The Nemesis Pact

Chapter 1 Abby

Abby

It’s like my brain short-circuits at the thought of standing here alone, vulnerable, painfully single in front of my past love, Marcus and his almond-munching, yoga-bodied girlfriend.

I don’t even know if my hair’s doing that weird cowlick thing it does in the summer and I didn’t even check before leaving the office if the mascara I’ve been rocking since yesterday was still pulling off that fresh-and-flirty thing or if it had already surrendered to full-blown exhausted raccoon energy.

And just like that, the absolute last person I want seeing me frozen like a deer caught in headlights shows up: Jonathan Slack.

Some kind of survival instinct kicks in, fight or flight, as he strolls over, probably ready to give me a hard time about my marketing pitch from this morning, even though we both know I crushed it.

“Hey, AJ…” he calls out, like we’re best friends and not mortal workplace enemies who’ve spent the last six years secretly sabotaging each other’s projects.

My ex looks surprised as Jonathan joins me and all I can think is…

I wish Jonathan was someone else. Anyone else.

Literally anyone. But the universe has a sick sense of humor, so of course it’s my work nemesis making his way over at the exact worst moment.

Because why not pour lighter fluid on my already flaming humiliation?

Without thinking, because thinking would’ve stopped me, I blurt, “This is my boyfriend, Jonathan,” and yank him into me.

My palms are sweating, my stomach’s doing that awful swirly thing it does when anxiety throws a party and I’m dangerously close to blacking out from pure secondhand embarrassment.

Then I kiss him. I don’t mean for it to become a mild make-out session, but… it sort of does. The second our lips touch, mine part like I haven’t kissed another human in, oh, I don’t know… years? Decades? What even is intimacy anymore? It’s truly pathetic.

In spite of the suddenness, his lips part too and suddenly our tongues are colliding like they’ve been planning this rendezvous all along.

He tastes like bourbon and trouble and his hand slips to my lower back like it has every right to be there. I massage his tongue with mine. Yes, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d narrate. And for a solid five seconds, we’re locked in each other’s arms. Well… more like he’s in my arms.

I finally pull back and Jonathan looks stunned.

Like, actually stunned. It’s not every day you see the human embodiment of arrogance, dressed in an expensive, tailored three-piece suit, look like he just got hit with a glitter bomb of feelings.

His whole face is frozen in disbelief. And honestly, I can’t blame him.

We’ve hated each other for six years. If anything, he should’ve expected a punch to the face, not a kiss so electric, it could set off a citywide blackout.

But then it happens. His face does that thing.

That overly smug transformation where his cockiness starts to leak out like an oil spill.

It’s Grinch-esque. Just like the scene where the Grinch decides to steal Christmas and his mouth curls into that wicked, slow-motion smirk.

Yeah. That’s the exact look Jonathan Slack is wearing right now.

And all I want to do is slap it off his face.

How someone with an objectively attractive face can also look like a creature you instinctively want to run from is beyond me.

“Say hello, honey,” I chirp, turning my body toward the ghost of my past and his long-legged goddess of a partner. Who even wants to be over 5′10″ and genetically flawless anyway?

Jonathan shifts smoothly to my side like we’re a well-oiled, completely stable couple who totally didn’t just make out for the first time thirty seconds ago.

“Yesss…” he starts, dragging the word out like he’s stalling for time. “I’m Jonathan. Abby’s… boyfriend?”

Boyfriend? Of course he says it like a confused Jeopardy contestant. Why can’t he just commit to the lie smoothly, like a normal deranged person? He’s so infuriating. So deeply, cosmically pretentious.

Jonathan reaches out to shake the hand of my walking, talking, ill-fated failure of a relationship. Well, technically, engagement.

“Hey, buddy. I’m Marcus. Nice to meet you,” my ex says, all plastered charm and high-end douchebag energy.

He looks exactly how heartbreak should not look: relaxed, glowing, freshly moisturized.

And the girlfriend? The woman radiates effortless glamour like she was born on a runway and raised on retinol.

“Oh shit,” Jonathan says, loud enough to make me wince. “You’re Abby’s ex-fiancé?”

Marcus clears his throat. “Yes. Yes, I am. That was a long time ago.” He straightens his posture like he’s posing for a stock photo called Man Pretending Not to Be Uncomfortable.

Jonathan flashes a smile. The kind that makes you want to slap him and maybe kiss him again, which is severely unfortunate. “Is the AC okay in here, or are your feet still cold?” he quips.

God, he’s such an ass. Mildly funny, though. If anyone can get under your skin and then poke around with the sharpest emotional needle he can find, it’s Jonathan.

Marcus’s handshake freezes, then drops.

“Whoa, it’s all good, buddy,” Jonathan continues, clearly enjoying himself.

“If you hadn’t left this little teapot at the altar, I’d never have had the chance to scoop her up.

So… thanks.” He winks. Winks. Then he turns to Marcus’s girlfriend and extends his hand like a polite sociopath.

“And you must be his girlfriend,” he says.

“I loved you on page twenty-three of the Victoria’s Secret catalog. ”

The girlfriend gives him the world’s most reluctant handshake before dropping his hand like it’s contagious. She shoots Marcus a look, equal parts why did you bring me here and is this your ex?

“This is Jasmine,” Marcus says, as if the rest of us aren’t painfully aware that she’s one of the actual Angels from the runway.

Who cares?… Okay, I care. I panicked when I saw Marcus and his airbrushed arm candy and did what any emotionally stable woman would do, I grabbed the first warm body next to me.

And of course, it had to be Jonathan Freaking Slack; hazelnut-colored hair so styled it looked like he rolled out of a cologne ad and just enough scruff to make him look like part rugged cowboy, part slick playboy bachelor.

He must’ve been walking over to say something crude and soul-crushing, like always. That’s basically his love language.

Admittedly, it could’ve been Dolores from accounting in her fuzzy cat sweater, oversized glasses and eternal scent of canned tuna standing next to me and I still would’ve declared her my new lover. That’s how powerfully unhinged I became the second Marcus showed up.

Grabbing Jonathan into my already spiraling disaster of an evening?

Possibly the lousiest decision of my adult life, stacked up against my failed engagement and the time I accidentally sent a meme of a dumpster fire to our boss during a team Zoom.

Now Jonathan will never let this go and make me suffer with the memory of this night every time we run into each other in the break room.

I nervously chuckle. What is wrong with me?

“Well, this is great,” I say brightly, trying to save face. I gesture to Marcus. “You’re happy.” Then I point to Jonathan, who’s giving me the wrap it up, Abby look like I’m an awards speech running long. “I’m happy. This is… great.”

“You said that already, hun,” Jonathan says as he casually grabs my hand, like we hold hands all the time and I didn’t just panic-kiss him into this mess.

“Have a pleasant evening,” he adds with a perfect smirk, turning to Marcus and his baby giraffe of a girlfriend. “And try the goat cheese balls. They’re amazing.”

Then, without waiting for a response, he pulls me toward the other side of the bar.

We weave past tables full of post-work happy hour regulars, dodging a server carrying a tower of martini glasses and someone loudly trying to Venmo-split mozzarella sticks.

I should protest the fast exit. But, he saved me from saying great one more time and I’m pretty sure that would’ve been the end of me.

The air shifts the further we get to the back of the bar.

Less clinking glasses and flirtatious laughter, more buzzing tension and the scent of aged whiskey clinging to dark wood.

Jonathan backs me up against the side of the bar and gives me a look like he’s about to read me the riot act.

His expression screams Are you insane? But then something changes across his face.

Maybe he sees the tears collecting at the corners of my eyes, even though I’m trying my absolute hardest not to let them spill.

“Listen, I know what you’re going to say,” I start, already bracing for impact.

“That you’re a good kisser, AJ,” he interjects, with that annoyingly conceited lift of his eyebrow.

He always calls me AJ. My name is Abigail Jean and while everyone calls me Abby, he refuses to.

Jonathan calls me AJ because he knows it gets under my skin.

And it does, mostly because when he says it, it’s laced with egotism.

He says it like it’s a joke. Like I’m a joke.

Though the truth is, I’ve never told him to stop.

Because every time he says it, I get this flash of my grandpa in his recliner, yelling for me to come watch the Yankees with him.

He used to call me AJ, too. Only when he said it, it sounded like love.

Like home. He was obsessed with baseball and somehow made me a fan, too.

I haven’t been to a game in years, but I think about him every time I pass Yankee Stadium.

Or, agonizingly, when Jonathan, of all people, calls me AJ.

My grandpa would have hated Jonathan. And if he saw me standing here, talking to him like this, he’d be shaking his head and muttering that I was making a rookie mistake.