Just fuck.
I don’t actually know what Chandler cares about.
A month ago, I would’ve said Emma, but since Hawaii, I don’t think he cared so much as he thought it meant he won. He got to marry the prom queen.
She’s not his anymore.
Losing Emma isn’t enough punishment or we wouldn’t be here.
So I need to figure out what would give Grey satisfaction.
And I don’t know.
And what does that say about me? And my relationship with my best friends, when I can’t even tell you what the man she was about to marry cares most about in the entire world?
“I’ll give you two weeks,” he adds.
“What’s going on here?” Zen asks. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I think I preferred the cheese incident.”
“Deal,” I reply to Grey.
Two weeks, I can work with.
One way or another.
17
Grey
The world is upside down. Right is wrong. Left is right. Sweet is sour. Sabrina Sullivan is my new obsession.
She’s filling the space in my brain that’s usually reserved for research projects in a way that no woman has since I met Felicia.
And look how that turned out.
But I still can’t stop thinking about Sabrina.
It’s mid-morning on Monday. Not even a full twenty-four hours after I heard her crying and then she invaded my townhouse to make sure I was okay when I had one of my annoying dizzy spells. I’m actively working on convincing myself that she’s not in the kitchen—and therefore not hiding from the places where she could find what would be a better plan for me to finally get justice on an old wound—when I notice a complete and total hush has fallen over the café.
It's not just a hush.
There’s a weird vibe too.
I don’t like it.
Reminds me of the hush and the vibe that came whenever I’d do something relatively normal for a kid—like the time I broke my mother’s favorite vase when trying to fill it with water for the dandelions I’d picked in the yard—and my siblings, who were so much older and therefore less likely to make messes or break things, were waiting for the blow-up that would come.
Both from the broken vase, and from the nerve that I had as a kid to pick weeds as presents when weeds would piss her off too.
I’m hunched over a puzzle in the corner booth, not actually seeing the pieces in front of me thanks to my brain being stuck on the Sabrina channel. As I’m shifting my gaze to covertly figure out what’s going on, someone drops onto the cushioned bench across from me, making the entire booth shake like Jitter’s flopped down on the table.
“Greyson Cartwright. I thought you’d be an absent owner.”
Chandler Sullivan.
Asshole in the flesh.
Sitting there smirking at me with his bulgy brown eyes and annoyingly fresh haircut and preppy button-down under some name-brand coat, his white skin tan like he stayed in Hawaii for an extra couple weeks after his disaster of a wedding.
My pulse launches itself into outer space. A hazy dark sheen clouds my vision. My mouth goes dry.
I consciously remind myself that he has no power here.
He can’t hurt me the way he did in college.
I’m still smart to stay on guard, but the man won’t hurt me. Or anyone else in this café. Super Vengeance Man doesn’t take shit from people like him.
I blink twice, clearing the haze out of my vision, and lounge back in my seat, taking a quick sweep of the room to verify that everyone in here is, in fact, staring.
That it’s not my imagination.
Sabrina’s cousin—one of the triplets—isn’t here like he has been frequently this past week, but Bitsy is. She said hi a while ago. I think. I’ve been very focused on not being focused enough for this puzzle, but a hi from Bitsy feels familiar.
Three women I recognize but can’t name are at one of the tables by the window overlooking the iced-over lake and snow-capped mountains. A group of retired men who apparently come in after their morning ski run once a week are at the picnic-style table closest to me.
All of them are staring at us.
Probably ready to pass judgment on me depending on how I react to Chandler.
He picks up one of my puzzle pieces and holds it up to the light. “What the fuck is this?”
Don’t flinch. Don’t flinch. Don’t flinch. “A puzzle piece. When you put them all together in the right order, they make a pretty picture.”
Bitsy chokes on her tea.
Chandler doesn’t seem to realize I’ve just insulted him. He’s still smirking while he examines the puzzle piece. “Willa! Willa, get me a cappuccino,” he calls.