Chapter 12
When they pull into the parking garage under Chloe’s condo in Burbank, Xavier insists on coming up with them. It’s a bland building, harsh stucco edges and large black frames on the windows dotting each level, no balconies or outdoor space, just concrete and cinder block.
Bianca spends the entire ride upstairs pressed against the back wall, holding Chloe’s hand, hoping fervently that Josh is actually with his parents and not upstairs waiting for her to come home.
She’s not scared, not really, she’s pretty sure Josh wouldn’t actually hurt any of them, but Chloe had looked pretty shaken last night and Bianca’s almost positive her friend had downplayed just how bad the fight got.
Having Xavier with them doesn’t exactly ease her anxiety either.
Not that she’s worried about him being able to defend them. It’s that she doesn’t want him to, doesn’t want anything to happen to him, and definitely not because of her, even in a sort of roundabout way.
But Chloe needs to get back into her place and he was so insistent about it that she just found herself agreeing.
When the elevator dings and the doors open, Chloe slides out first, her key in hand. Bianca reaches for Xavier, stopping him just as they step into the hallway.
When her hand lands on his forearm, he glances down at it and then looks at her expectantly. “Let’s keep everything calm. He didn’t hurt her. Promise me, okay?”
He pats her hand with his and nods. “I promise.”
When they catch up to Chloe, she’s standing in her doorway stock-still, not moving into the small condo they bought years ago – their starter place, she’d called it at the time, with enough room for them and a guest room that could maybe turn into a nursery in a couple of years.
That isn’t going to happen now.
“Chlo, what?” Bianca asks, stepping up beside her. “Oh.”
“Did he . . . did he move out?” Chloe asks, but neither of them answer her.
The main living space is empty except for a chair Bianca recognizes from Chloe’s apartment before this one and the stools at the kitchen counter.
Everything else had been Josh’s before they moved in together and it looks like sometime last night, he’d come back, taken all of his stuff and left.
Chloe marches into the space, through the empty living room and dining area and down the hallway to her bedroom. Bianca follows, feeling Xavier just a couple of steps behind her. As they pass the kitchen, she spies a key left on an otherwise empty key ring on the granite countertop.
When they move through the bedroom door, Chloe’s got the closet open and it’s half empty.
“So when he said he was going to stay with his parents, he meant he’s moving back in with his parents,” she says and her voice cracks on the last syllables and her shoulders hitch.
Bianca glances up at Xavier and, without uttering a word, he seems to understand.
“I’ll wait in the car,” he whispers, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Text me if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” she whispers back.
A few seconds later, the front door clicks shut, the sound echoing in the space around them, and Chloe finally breaks.
Bianca steps up behind her and wraps her arms around Chloe’s shaking shoulders, pulling her in tight. The sobs follow, harsh and guttural, from deep in her chest as she turns around and lets herself be held.
They stand like that for a while, Chloe letting the tears flow, Bianca making soft shushing noises and rocking her back and forth gently, the shoulder of her t-shirt growing damper by the second.
“Twelve hours,” Chloe says, as her breathing comes back under control. She sniffles, loud and snotty. “We fought twelve hours ago after a decade together and he just left.”
Bianca gives her one last squeeze before stepping back. “I know. It’s unbelievable.”
“No,” Chloe disagrees. “No, it’s not. It should have been obvious. You knew, right?”
“Knew what?”
“That he didn’t want to marry me.”
Bianca sighs and sits on the edge of Chloe’s bed. “I knew that he didn’t deserve you.”
Chloe plops down beside her and they stare at the half-empty closet.
“At least he left the bed.”
“You deserve a new bed. A new everything. A new couch at least, and a dining-room set.”
“Okay, moneybags,” Chloe teases, but something clicks in Bianca’s head.
“Actually,” she trails off. “That’s . . . sort of true.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’re gonna go get you some new furniture, right now.”
She grabs Chloe’s hand, just like she did back at summer camp when they’d made a pact to be absolutely nowhere to be found during orienteering – also known as letting preteens wander around the woods by themselves with even odds whether they find their way back to camp with just a map and a compass – and instead spent the afternoon hidden in a disused storage closet in the arts and crafts cabin with a tube of Pringles, a package of Oreos and copies of Sarah Dessen’s Just Listen , the book they’d both brought to camp and bonded over the first night while they unpacked.
If Xavier’s surprised by how fast they come back down to the garage or that Chloe’s with her, he doesn’t say anything about it. He just starts up his Jeep and with a quirked eyebrow, asks, “Where to, boss?”
“IKEA,” Chloe says.
“West Elm,” Bianca says right on top of her.
“We are not going to West Elm. It’s too expensive.”
“We are going. I know you love all that modern stuff and I’m a trust-fund baby now. You can pay me back whenever, or not at all, I don’t even care. We’re going to get you a beautiful couch and a bed and you aren’t going to say a damn word about it.”
Bianca watches as Xavier and Chloe’s eyes meet in the rearview mirror.
“I find it’s best not to argue when she sounds like this,” he says, pulling out of the parking spot and heading out of the garage.
Chloe snorts. “Okay, fine, but I am paying you back.”
“Whatever, we’ll talk about it later.”
West Elm, in all its modular shapes and mid-century-whatever glory, is the antithesis of Bianca’s style. She leans more eclectic with a bit of Mediterranean influence, but it is obviously like heaven for Chloe.
She flits from display to display taking it all in. “You guys should register here.”
“Register?” Xavier asks.
“For stuff, for once you get married. You know, you make a list and people buy you things off the list.”
“That’s a thing?”
“Can confirm,” Bianca says, giving his arm a reassuring pat, and he slings an arm around her shoulders as they follow Chloe toward a soft-looking cream-colored couch with a chaise extending from one end.
“Suddenly marriage makes a lot more sense. People just do it for the free shit.”
Bianca snorts. “You’re not wrong.”
“You two are lucky,” Chloe says, dropping into the corner of the display sofa, curling into it, and then nodding to herself, as if it meets the standard of comfort she’s looking for.
Bianca slides out from under Xavier’s arm and sends him a meaningful look. Now is not the time for public displays of affection. Chloe doesn’t need to see it, not with what she’s been through in the last day.
“No,” Chloe says, shaking her head. “Don’t do that, not for me.
It’s actually weirdly comforting. Josh and I didn’t have that, at least not in a long time.
Just one more reason that this is a good thing, I think.
” Then she takes a deep breath and runs her hands over the material of the couch. “This is the one.”
“Sweet,” Bianca says, holding out her hands for her friend and pulling her up. “And now, a bed.”
In the end, she convinces Chloe to pick out a couch, a bed and a dining-room table and chairs, all the opposite of the shit she had with Josh, and, while not exactly a full fresh start, enough to make the condo they just left feel like hers .
Xavier eyes the boxes of furniture piled up at the curb once they’ve paid – the most money Bianca’s ever spent on anything that wasn’t a tuition bill – and he shakes his head.
“We’re gonna need a truck.”
Bianca wrinkles her nose. “I didn’t think about that.”
He laughs. “Someone needs to stay with the stuff, while I go rent one.”
“You can rent a truck?”
“Yeah,” he says, “like a U-Haul. Home Depot does it too.”
“Huh, the more you know.”
Chloe pulls out her phone. “You two go. I’m going to call a locksmith. I’m changing the locks today.”
“That’s a good plan.”
They leave her perched on top of the box holding her new headboard, scrolling through her phone.
“So you’re spending our wedding fund on this?” Xavier quips once they’re back in his Jeep and pulling out into traffic headed toward the closest Home Depot.
She snorts and shrugs. “My parents didn’t specify what the money was for, not really, and you saw that check. It barely makes a dent. Besides, Chloe’s good for it.”
“You’re something else, you know that, right?”
“What?”
“People don’t do things like this, Bianca. You . . . you’re just . . .”
She feels a flush building over her skin as he struggles to find a word, but she doesn’t look at him, despite feeling the heat of his gaze.
“Eyes on the road,” she says, diverting hers out the window.
She hears his sigh, but then his hand finds hers and, twining their fingers together, he lifts it to his mouth and presses a kiss to the back, setting the skin there alight. The sparks flicker up her arm and over her body, settling in her chest with a fluttery warmth.
He rests their joined hands against his thigh as he drives and she doesn’t pull away, not until they have to get out of the car.
The Home Depot doesn’t have a truck, but they do have a van, a white one with tinted windows that’d look super creepy if it didn’t have a massive logo painted on the side, telling exactly how much the thing costs to rent by the hour to everyone Xavier drives past, while she follows behind in the Jeep.
They find Chloe where they left her and she looks up with a grin when they pull up.
“That was fast. Locksmith will be there in an hour. Let’s do this.”
The furniture fits easily enough in the van, which Xavier handles like a pro.