Chapter 2 Nora
NORA
I stare at the text.
It’s over, Nora.
I can’t believe that this—all of this—is real.
Last week, Brett and I were fine. Well, not fine, but definitely not bad.
I know he’s been stressing about his contract being up this season and worried the team won’t renew him, but I told him that’s crazy.
He’s easily one of the most popular players on the team.
I thought the fact we hadn’t had sex in the last month was just because he was focused elsewhere.
I guess I was right about that, at least—though it seems his focus wasn’t on the game. Seems his focus was only on where he placed his damn cock.
I’m numb as I stare at his text.
It’s been two days. Two days since I came home to find my boyfriend—well, ex-boyfriend now, I guess—in bed with his cock buried in someone else.
Two days and not a word from him until now. Just three words.
It’s over, Nora.
Should I have called or said something?
What was I going to say? How were we ever going to move past something like this?
This isn’t just cheating. It’s so much more than that. I don’t know if she was the only one, but there’s a great possibility she’s not. He travels all the time for his games, and though I’ve always talked to him out of state—trusted him—I know now that the possibility is there.
Did he fuck them without a condom too?
Am I the only one he didn’t want in that way? Why?
Brett knew I wanted kids. I’d mentioned it on multiple occasions.
I thought his insistence on using a condom was purely because he wanted to wait until we got married, and I was fine with that.
I didn’t want to force my boyfriend into something he didn’t want, and I fully thought we would be getting married.
For God’s sakes, I thought our anniversary date was going to be a proposal! But instead it was a wrecking ball.
Had Pam not let me come home early, I would’ve never known. I would have met him at the restaurant, and he would have looked at me like everything was fine, knowing what he’d done.
How could a person do something like that? Especially to someone they love?
Because he doesn’t love you, Nora. That’s clear, the bitter voice in my head reminds me.
For the last two days, I’ve been in a haze. Waiting for Brett to call, to say…well, anything on the matter.
He didn’t run after me. He didn’t call.
The only communication was that one text.
It’s over, Nora.
No explanation. No “baby, I’m sorry, I can explain.”
Nothing.
Because I meant nothing.
I don’t know what I expected, but the cold shoulder and brush-off certainly wasn’t it. Not after I’d moved in and started to build a life with Brett fucking Sterling. Sports Illustrated’s number one ice hockey star on the rise.
The home-cooked dinners, the family gatherings with Brett and his family—including his three brothers—the games…
The sex…
I’ve hovered over that text all day, unsure of what to say. What can I say? Do I want Brett back? Can I ever forgive him for what he did?
I don’t know. I don’t know what to say or what to do when I can barely process how everything that felt so perfect went to shit so fast.
It was all for nothing.
My stomach twists again, and I turn my phone off so I don’t continue to torment myself by staring at those three words.
Maybe it’s better this way.
I slide my phone in my pocket as Zayne comes through the door with a fresh order of Starbucks.
“One caramel latte, for you,” he says softly with a smile. “Extra whipped cream.” He winks.
I take it from his hands, mouthing thank you as he hands the mocha to Pam and the flat white to Abby. Krystal squeezes in and grabs her Frappuccino which looks more like a milkshake than an actual coffee, but I digress.
Pam takes a seat in her chair, sighing as Krystal sucks down half her drink in one go before heading to the dryer to pull the towels.
“You know what you need?” Abby says as she sets her drink down on the counter of her station.
Zayne plops down on the couch—the client couch, which we’re not supposed to sit on—and spreads his legs, looking at me with a raised eyebrow as he sips his venti caramel macchiato with an extra shot of espresso.
The man certainly doesn’t need the extra jolt of caffeine, after all he’s practically a shot of espresso himself, but I digress.
“A day at the spa and some rebound D?” Zayne suggests.
Pam rolls her eyes. “Must everything be about the dick with you, Zayne?”
He shrugs. “I’m gay, I can’t help it. I have a two-track mind.”
“Dick and—” Pam purses her lips.
“Hair, of course. Duh,” he says with a laugh.
Abby rolls her eyes. “Please. You’re just sour because you’ve been single longer than the rest of us.”
“Not like I’m not trying to find Mr. Right,” Zayne huffs before sucking down a gulp of his hot coffee.
“You know, maybe if you want a boyfriend, you should stop swiping on hook-ups.” Krystal says with a judgmental glare.
“Oh! Krissy went there!” Abby says with a giggle.
Zayne flips her off. “We’re not talking about moi, here, Krys. We’re talking about Nora and her fragile mental state.”
“I’m not fragile!” I protest, but Pam raises an eyebrow.
“Sweetheart, you’ve spent the last two days staring into the distance like you lost your husband at sea.”
“I mean, to be fair, he’s Brett Sterling,” Krystal says. “He’s like the hottest hockey player on TikTok right now.”
“Not helping, Krys!” Zayne snaps as Abby leans her elbow on my station counter. I sip my vanilla latte, relishing the warmth on my tongue. It doesn’t fix shit, but at least it tastes good.
“As I was saying,” Abby says, “you know what you need is a night out.”
“I can’t go out,” I say. “I have things to do, I—”
“Watching romantic movies with Pickles and crying into takeout is not a solid plan, sweetheart,” Pam says bluntly.
I’m not about to tell her that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for two days.
The way she knows me is uncanny, though, and I don’t want to admit that. But then again, I’ve known her a long time—all my life, practically—so I suppose she comes by her knowledge honestly.
“Pamcakes is right, Nora. You need to shed that which does not serve you,” Zayne says, and I give him a sad smile.
I spent most of my actual anniversary crying in my brother’s house with a rather scared-looking Pickles, who wouldn’t leave my side.
When I stopped crying because I was numb, I called Abby.
Though, I didn’t tell her the sordid details.
It was bad enough I would remember them; I didn’t need to relive or rehash them to my best friend because I did not need her going off half-cocked to my house—er, Brett’s house—and causing a scene.
The last thing I needed was my best friend to get arrested, given the fact that Brett always complained Abby was an “instigator.” Which is why Brett and I rarely went out with my friends, if at all.
And knowing Abby, she would have gone all in on giving Brett an earful regardless.
So all she and everyone else of importance knows is that Brett cheated on me and I came home to find him in bed with another woman. That’s all they need to know, really.
I expected him to at least text or call in the past two days, but instead it’s like…it’s like I don’t even exist, and I’m not sure how to feel about that, given the last year we spent together.
Sure, it wasn’t an easy year, but most of that was because Brett was traveling or doing appearances. When he was home, we spent as much time as we could with just one another unless he had some sort of family thing we needed to attend.
And those days—and nights—we spent together, kissing, fucking… I didn’t really realize how often we stayed in, and now I wonder about that too.
“Maybe I should call him—”
“No!” every one of them shouts in unison, and Abby reaches for my phone out of my pocket.
“Hey!”
“No!” she says. “That’s the melancholy talking. Asshole could not be bothered to even fucking call you to break up with you to your face like a man! You are not calling or talking to him. He doesn’t deserve that.”
I sigh as Krystal nods while folding one of the towels from her large stack. “Abby is right,” she says.
“I know I’m right,” Abby says proudly.
“I don’t know, Abs.” I run a hand through my hair, my fingers tangling in a knot which I work my way out.
“It’ll be fun, I promise. Just you, me and—”
“Me, of course,” Zayne says with a grin. Abby sighs. “What? I’m invited, right?”
“Well, now if I tell you no, I look like an asshole,” Abby says, but I can see the smirk on her face, and watching the two of them banter settles my nerves a fraction.
Maybe Abby is right. Maybe this is what I need to get my mind off Brett and that woman and how what felt like the most perfect relationship ever dissolved into thin air, destroyed by sex and a simple text.
A night out with my friends. I haven’t had one of those in a long time…
Not since I moved in with Brett, six months ago.
“You are always an asshole,” Zayne says, sticking his tongue out at Abby.
“No, you’re just always a damn brat.”
Zayne preens at her insult, as if she just told him he was king of the world. “Why, thank you, baby,” he says, batting his eyelashes at her. She rolls her eyes, and I can’t help but laugh as he gets up and heads to us with his giant coffee.
“You want me to go, right, Nora?” he says, pouting as if he’s a child begging for a cookie. His blue eyes glisten, his spiky black hair catching the overhead lights and shimmering from the gel in it.
I swear, when he makes that face, he looks almost exactly like Ben Stiller in Zoolander, when he goes head-to-head with Owen Wilson for the “model-off.”
“How can I say no to that face?” I say, faking my enthusiasm not because I don’t want him to go, but because I don’t want to go anywhere, period. But I know I should probably stop moping around my brother’s and at least make some sort of an effort to keep moving.
It’s over, Nora.
If it really is over…I should try to move on, right?