6. Gianna
February
I shovemy hip against my apartment door to get it to unstick and tumble into my apartment. I try not to drop anything, but I’m juggling my groceries and my bag while cradling my phone in the crook of my shoulder.
“I’m on my way. You got the goods?” my cousin and best friend, Simone, asks.
I kick my door shut behind me and shuffle into my apartment. Dropping my work bag next to the small gray couch, I lug my groceries to the kitchen to put them away.
“If you mean those tiny mozzarella balls and the chocolate-covered pretzels, then yes, I’ve got the goods.” I smile into the phone as I place the tote bags full of food on the counter. “I’m going to put everything away. You’ve still got your key right?”
“Yup. I’ll be there in ten, so buckle up. I hear Shonda’s really going to be playing with our emotions again.” She ends the call before I can respond, but I groan anyway.
I’m not even sure why we continue watching these shows. It’s been over a decade, and all Grey’s Anatomy does is cause us emotional turmoil.
And yet here I am, setting up for our weekly watch party. Luckily, we’ve got the most recent season of Bridgerton to stream after. Hopefully, that’ll lighten the mood.
Swinging the door of my fridge open, I start putting some food away. I leave everything that doesn’t require refrigeration on the counter for easy access. I take a cursory look around my small apartment. It’s cozy but cluttered. The sweatshirt I wore Monday is still thrown across the back of my couch, my shoes are piled against the wall next to my TV stand, and the box of donations I put together last month is still sitting on my small dining room table.
I don’t even consider tidying up for Simone’s sake. She’s known me my entire life, and she knows how I am. A little frazzled and not so worried about having a pristine living space. My apartment isn’t dirty, it’s just a bit of a mess sometimes.
Okay, most of the time. Save the two or three days out of the month that don’t immediately follow a particularly hardcore cleaning day.
A quick knock distracts me, and Simone breezes into the apartment, two bottles of wine tucked into her arm. “I have arrived, favorite cousin of mine.” Grinning, she shakes her hips as she walks toward me.
I take in her whole look and just shake my head. She’s recently bleached her hair again, but left the roots dark so it gives her a whole edgy look. Her signature red lipstick stands out in stark contrast against her pale skin. Simone is tall at five-ten, but she’s still rocking platform boots with her black leggings and oversized green sweater. Her eyes are lined, as always, with a dark cat eye.
If I didn’t know she worked from home, I would say she’d come straight from work. But this is just her. Always put together like she belongs on some NYC runway.
“You’ve got to stop saying that.” It’s the same thing I say to her every time she claims I’m her favorite. We’ve got a pretty big family, and we’re the only girl cousins, but there are fourteen of us altogether. She’s just a year younger than me, but she’s got enough attitude for the both of us. And she’s not shy about letting everyone know who she likes best.
“The boys are all bozos, and you know it.” She’s talking about her brothers more than the others, and we both know it.
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll grab some glasses and some snacks. Take one of those to the couch.” I grab one of the bottles of wine and head back to the kitchen.
Once we’re curled up on the couch under the large throw blanket I took out for winter, we cue up our show.
“Before we start, you’re going to tell me about your little love connection from Colorado.” The insinuation that my night with Henry is something more than a one-time hookup is incredibly evident in her tone, and I don’t like it.
“It wasn’t a love connection.” I made the mistake of mentioning my night with Henry to Simone a few weeks after I returned from the trip.
She was more than a little annoyed that I hadn”t told her about it when I first came home. And even more annoyed when I barely gave her any details.
I had been successfully avoiding this line of questioning because both of our schedules have been a bit busy the last couple of weeks. Apparently, my run of luck has ended.
“Well, it was something, and I want to hear all about it.” She pins me with the same glare my aunt has wielded for our entire lives.
It’s a little scary. “You look like your mom.”
“Take that back.” Her mouth drops open, and her forehead creases.
“Don’t look at me like that, then.”
“If you would just tell me, I wouldn’t have to.”
“It’s not that interesting.” I’m trying to convince myself more than her.
The truth of the matter is that I haven”t been able to stop thinking about him. I mean, that night. The sex, really. It has everything to do with how good the sex was, not who it was with.
“G, you had a one-night stand in Colorado on a work trip. There’s nothing not interesting about that. Spill so we can get our hearts ripped out by a medical drama that should’ve been canceled six years ago.”
Rolling my eyes, I take a hearty sip of the chilled white wine and try to decide how much I should tell her. Pinching my bottom lip between my teeth, I decide to give her the amount of detail she usually shares with me.
Which is a lot more than I’d usually be comfortable with.
And with that, the words spill out of my mouth as fast as I can think them, and my entire face burns at the memories they conjure.
“Hot take, Owen should’ve been gone seasons ago.” Simone snickers as she pops another tiny mozzarella ball into her mouth.
“That’s not a hot take if you say it every time we watch this show.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m not wrong, though.” Her red-painted mouth tilts into a smirk, and she shifts so she’s facing me.
“You? Wrong? In what world?”
“You’re right, not even possible.” I lace it with as much sarcasm as I can, although nothing will ever match her sarcasm.
“I’ve been right about every single guy you’ve ever been with. Which is why I’m glad you took a chance and decided to be a ho with this Colorado guy.”
I resist the urge to correct her and remind her of Henry’s name. It doesn’t matter. “I wasn’t a ho.”
“You were a bold badass ho with a guy who seems to be the complete opposite of your usual laced-up lame asshole type. And I use the word ‘ho’ endearingly. You know I ho enough for the both of us.”
There’s one thing I don’t ever have to worry about when it comes to Simone. She’ll never sugarcoat the truth. Even if she should sometimes. Luckily, I’ve developed a thick skin after all these years, so it isn’t so jarring. And I do know that she’s using the term ho with affection.
“Listen, I know that my past boyfriends haven’t exactly been shining examples, but I don’t know if that means I should start messing around with anyone new.”
Simone’s been convinced that I’ve had so many bad relationships because I go for the wrong kind of guys. She’s never really been on board with the way I find my boyfriends through our cousins, her brothers specifically. When I tell her it’s just convenient, she goes on about how love isn’t supposed to be convenient. She’s been so dedicated to that rhetoric that I almost believe it myself.
Only, I’m more convinced that it’s a me problem, not a them problem. It certainly doesn’t help that I’ve been told more than once that maybe things would have worked out if I were just a little bit different. Just before they told me that they had actually met someone else.
Of course, this “someone else” was somehow better than me. Had something I didn’t have.
The shittiest part about how all of my relationships have ended is that my partners never seem to care all that much, and I’m left with a broken heart wondering why the same thing keeps happening over and over.
Not all of us can go off and have a string of fun flings with all different kinds of guys, not caring what anyone else thinks about it. Simone decided to walk that path a long time ago, and there’s no room for me there. We may be family, but as an only child, I don’t feel like I can do the whole free spirit thing.
Simone’s mom and mine are sisters, two of five siblings, and Simone has always had way more leeway than me. Her three older brothers bear the brunt of her parents’ expectations, while Simone, as the only girl in her family, is more or less left to do as she pleases.
I, on the other hand, am under a lot of pressure. Pressure to be successful in my career. To succeed at finding the right person to date and eventually marry. Someone my family likes and accepts, which can be tricky with a huge Italian family. The number of opinions is almost insurmountable. It’s a miracle any of my cousins have gotten married, but a handful have achieved what I still haven’t.
It’s why I’ve stuck to people who are already kind of in our orbit. Not that that’s worked out well at all.
Which is fine. Completely fine. I’ll find someone who is right for me.
After I take a long break from dating. I’ve been hopping from one relationship to the next since college. A break is more than called for.
“I’m just saying, there are plenty of fish in the sea and all that. And more than enough who don’t live in suits.”
“I hear you. If nothing else, I’ll have the memories of an epic hookup.” It sounds like some kind of consolation prize, and when I say it, it feels off. “Let’s just drop it for now and start Bridgerton, okay? I need something to cleanse my brain of that episode.”
“All right, all right.” She grabs the remote from the coffee table and navigates to the Netflix app. Once she finds the show, she glances at me before hitting play, but I’m barely paying attention.
I’m staring down at my phone, reading a text message that just came in from Cam over and over again to make sure I’m not seeing things. I can’t quite compute what he’s trying to say. I haven’t heard from him since we both flew out of Denver a couple of months ago after that less than stellar meeting. I’ve been working on a freelance project that’s set to wrap up next week.
Just as the contents of the message are starting to sink in, another one comes through. A cold sweat breaks out on the back of my neck, and my mouth drops open.
“What’s up, G?”
Dragging my eyes away from the flight info displayed on my phone, I snap my mouth shut. She looks at me with concern in her green eyes, her finger poised to click the play button.
“Apparently I’m going back to Colorado.”
Her perfectly arched eyebrows shoot up, and she lets out a shocked laugh. “What?”
“In two weeks, I’ll be back in Ever Lake.”
Oh, shit.