Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
“Cinderella, it’s well past midnight.”
Stanton’s voice greeted her as Haleigh entered their apartment.
Her roommate rarely went to bed before two in the morning, so she should not have been surprised to find him and his latest knitting project sprawled out on the sectional.
“It’s like twelve fifteen,” she pointed out.
“Plenty of time to become a pumpkin.” He set his needles aside to give her his full attention. “Did you at least land the princess?”
“I was at Jack’s.”
Stanton fell back against the couch, dramatically clutching his chest as if she’d shot him. The light from the free-standing lamp above him painted more golden tones into his warm brown skin. “You know there’s life beyond Jackson, right?” He spoke the words to the ceiling.
Haleigh leaned over the couch. “My date was horrible. I needed to unwind.”
Stanton blinked up at her behind his black-rimmed glasses. “You were in a bar full of other perfectly bangable people—”
“It’s Monday. It wasn’t exactly full .”
He ignored her. “And instead you ran straight for the platonic playhouse.” Stanton flicked her gently on the shoulder as he sat up. “This is not how you find the love of your life.”
Ever since Stanton met his boyfriend, it had become his life’s mission to ensure that everyone else found their own Ryan. Haleigh’s unwillingness (according to him) to cooperate in this endeavor had made her a burr on his proverbial behind (again, his words).
Haleigh rounded the couch and dropped down opposite him. “Tonight wasn’t about sex, though. I’d thought we’d clicked. For real.” Her chats with Annie had made her laugh. She’d researched film editing to find out more about Annie’s job. She’d actually been looking forward to tonight instead of dreading it. For once, she’d thought she’d found someone who might remind her that she could connect with another person, the way she did with Jack.
Instead, what she’d gotten was further proof she was doomed to singledom. Which made her sabbatical idea even more appealing. She could choose to be single before it chose her. Then at least she’d be in the driver’s seat.
Stanton shoved his thick black hair off his face. “Maybe you need to start looking somewhere besides the internet.”
Haleigh snorted. “Where’s that? Grocery stores? Gyms? Laundromats?” All places Haleigh hated for distinctly different reasons.
He pursed his lips. “I think my dentist might be single—”
“Okay.” Haleigh waved her hands in surrender. “We’re officially done with this conversation.”
“Fine.” Letting out a beleaguered sigh, Stanton reached for a stack of envelopes sitting on the coffee table. “Let’s talk about the purpose of a freezer then.”
Haleigh accepted the semi-thawed pile begrudgingly. “They were in jail.” The freezer was her favorite place to put things she didn’t want to deal with.
He snorted. “What could your bills possibly have done to warrant hard time?”
“Exist.”
“You know you could use the money you give me to pay those.”
Shaking her head, Haleigh rose to her feet. “I’m not living here rent free.”
She’d met Stanton right after college, when she’d burst onto one of his live film sets because she’d been too busy composing (increasingly hostile) resignation emails to her boss in her head to notice the very large, very clear CLOSED FOR FILMING sign on the coffee shop door. She’d gotten all the way to the counter before she realized something was amiss. Logan, their cameraman, had looked on the verge of bursting a blood vessel, but Stanton Bakshi had laughed that booming, infectious laugh of his as he watched Haleigh glance around, confounded, and then mutter, “Oh.”
He’d fetched her a coffee from craft services, declaring no one should be deprived of caffeine, and by the time Haleigh had taken her first sip, she’d found herself spilling her guts about her miserable copyediting job, and her merciless boss, and the depression she could feel setting over her bones like a blanket despite her meds. Stanton had been the first person to suggest to Haleigh that her mental health was more important than a nine-to-five job with benefits and a 401(k) and all the other things that people seemed to view as signs of a stable life.
“You can make your life look like whatever you want it to,” he’d said.
And she’d believed him.
He was her inaugural freelance editorial client, and when he’d heard she’d had to give up her apartment after the landlord raised the rent last year, he’d insisted she move in with him instead of living at home.
He’d pretty much saved her life. Or at least helped her salvage a version of it that she enjoyed. The same way he did on his show every week.
“I don’t need your rent,” he insisted now. “I don’t even have a mortgage.”
“I don’t care.” Haleigh didn’t take charity. She’d planned to pay her mom two hundred a month to live in her old bedroom, and she’d been doing the same for Stanton.
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m stupendous.” Haleigh tipped her chin up and grinned.
“Stupendously impossible.”
“And you love me for it.” She gave his hair a quick muss and mumbled goodnight, flipping idly through the envelopes as she headed for her room.
Haleigh hadn’t even looked at what was there before shoving her mail in the freezer this morning. She couldn’t work with bills nearby: they too easily activated her money panic.
One by one, she tossed them on her chair. Car bill. Student loan payment. Credit card bill. Three different scams.
At the bottom of the pile was a small, cream-colored envelope.
Haleigh’s name and address swooped across the front in silver calligraphy. The return address was a customized stamp with a frame of wildflowers.
Josephine Berkshire and Whitney Edgemount
Haleigh groaned as she tore open the silver-lined envelope with an unnecessary amount of force.
Her mother had warned her this was coming. Joey and Whitney were both graduating from Harvard Law School in May. Since they’d gotten engaged right before Thanksgiving, the two of them decided it would be a real hoot (Haleigh’s word, not theirs) to celebrate both milestones with a big party at Whitney’s parents’ estate in Vermont. Their estate. Haleigh didn’t have her own bathroom and these people had an estate.
“Great.” Her eyes followed the swoops and drops of the fancy print.
April 16th–18th. A three-day celebration.
Just what Haleigh needed. Three days of people asking her what she did for work, and if she was seeing anyone. Three days of watching their eyebrows scamper up their foreheads at her answers. She should carry a flask and turn it into a drinking game. One shot for every question. Two for every judgmental response masked in politeness. She’d be obliterated before the hors d’oeuvres were passed.
Mental note: Get Jack’s flask. The celebration was three months away, but it never hurt to be prepared.
She flopped down on her bed and kicked her boots off, letting them sail across the room and into her messy closet with a loud thud .
A big fancy party meant a plus-one. A plus-one meant even more pressure to find someone to take. And that someone couldn’t be random. They needed to be relationship material. They’d have to spend days together. They’d meet her family.
Leave it to Joey to find new and interesting ways to make Haleigh suffer.
As she got ready for bed, Haleigh bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t just take Jack. Before the incident in Hawaii that had almost imploded their friendship, he’d always been her plus-one. And they’d always had the best time.
But “no plus-ones” had been the first rule of their friendship pact. It was too easy to blur the lines between “friends” and “something more” when they were dressed up and surrounded by other couples at fancy restaurants or country clubs. Too easy to slip a little too close while dancing or have one too many drinks to keep their desires contained. After Hawaii, Haleigh and Jack both knew that the only way to protect their friendship was to never cross those lines again.
And Jack mattered too much to her to risk that, even if it meant that Haleigh would have to somehow scrounge up a perfect plus-one from who knows where.
Or choose to endure the endless scrutiny from her family for attending Joey’s party alone.