouldn’t allow it.

Relenting, Grace fed them again, despite the vet’s suggestion that the twins could stand to lose a little weight. He just didn’t understand that they were Cuban Siamese cats and curvy like everyone else in the Ortega family.

Grace only made it as far as the long L-shaped sectional that faced the ocean because she didn’t have time to watch TV. She didn’t like enough people to ever fill the couch, but anything smaller would have looked ridiculous in the sprawling space. Her family had visited, but rarely.

She’d loved the idea of being in a completely different part of the county when she found the place. Enjoyed the fact that no one would ever just drop in on her. But now, rather than solace, all Grace felt was lonely.

Head on a throw pillow and dress pants tossed on the far end of the couch, Grace curled up her legs and decided she was done being sad.

She just had to get over Julie. That was it.

They’d been together twenty-four months and been broken up for five.

That was, what? Twenty percent? That seemed like a very reasonable amount of time to be over it.

People had been falling in love and getting their hearts stomped on since the beginning of time.

Certainly someone had to have figured out the way out by now.

Grace turned to the internet for help. On her phone, she opened a browser and searched: how to get over a breakup. After a beat, she added fast.

The internet was disappointingly useless.

She’d already done everything she’d read on every list. The things she could, anyway.

She couldn’t cut off all contact because they worked at the same firm.

Remove all reminders from her home? No problem.

They weren’t big gift people, and they spent most of their time at Julie’s house because she hated driving all the way to Grace’s place.

Avoid social media? Easy. Julie wasn’t online.

At all. Get rid of photos? Considering she only had a handful, it only took minutes to lock them away in an app she didn’t have to see.

As for exploring new hobbies, she already went to kickboxing three times a week.