Chapter 4
Ellie
Katy places two glasses of Pinot on the table, then frowns. She trots back to the bar, and I hear her flirting with the bartender. She returns with the whole bottle.
“Seems like a waste of time to keep going back and forth, when we both know we’re getting through at least this bottle tonight,” she says as she perches herself on the stool beside me.
I nod. “You’re a wise woman, Katy Sullivan. I don’t care what anyone else says about you.”
“Ha! Me neither. So, tell me all about it, sweetie. All the gory details please.”
Her big blue eyes are sparkling, regarding me with part concern and part I-told-you-so.
I don’t blame her. She never liked Owen.
Katy is determinedly single and happy that way.
She has a ‘friend with benefits’ called Josh who she hooks up with when they’re both in the mood, and she casually dates.
But unlike me, she doesn’t have a romantic bone in her body.
She’s not cynical or depressed about it, either.
It’s totally her choice. Naturally enough that, along with her enviably slender figure and pretty face, makes her even more attractive to men.
She was supposed to be on one of her Netflix-and-chill nights with Josh—code for watching Bridgerton, then fucking like bunnies—when I called her. Proof of her good friend credentials, if I needed it, when she immediately cancelled on him and agreed to meet me after work instead.
“You were right,” I say, picking up my glass, “about Owen being a douche-canoe.”
She places a reassuring hand on my arm. “Well, I didn’t want to be, if that’s any consolation.”
“It’s not.” I retort, and it makes her laugh.
I take a swig of my wine. Not ladylike at all, but tonight is a wine chugging kind of evening. Delicious. Probably packed with calories too. Fuck you, Owen!
“What particular brand of douchery did he display this time?” she asks, refilling my glass without asking. Another important friend credential.
“Well, he didn’t cook me breakfast for starters.”
“The bastard.”
“I know, right? To put that into context, he cooked himself breakfast, using stuff from my fridge. My stuff.”
She looks aghast and places a hand over her heart. “Not the organic eggs? And the free-range piggy bacon? And the sourdough from the farmers market?”
“Yes. All of the above.”
She likes to joke about my shopping habits, but I stand by them.
I love animals, but I’m not hypocritical.
I do also eat them. However, it’s important to me that I only buy high-welfare products when I can, and I prefer to source my food from places that are sustainable.
I don’t think big stores are evil, and if I was a busy mom juggling work and feeding a family, then I’d be a hell of a lot less fussy.
But I am not, and Jamestech pays me well, so I can be picky where it counts.
It’s one of the advantages of living alone in my little apartment.
“Not only did he use all of that, Katy, but he didn’t even make me a plate. You know why?”
“Because he’s a selfish asshole?”
“Well, yes, there is that. But also because I’m too fat. I should just be eating fruit and drinking black coffee apparently. And, you’ll love this, doing ‘proper’ workouts because Pilates doesn’t count.”
“What the actual fuck. I’d like to see him do an hour of reformer, the knuckle-head. I can’t believe he called you fat. You know you’re not, right? You know you’re gorgeous, just the way you are. You’re fit and healthy, and I’d kill for your curves.”
I smile and give her a quick hug. “Katy, you are so perfect. Why can’t I be into vaginas?”
She shrugs and looks a little forlorn. “I don’t know. Me neither. Otherwise we’d be a great couple. Was he even any good in the sack, Owen the Asshole?” She tilts her head to one side and looks curious. A fair question for how many red flags he gave off.
“No. Not really. I mean, he had stamina, I’ll give him that.
But he was all bluster, you know? It was like getting fucked by a rhino, one that immediately fell asleep after.
And snored, real loud. He never once, um, you know…
” I blush slightly. I have no idea why. Katy and I have talked about everything under the sun.
“Kissed your magical lady garden?” she supplies.
I burst out laughing. “Yep.”
She shakes her head in disgust. “What a prick. His loss.”
I nod my agreement. And out of the blue, I get an image of Maddox James and his luscious lips.
Given the stories I heard about him back in Marrakech, he has no qualms about kissing the magical lady garden.
I wonder what it would be like to feel those lips on me, and it makes me shudder. Shut up, brain. Get out of the gutter.
“So it’s definitely over?” she asks. “This isn’t going to be one of those situations where I call him every name under the sun, and then you get back together and I feel bad?”
“God, no. I’m not that stupid, or that desperate. Besides, even if he did want to get back together, I’ve made it hard for him. He’s well and truly blocked on everything. Even Pinterest.”
“Pinterest?” she says, dissolving into giggles.
“Yeah, I once had an ex slide back into my life that way, and I learn from my mistakes.”
She fills our glasses again and raises hers to clink against mine.
“To you,” she says. “You are so much better off without him. Here’s to an asshole free life. You know, don’t you, that you can do so much better than Owen?”
She smirks. She always says this. It’s like her mantra: you can do much better. And while I kind of agree with that, I also do feel disappointed. Life hasn’t led me to expect fairy tales, but a girl has to hope, doesn’t she? I’m not ready to give up on love, or on myself.
“I know. I did hope this guy would be different though,” I tell her with a sigh. “He seemed so nice.”
She rolls her eyes. “They all seem nice at first. That’s why they’re only good for one thing. And sometimes, they’re not even good for that.”
“I know. My book boyfriends are so much better. Xaden Riorson would never call me fat.”
“True. Though I’m not sure he’d cook you breakfast, either.”
I ponder that. Impossible to predict. But that is the beauty of a book boyfriend.
“How are you and Josh by the way?” I ask, peering at her over the rim of my glass.
“Good. If you’re okay when we’re done, I’ll head over to his place.
Unless this is more than a few glasses and a hug situation?
If you need me to, I’ll blow off Josh. He won’t mind if I bail and come to your place for a sleepover.
We can do tequila shooters and stay up late watching Grease and singing along. I’ll be Rizzo.”
I flutter my eyelashes dramatically. “You’d really do that for me?”
“In a heartbeat, girl. You’re my Sandy and my Danny all rolled into one. You’re my ride-or-die.”
“And you’re mine, too, but I’ll be okay tonight. I just needed to blow off some steam, you know.”
She gets it. Of course she does. I know how lucky I am to have found Katy Sullivan, to have her as my bestie. Screw the boys of the world, because this girl rocks.
We’ve been at each other’s side since we first met two years ago.
I was a newbie to New York, making my way in a city even bigger than Chicago.
She was a Brooklyn native, one of seven siblings from a big Irish family.
We started working in a telemarketing center on the same day and bonded over our mutual dislike of our boss, Leery Larry, who was called that for pretty obvious reasons.
Although we’ve both moved onto bigger and better things now career-wise, we still keep that close friendship.
We go to the gym together, we have drinks at least once a week, and we talk most days.
We're there for each other, no matter what happens. She’s my New York family, in the best possible way.
“Have you talked to your mom about Owen?” she asks mischievously.
I have what you could call a complicated family dynamic.
My birth mom passed, and my dad was…well, that’s a long story, but he’s not in my life anymore, for damn good reasons.
My three younger siblings were adopted by one of the fiercest, proudest women who ever walked the earth, Keres, and she kind of unofficially adopted me too.
Katy has met her and knows she is not to be messed with.
“Uh, no, obviously. She’d be on the next flight from Chicago, and poor Owen wouldn’t have a dick come morning.”
Katy laughs. She thinks I’m joking. I’m not entirely sure I am. Keres would do anything to protect the people she loves.
For that reason, I’d never tell her about something as unimportant as one lame-ass gym-rat douche-nozzle.
I wouldn’t threaten her peace with that.
As shitty as he is, there are plenty of worse people out there who need to be flayed from the balls up.
One in particular comes to mind, but I shake away those memories like I always do, refusing to give them any space in my life.
I feel better as I think about my latest doomed relationship. He really is trivial. I’ll have forgotten his name by this time next month.
Unlike Mad Dog Murphy, of course, who's stayed with me for all these years. It’s not even his real name. I wonder why he went by it when he was traveling. What was he running away from?
He told me some of it, that one night we spent talking.
He opened up about losing his mom, and about mourning a girlfriend who took her own life.
I recall how he spoke about having a kind of darkness inside himself that he could never fully escape, but even after that admission I could only see the light in him.
We all have dark parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see.
He mentioned his family too, how much he loved them but how difficult a situation it was. He never gave me specifics.
It’s odd now, to realize that he was talking about Mason and Elijah and the other James men. How strange that we circled back to each other. Strange, and a little unsettling.