Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
RUSTY
" W ho are you and what did you do with my Rusty?"
Ash asks this the second the door closes to the Jane & Co. offices.
Jane and Parker are in the conference room on what looks to be a Zoom call, and an intern with oversized headphones on pays us no mind. Ash's friends shoot us a concerned look, but they stay in their meeting.
"I've never seen you like that!" Ash gushes, walking backwards and pulling me into her office by my collar. I wish more than ever that she were pulling me into her office like this for another reason altogether. "You were so smooth and confident and a bit menacing . It was hot! How did you turn it on like that?"
It was hot?
My heart beats so hard against my chest, it bruises. How do I answer Ash? How do I say that the reason I was able to turn it on like that is because, for the first time in the year I've known her , I wasn't acting? I didn't have to hold back a thing. I didn't have to second guess or hesitate or plan every word out of my mouth to make sure she didn't see the naked truth.
That was me at my most unfiltered, my most unfettered, my most real.
"Philip was so mad! Did you catch how his eye kept twitching? That's his only giveaway. He can wear that cocky smile all day and blink that slow, creepy blink, but he's never been able to control that twitch."
When we get into her office, she kicks the door closed with her foot and drops into her chair, spinning in it. I lean against the wall, trying to hold myself together.
She is triumphant, and I'm in agony, and that's the way every minute of the rest of my life will play out now that I know what it's like to touch her cheek and the curve of her jaw, what it's like to bury my face in those curls and have my arm around her like she's mine and I'm hers.
I've done so many routine activities throughout my life that I know what muscle memory is. I could build a bookshelf in my sleep. I could whip up a website or design a logo without a second thought. At some point today, I rolled up the sleeves on my button down shirt and don't even remember doing it.
I've held Ash one time. I've stroked her cheek and let my lips glide across her skin one time. Those motions have imprinted into the sinews and fibers of every single muscle in my body.
My muscles will never forget.
And my heart — the hardest working muscle in the human body — will never recover.
The Janes have not been subtle about how much they're rooting for me, but they've also hinted that Ash has a thing for bad boys.
I thought they meant biker dudes who grunt a lot.
I didn't realize they meant American Psycho .
If that's really what she's attracted to — money and status and faces that deserve to get punched — I have no shot with her. I've imagined a scenario where she's too reluctant to date me because she's dumped every guy she's ever dated and doesn't want to risk losing me, too. I know people with that love story. It's a classic for a reason.
Meeting him makes me realize that will not be our love story.
Meeting him makes me think we won't have one at all.
The office door opens and closes as Lou rushes in. She darts straight for Ash, hugs her, and then holds her shoulders. "What happened? Are you okay?"
The look Ash gives her friend is appreciative but … defensive, too. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be interviewing musicians for your tour?"
"Like I care about findin' a bass player when Philip is in our town? Also, if that man so much as touches you, I will tear him apart with my teeth."
“He hugged me,” Ash says, “but? — ”
“Did you say he hugged you?” Millie bursts through the door, her red hair flaming with a righteous fury at odds with her usually calm therapist vibe. "I will cut that man open and boil his entrails like a witch. How dare he show up here?"
"Get in line," Lou says, an echo of her text.
"Why do you always get the front of the line?" Millie asks.
"That's the rule of dibs," Lou says.
"Dibs has to be called in front of other people. I said I want to go all medieval on him. Ergo, I called dibs."
"But I saw him first."
"But you didn't call it.”
Lou blows a raspberry with her lips. "Possession is nine-tenths of the law."
"That doesn't apply to dibs!"
"It's implicit! It's tacit dibs! The very act of me pointing him out created an unspoken dibs contract. "
"Seriously?" Millie asks flatly.
"Seriously."
"Ugh. I hate when you go full lawyer."
"You didn't mind when I got you out of being detained by TSA so you could be reunited with Duke and Lottie," Lou says smugly.
"Touché. Tacit dibs it is."
Ash is watching her friends while I watch Ash. She looks like she's torn between gratitude and embarrassment, but she drops both from her face when Millie and Lou turn their attention to her.
"How are you?" Millie asks Ash.
"I’m fine."
Parker and Jane come into the room like vengeful goddesses, and it's a good thing I'm already leaning against the wall, because there's barely enough space as it is. Their anger takes up every remaining inch.
"I'm going to tie his arms up to four horses and send them to opposite ends of the globe," Jane says.
"You can't quarter him. Lou has dibs," Parker says.
"Why does Lou get dibs?" Jane asks in outrage.
"She saw him first," Parker says. "If she hadn't spotted him, we wouldn't even be having this argument. She who spots him calls him."
"There's no way that rule applies? — "
"It applies," Parker and Lou say together.
Jane and Millie shoot each other a look.
"For the record," Ash says. " I have dibs. And Rusty and I already used them."
"Used?" Lou says. "Past tense?"
"Past tense, baby," Ash says, and a smile pushes away the other emotions. "I don't know which of you gave him the idea, but that fake boyfriend thing destroyed Philip!"
Ash beams while my intestines tie themselves into knots .
And suddenly, I have four pairs of eyes on me, ranging from bright green to darkest brown. And each of the accompanying Janes is trying not to smirk.
Jane rolls her lips together. "Who did give you that idea?" she asks, tapping her cheek like she just can't remember.
Lou elbows Jane, officially making her my favorite of Ash's best friends. "It was a group effort," Lou says. "But it worked?"
Ash takes a handful of candy from a jar on her desk and pops it into her mouth. "Brilliantly! You should have seen Rusty! He was all confidence and swagger and … sexiness . I didn't know my boy had all that in him!" The Janes' smirks sharpen like daggers to my chest. "Fortunately, when Philip found out that we're fighting for the same job and that we won't know who gets it for two weeks, he left town."
Millie cocks her head to the side. "Did he say that?"
Ash shrugs, chewing her gummy candies. "No. But why would he stay?"
"How did he look when you told him about you two?" Millie asks.
I flex my fist. "He looked like a jealous little prince."
Ash puts one finger on her nose and points the other at me.
"Why did he say he was here?" Millie asks.
"To get back together with her," I say.
"For work," Ash says at the same time.
"He talked about wanting you back?" Millie asks Ash.
"It was a power move," Ash says. "We all know he doesn't care about me. He's a narcissist! He cares about me caring about him. He knows I don't, so there's no reason to stick around."
"Ash, I wish that were true," Millie says, "but that's not Philip's M.O. He's not a narcissist. If he has anything, it’s antisocial personality disorder. He's not happy unless he wins. I guarantee he's going to stick around to try to get you to break up with Rusty, choose him, move with him back to Chicago so he can isolate you, extinguish your spark, and then drop you when you fight to get it back."
"What?" The word explodes out of my mouth like a slapshot. I clench both fists so tight, my knuckles crack. Violent, hot anger pumps from my heart and into my veins. "Is that what he did? I am going to kill him."
Ash's eyes pop.
"Get in line," Millie says.
"And use your imagination," Parker says, turning her nose up at my word choice. " Kill ? Seriously? I'm going to disembowel him and use his? — "
"I'm already using his entrails," Millie says. "I'm going to boil them like a witch."
"Oh, that's good," Parker says appreciatively.
I'm too angry. I'm too explosively furious. I can't let Ash see me like this. The memory of how wide her eyes are will already haunt me enough. If she sees me out of control, I'll never get over ruining her faith in me.
Never .
I draw on every tool and technique I can think of. I focus on my breathing. I count backwards from one thousand by sevens. Anything to manage the emotion bursting from me.
"Fine," Parker says. "Then I want to travel to Egypt, break open a Pharaoh's cursed tomb, collect the scarabs, bring them back to Sugar Maple, and set them loose on Philip until they eat him from the inside out."
Jane fist-bumps Parker.
"What about you, Lou?" I ask, because Parker's idea may be grizzly, but it isn't enough. Not nearly. And if I can't let myself fantasize about dismantling this guy, I need to live vicariously through the people who can.
Lou glances at Ash, who's fidgeting with a fingernail. Maybe it's the poet in her, but I feel like Lou’s looking at Ash differently than the others. She doesn't say anything until Ash meets her eye.
Lou smiles.
"I want to see him lose. I want to revel in the devastation on his face as he wishes the worst thing that ever happened to him was dismemberment, disembowelment, or death. I want to watch him suffer knowing he's incapable of a love like Ash's, but that she's found someone else totally, perfectly worthy of her."
My throat closes, thick with emotion that I don't dare show anyone, not even these women who can see through me like a window, and especially not my best friend who … can't.
All of the Janes look at me.
Including the best Jane: Ash.
I nod like Ash's eyes don’t eviscerate me as thoroughly as the Janes wish they could do to Philip. I force my words out as casually as I can. "I like it."
Ash's grin spreads slowly over her face until her light and goodness fill the room. "Then let's do it."