Chapter 2
I groaned as the sunlight shone red through my closed eyelids.
I hadn’t pulled the blackout curtains all the way shut the night before.
Yes, I’d stayed in the hotel. It had been too late to cancel when Nate broke up with me.
It was going to cost me the same whether I stayed in the room or not.
And honestly, I needed the break, with or without Nate.
I squinted my eyes open, memories of the night before causing me to groan again. Had I agreed to go to therapy with a complete stranger? A smug one at that.
After I called his bluff, he’d shrugged, like he agreed to these things on most weekends, and said, “Care for a secondary bet? Between the two of us?”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked.
“If I’m right”—he gave me a once-over, like he could read me just by looking at me—“you have to…”
“Make her do karaoke or a poetry slam,” Tara said. “She hates doing fun, embarrassing things in front of a crowd.”
I whipped my head toward Tara and her betrayal. After all, I’d agreed to this mostly for her. She gave me a sheepish smile and a shrug. I swallowed down my feelings, realizing she was probably hanging on to things from high school as well. Things I thought we’d put in the past.
“Not surprised you like to maintain all the control,” he said, and hot anger poured through me.
“If I win, you have to shave your head, Pretty Boy,” I snapped.
Michael let out a burst of laughter. “She has your number.”
His eyes went to his empty glass. He looked inside as if he was studying the patterns in the dried foam along its sides. Then he met my eyes, held out his hand, and said, “Deal. By the way, I’m—”
“A stranger,” I interrupted, not touching his outstretched hand. “We’re supposed to be strangers. I should leave before we learn any more fun facts about each other.” Now that humiliation was on the line, I needed to make sure I won.
He retracted his hand, holding it up instead, his smug smile back on his face as if I’d just cemented his one and only opinion of me to this point—that I was a control freak.
I wasn’t. I was organized and structured and task oriented. Without those things there was little to no productivity.
“You obviously won’t be strangers for all four sessions,” Michael said, challenging my logic.
“I’m counting on one session,” I said.
“Yes!” Tara said, like we’d already won. Hopefully the therapist was a good one.
I shrugged, then pulled some cash out of my purse, put it on the bar, and walked away. My stumble on the way to the door reminded me how much I’d drunk.
“I’ll text you a time and location,” Tara called after me while I was pulling up a rideshare app on my phone.
Now, lying in the hotel bed, completely sober, I wondered again how I had been talked into such a horrible idea. I didn’t have time for this game. I was running a business and taking care of my mom and getting broken up with. I needed to cancel. I was going to cancel.
I pushed my palms against my eyes and sat up. My phone buzzed from the nightstand next to me, and I wondered which of the three life events I’d just laid out awaited me on its screen.
Raya. My business partner at Luminesce, our bar/restaurant.
Will you send me the delivery schedule for this week?
I’d already sent her the delivery schedule.
I know you already sent me the delivery schedule but I dropped my phone in the fryer last night, yes the fryer is fine, no my phone is not.
I should’ve been shocked that Raya’s phone had somehow ended up in the fryer. I wasn’t. She had probably been holding it in the same hand she was also using to hold the fry basket.
I hope customers didn’t get phone fries, I texted back. Because honestly, I could see her thinking the food was somehow unaffected by the presence of a phone melting in the hot oil.
Of course they didn’t, Sutton! We shut that fryer down for the night, had it thoroughly cleaned and it will be up and running again tonight. I can do *some* things without you.
It wasn’t that I didn’t think she could … okay, I mean, nobody did it exactly the right way, but out of all the somebodies in the world, she was the only one I would ever open a business with, so there was that.
We’d met in college in an entrepreneur development class. We’d actually opened a fake restaurant for our final project. Laid out the plan so thoroughly that at the end of the semester, we’d decided that one day we were going to make it a reality. And we did.
Raya was so good at the main thing I wasn’t: marketing.
She attended parties and frequented events and passed out flyers to get the word out.
She made a social media page and posted almost daily …
well, three times a week. I was the one scheduling deliveries and ordering food and alcohol and organizing the waitstaff and doing all the things that made the business actually function.
And I was still doing those things, even from three hundred miles away.
She just had to make sure she was at the back door for said deliveries.
I sent both the delivery schedule and the staff schedule for the week again.
She responded with a Thank you!
Btw, Nate and I broke up last night.
My phone immediately started ringing, her name scrolling across the screen.
“I’m fine” was how I answered, sliding off the bed.
“What the hell?” she said. “Why?”
“Why am I fine? I don’t know, because I can’t think about it right now. It helps that I haven’t seen him in two weeks. It softened the blow a little.” At least that’s the reason I was telling myself this didn’t hurt as much as I thought it should’ve.
“No, why did you break up? What did he do? Did he cheat? I will kill him.”
I swallowed. “No, he didn’t.” At least I didn’t think he had. “We’ve just grown apart.”
“I always hated him anyway,” she said.
“No, you didn’t.” I straightened the comforter on the bed, pulling on each corner to smooth out the wrinkles.
“You’re right, I didn’t … and I can’t if he’s still going to talk to the meat guy for me on Tuesday. Tell me he’s still going to take care of the meat.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I’d forgotten about that. “Yes, it’s taken care of. You don’t have to worry about it.”
She took a deep breath. “Thank god. After that, I’ll start hating him.”
I walked to my overnight bag and pulled out my outfit, laying it over the chair. I should’ve pulled it out the night before, like I typically did, and hung it, but I hadn’t been thinking clearly last night. “You don’t have to hate him.”
“Too bad, I will.”
I gave a breathy laugh. “Fine.”
“I have to go,” she said. “This place doesn’t run itself.”
No, it didn’t. I had about a dozen calls to make and a dozen more bills to pay to make sure it continued to run.
We ended the call, and I stared at the lit screen of my phone, wishing I didn’t have to reach out to Nate.
His parents ran a diner in North Hollywood, had for thirty years, so he had knowledge and contacts.
Both of which I rarely called on. I had never wanted him to think I was using him.
Raya and I were strong, capable women, after all, but damn, he’d negotiated a good price on filets that I didn’t want to miss out on.
Can I have your meat contact? I texted.
Is this some backhanded way of asking for a dick pic?
I’ll take one of those, too, if you’re offering.
There’s something seriously wrong with you, he texted, but he sent me the name and phone number anyway, along with the quote he’d gotten.
There was something seriously wrong with me because I felt nothing at his words. All I felt was numb. Cold.
Thanks, I responded.
He left me on read.
I felt nothing about that either.