Chapter 10
The Stupidity
Nate
I haven’t seen Robyn since last Wednesday. When she broke up with me. She’s not returning my calls or texts. Even that night driving home, I had to pull over due to hyperventilating, vision blurring, hands shaking, and chest aching.
What did you expect, idiot?
Once I made it home, everything of hers was gone.
She would have picked everything up while I was at work, and left her key on the coffee table.
Break up. That’s the understatement of the century.
Break up is what kids do. They go on a few dates, get sick of each other, and never speak again. That’s a breakup.
Ending things with Robyn is … life altering.
My apartment’s become an extension of my own body, riddled with hollowness in places Robyn should still exist. Yet it is all gone.
Except for the engagement ring I never gave her.
That’s still hidden away. Mocking me from its velvet box.
No, this isn’t a breakup, this is someone cutting off a limb and leaving me to bleed out on the floor.
Robyn’s off today. The irony. The first free Friday she’s had in forever, and I can’t even spend it with her because she’s …
done with me. I couldn’t stay home, though.
So I’m at the same bar from the night I fucked everything up.
The place smells of spilled beer and burned popcorn, same as always.
The lights are too dim, the music too loud—the kind of background that makes regret easy to hide in.
Andrzej’s easy to spot, tallest guy near the counter, and his blond hair’s gelled up, giving him an extra inch he doesn’t usually carry. I clap him on the shoulder then shrug off my sports coat and remove my tie before stuffing it into my back pocket.
When he turns, his eyes narrow as he presses his lips together. He rolls his neck, muscles bulging and veins protruding.
“What’s up?” I ask, confused and honestly too drained to deal with someone else’s disappointment.
“Robyn’s destroyed.” He crosses his arms, the movement sharp. “I told you. And you fucking broadcasted your thing with Tessa all over social media.”
“You talked to Robyn?” That’s all my brain can process—Andrzej talked to Robyn, and she’s destroyed.
“I texted. Told you I would.”
I blink at him, pull out my phone, and thumb through our message thread. The last text is from Wednesday morning. 7:52.
Andrzej: I can’t believe my fucking eyes, Nate. You lied to me.
Andrzej: FYI, I’m telling Robyn.
My reply was a thumbs-up. I don’t even remember sending it. Wednesday was such a blur.
“You didn’t even read it, did you?” His voice dips low with disdain.
“I must have, but I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Me calling you a liar didn’t even register? What made you so distracted?”
“Tessa showed up at my office upset. We argued about Robyn the day before. She brought breakfast to apologize. I couldn’t turn her away.”
His eyes widen, and when he opens his mouth, his voice an octave lower—mocking me.
“We argued about Robyn. I couldn’t turn her away.
” He fists his hand on the table. “Who’s supposed to be your girlfriend?
” Andrzej’s brows shoot up. “And you had breakfast with her? Afterward?” He shakes his head slowly.
“Not that I thought Robyn would lie—I just couldn’t imagine you being this stupid. ”
“Dude, I’m right here.”
“I’ve got no problem saying it to your face.” He leans against the bar, the wood creaking under his weight. “Didn’t a week ago when you went on a date with Tessa. Was that before or after you kissed her silly?”
“I didn’t go on a date or kiss her—it was a joke!”
He laughs once, humorless. “Have you seen the video, Nate? Because a thousand people have, and I bet you not one of them would guess you kept an engagement ring for a different woman.” He tips his drink back, scanning me over the rim.
“You look … hell, everything’s there but the bulge in your pants. ”
I drag a hand down my face. “Jesus, Andrzej.”
“Fuck no, Nate. Don’t tell me you got hard kissing someone who wasn’t your girlfriend. That’s so fuck—”
“I didn’t get hard kissing Tessa,” I whisper-yell, leaning in. “It felt so off … wrong.”
“It should feel wrong.” He pins me with his cold eyes, and it has the same effect as if he were dissecting my guts. “Let me tell you now, if you thought of her at any time when you were with Robyn—”
“Andrzej, I swear.” I tug my hair hard so I feel something other than this burn down my throat. “I pulled away.”
He scoffs, setting his glass down with a thud. “Too fucking little. Too fucking late.”
I nod, the words catching in my throat. “Yeah. Ten seconds too late.”
His expression stays stoic, jaw set, eyes unblinking, but the longer he looks at me, the larger the crack. The anger softens into something closer to disillusionment.
“You cheated on her,” he says, quieter now. “Didn’t even bother denying it. I’d kill to have a woman look at me with half the love Robyn looks at you—”
“Wow, I didn’t cheat.”
He snickers. “Talks like a duck, quacks like a duck, motherducker.”
The silence stretches, filled by the low hum of music and the clink of glasses. Andrzej exhales hard through his nose, tension breaking a little.
He signals the bartender with two fingers. “You look like shit,” he says. “My people believe vodka doesn’t solve problems, but it helps put a smile on your face through anything.”
I manage a weak grin. “I’m okay putting that theory to the test.”
“I have more questions, but let’s get fucked up.”
The bartender slides two glasses across the counter, clear liquid catching the dim amber light. Andrzej lifts his glass like a salute. “Na zdrowie. Cheers.”
The vodka burns going down. Good, it’s supposed to.
He eyes me over the rim of his glass. “So … breakfast apparently has a PG-thirteen excuse. Do you have one of those for why you were checking out her ass?
“What?”
“You still haven’t figured out Robyn saw you?” He asks the bartender for two lagers this time. “Arm on Tessa’s shoulders? Favorite baked goods? Drooling over Tessa’s legs?”
I grab the wooden counter until my knuckles go white. She did see. She said so. I rack my head trying to figure out what Andrzej’s talking about. “She … Tessa asked if I thought her skirt was too short.” I huff out a breath to his challenging smirk.
“For a meeting with her CEO.” I drag a hand through my hair. “Curt something or other. At her marketing company.” I let out a low groan, shoulders sagging. “Something about attrition rates, dude. I wasn’t checking her out.”
Andrzej shakes his head. “That sounds like you were invited to check her out. Not that you didn’t.” His tone’s accusatory as he grabs one of the beers from the server. “I’d tell you she probably even saw Robyn, but you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Come on, dude. Tessa doesn’t have that level of planning in her.”
Andrzej snorts. “You still don’t see it.”
“She showed up half crying about how she shouldn’t have bitched about Robyn. Brought lemon bars. I ate ’em and told her to leave before eight so I could work.”
“It still looks like cheating when you put in the video. You gotta put yourself in Robyn’s shoes.”
I drag a hand over my face. “Jesus. That’s what she thinks?”
He just stares.
“I’m serious. Tessa wouldn’t stop apologizing. I didn’t know she posted the video until Robyn brought it up. I’d have been angry.”
“And now? You’re still doing a lot of defending her.”
“Yeah.” I trace the rim of my glass, the condensation slick under my thumb. “I’m still pissed at her, don’t get me wrong. But she made a mistake. Didn’t mean to post it, clicked on the wrong draft.”
He mutters something under his breath in Polish that sounds like a curse and a sigh at once. Louder, he adds, “You’re falling for it.”
“There’s nothing to fall for. In any case,” I add, staring at the bottle behind the bar, mesmerized by the way the light hits the label, “it’s my fault. I mishandled the whole thing.”
“We can agree on that.” Andrzej asks for two more shots when I’m not even halfway through the beer.
“Want me to take one for the team?” Andrzej winks. “Give Tessa a good fuck so she stops bothering you?” He grins, teeth flashing.
I bark out a laugh that makes the guy two seats down glance over. “I thought you had something with those twins?”
“It’s a work in progress,” he says, hands up. “I keep getting their names mixed up. Pissing both of them off.”
I shake my head, smiling into my glass. “You’re unbelievable.”
He points at me. “Better unbelievable than unfaithful.”
The words unfaithful and cheated are a punch to the gut every time. The kind you know you deserve.
Andrzej leans back on his stool, arms crossing. “You’d be okay with me going for Tessa?”
“Wanna fuck someone you can’t stand? Go for it,” I toss back, barely looking up from my beer.
He studies me for a beat, eyes sharp under the low bar lights. Then he huffs a laugh, leaning forward again, elbows on the counter.
“Nah,” he says, shaking his head. “She’s not hot enough for that level of crazy.” His smirk is deliberate. “Robyn, though—all hot, no crazy …”
The stool legs screech when I turn toward him. “Dude, stay the fuck away from Robyn.”
He lifts his hands in mock surrender, grinning.
I take the shot, throat burning, and set the glass down harder than I mean to. “That was a trick, wasn’t it?”
Andrzej shrugs, sliding his shot to me. “You’ve been such an idiot. You can’t blame me for wanting to have Robyn’s back in case you’re wishy-washy. But you really love her, huh?”
“Yeah.” My voice cracks a little. The alcohol burn settles low in my stomach.
He signals the bartender to keep the shots coming. The bar hums around us with low music and chatter. The air feels thicker with every shot, my head buzzing with that loose, weightless kind of drunk that makes it too easy to talk.
I rest my elbows on the bar. “I didn’t cheat on her. I swear.”