Chapter 1 #2
“Ellie,” he repeats, like my name is the key to resetting his expectations. Apparently, it is, because his face lights up with a smile so large, his cheeks threaten to overwhelm his eyes. “Okay! Nice to meet you, Ellie!”
The pretty one continues to observe from his spot in the lawn chair. “And you want to live here?” he asks.
While I can’t rightly say that want has anything to do with my current situation, I’m also not inclined to lay out that my boyfriend proposed “a break” while I wait to find out if my body has decided to turn on my nervous system, and that, frankly, I’d rather set myself on fire than spend another evening under the same roof as him. So I nod.
He considers this. Then shrugs. “Aight.” He gets back to his phone.
“That’s Alistair,” Diego explains. “He just got back from a shoot. He’s a model,” he adds, conspiratorially. I nod. Of course he is.
“So it’s the three of you? No girlfriends or…” I stop myself shy of saying actual adults?
“Nope,” says Grant. “Just us. Though my brother was here for a while. He had the back room while his place was getting remodeled.” He chuckles. “Ian was so ready to get out of here.”
Looking around at a living room that appears to have been furnished with the contents of the lost and found of a public pool, I don’t doubt it. Good for him.
“Is the back room the one that’s available?” I ask.
Grant’s brow wrinkles, then relaxes. “Oh, yeah! Do you want to see it?”
“It’s what I’m here for,” I remind him.
Grant brays out a laugh. “Right! Cool. Let’s—”
A vibration picks up in my purse. My chest squeezes uncomfortably, but my lips twitch into a smirk. Took him long enough. I’d already ignored the You okay? I received while waiting for my ride, and Cole’s Ellie??? had arrived as I’d messaged Grant about looking at the room.
Three pairs of eyes dart to the clutch humming at my side, then back to me. The only other sounds in the room are the tinny gunfire drifting from Diego’s headset and the incessant rock of the ceiling fan.
The phone stops, and the tension in my chest releases some.
“The room—” I start, and the buzzing picks up again, rattling against my hip. The guys cock their heads in tandem, a chorus line of curiosity. I sigh.
“Excuse me.” I fish my phone from my purse.
Filling the screen is the familiar, handsome face of my abruptly, emphatically ex-boyfriend, Cole’s too-pretty lips captured in a smile.
It’s a far cry from how I’d left him at the restaurant, eyes rounded in shock, my “Go fuck yourself” hanging in the air over our cozy two-top.
His mouth had still been open when I excused myself from the table, which in retrospect I regret doing.
He’d just dumped me in a public setting, thank you very much.
He didn’t deserve politesse. I’ll have to consider that a moral victory.
I glare at the image, a sliver of hurt intruding on my anger.
We were supposed to be celebrating. Even if today’s MRI results were more of a semicolon than the period I was hoping for, I was happy.
I got dressed up; I’m wearing boob tape, dammit!
We’d been on a downward trajectory for months; what was another night of willful ignorance?
But before we could even order, Cole announced that he was “just not strong enough for this, too.”
The memory of that too cuts deeply enough that I wince. I swipe the screen to find the option to block his number.
“Ellie!” Cole’s voice explodes from the receiver.
I swear under my breath. Damn stiletto tips. I’m constantly flubbing on my phone because of my nails, but I just can’t give them up.
“Where are you?” he continues.
I frown. He doesn’t sound mad or worried, more… exasperated. Which is annoying. I’d like to think that one’s long-term partner’s sudden disappearance from a dinner together would register as more than an inconvenience. At least when that long-term partner is me.
“You can’t just leave like that in the middle—”
I end the call, and a few taps later, succeed in putting the thing on do not disturb. I’ll figure out how to block him later.
I look up to find that I am once again being observed like I am part of a zoo exhibit. I brace for the inevitable onslaught of questions.
Who was that?
Did he dump you? Why?
How do you feel about the dissolution of yet another relationship as a direct result of your defective body?
The imagined interrogation is enough to have me blinking back tears.
Anger shudders through me. No. I’ve managed to get through this week without crying once.
And while the greater implication of the breakup might be worth a few tears, Cole, who, despite two years of cohabitation, still doesn’t know where we keep the goddamn salad spinner, is not.
Steeled, I raise my chin and wait.
All three men dissolve into laughter.
Grant points to the phone, one side of his mouth hitched up in a smirk. “He sounded like a tool.”
“Right?” Diego chuckles, back to his eye-encroaching grin. Alistair snorts.
Grant nudges my shoulder gently. “Seems like you could use a beer.”
I look from bro to bro to bro. That’s… it? No commentary. “A beer?” I manage, still floored by their lack of reaction. What they overheard was downright delicious! If I’d listened in on that, I’d be dying for details.
“Ah! A beer!” Diego returns to his seat, deposits his headset and controller, and turns to me with a sweaty, unopened bottle.
I start to shake my head, then stop, letting my good eye land on the label.
Shiner Bock. When was the last time I had a Shiner?
Between Cole’s aversion to macrobrews and the never-ending supply of options that comes with dating a wine rep, I can’t think of the last time I’d had any beer.
It sounds perfect. “That would be great, actually. Thank you.”
“My pleasure!” Diego twists off the cap and extends the bottle to me. I swear, he bows slightly as he hands it off.
I raise the beer appreciatively, and Grant does the same, while Alistair reaches back for the drink defacing the end table behind him and Diego scrambles to his chair for his bottle.
“Cheers?” I offer.
“Cheers!”
We clink bottles, though Alistair doesn’t deign to get up to toast. I drink.
I don’t know that I consciously decide to chug the whole thing, but I commit, the mental middle finger to Cole and his snobbery and weakness and every other character flaw I’ve spent years overlooking absolutely worth the watering eyes.
I finish with a gasp, then blot my eyes. I silently thank the bighorn on the label. Good God, that hit the spot.
They’re staring again. Even Alistair gawks, dazzling features slack in shock.
“Dude,” they chorus, the single syllable coming out with no shortage of admiration. I’m oddly proud.
“It’s been a day,” I say flatly.
“No shit,” says Grant, and he lets out a little laugh. “So, you want to see the room?”