Trading with the Boys

“Sandwich sho—” he paused stupidly mid-sentence, as if something suddenly — and innocently — occurred to him. “Oh, Sydney? She’s just a friend! A friend who—”

“A friend who you hold hands and play tonsil-hockey with?” I demanded.

For some reason, I was having fun. Even wounded and angry, there was an intoxicating sense of power that came with having the upper hand.

“I saw you, dickhead,” I chuckled, almost manically, “with my own two eyes. I stood there for a whole minute, watching as you made out with this red-lipped bimbo, who I somehow kn—”

HOLY SHIT!

It came to me at once, in a flash of insight. The girl. Her face. Her big-toothed, red-lipped smile — all bright and cheerful — as she handed me back a few dollars in change.

The girl from the Christmas tree lot.

She’s the one who sold us our tree! The one who I?

??d paid with cash as Drake helped one of the lot’s workers tie the tree securely to the roof of his Range Rover.

She’d wished us both a Merry Christmas before we drove off, staring strangely at my boyfriend the whole time. I remember her being all doe-eyed for him. I even remembered teasing him about it on the way home.

“You’re being silly,” Drake had laughed dismissively. “Was she even pretty? I barely noticed her.”

Somehow I’d let him convince me I was being foolish. I’d even thought it was cute that someone else had an insta-crush on my boyfriend. We decorated the tree together in the hours that followed, drinking wine and eating snacks I’d fixed earlier. It was one of the few good times we had together recently.

And now…

And now he’s lying through his fucking teeth.

“Sloane? SLOANE?”

In my flash of insight, I’d almost forgotten he was still on the phone. My blood was boiling. I was done with the lies.

“Drake?”

“Yes?”

“You know we’re through, right?”

Five long seconds of utter silence followed. Drake was thoughtless, selfish, and stubborn too. But if there’s one thing he wasn’t, it was stupid.

“Yeah,” he answered finally, with a dejected sigh. “I—I know.”

“Good.”

The finality of it was refreshing, even if it hurt like hell. It was like ripping a Band-Aid off in one quick motion, rather than slow-playing it.

“Answer one last question though?” I asked. “And be brutally honest with me?”

Another bout of silence followed. Then: “Of course.”

“Two possibilities exist,” I went on. “One, you met that girl when we bought the tree together. You saw she obviously liked you, and you went back later on to start something up with her.”

I paused, trying not to let my voice crack. I took one last shuddering breath.

“Or two… you already had something going on with her,” I continued, “and for some twisted reason you still brought me to that particular lot to pick out our Christmas tree.”

More silence. The other end of the phone was so dark and cold it was pure oblivion.

“So which is it?” I prodded him. “It’s over anyway. You owe me that much.”