A Thousand Cuts (Underworld Kings)

“It feels so great to not have to pretend anymore,” Jessica interrupted whatever euphemism Aiden was going to try and work with. “And I honestly didn’t think it would come as any kind of surprise, I’m a terrible actress. I haven’t liked him since the moment I met him, and he made some kind of comment about how ‘brave’ I was, being a single mother, as if the most logical choice would’ve been to drop Eli off at the fire station.”

I stared at her. There was bitterness in her voice. A lot of it. I was sure I would’ve noted it previously any time I talked about Pete with her. But now that I was thinking about it, I hadn’t talked to my best friend about my fiancé in well over a year. Even when we got engaged, I mentioned it to her in a text because a part of me knew that I didn’t want to see her face when she found out. She’d sent the appropriate text with the emotions, the exclamation points and the all-caps…

But she had not bought me bridal books, made a Pinterest board for me or demanded to go shopping immediately. Things that were decidedly un-Jessica.

It should’ve been a sign, a big one, that I didn’t bother to waste any of the precious one-on-one time I had with my best friend talking about the man I was supposed to be spending the rest of my life with.

Aiden was a little trickier. We’d met him when we found this bar when we were both college students and needed a place with cheap drinks that was a short walk back to our apartment. He was just the bartender of a dive bar back then. Now, ten years later, he was the owner of a dive bar he’d renovated and turned into an incredibly trendy cocktail bar and gastropub. Aiden himself detested the term ‘gastropub’ and the kind of people who patroned such places. But he had big dreams and a lot to prove, plus he knew that millennial and Gen Xers would pay through the nose for that shit.

And they did.

Aiden had three other locations in the city and was seriously wealthy. He had not changed a bit. Nor had his infatuation with Jessica.

To me, he was like a big brother. To be fair, I’d Frenched him once when I was wasted, and he was heartbroken over Jessica declaring she was pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby. We both wanted it to work because it would’ve been so much easier, and we really liked each other, but it just wasn’t there. He was too pure, too all-American. Too much of a decent guy.

“Who is he?” Jessica demanded. “How did you meet?”

I swallowed. This was the tricky part. The part I hadn’t factored in when I’d drunkenly blurted out I’d cheated on Pete.

The specifics weren’t exactly appropriate for the likes of Jessica and Aiden. Neither of them were prudes. Far from it. Aiden was an attractive, single man with an accent who owned his own bar. He got laid. A lot.

Jessica got laid slightly less often, but only because she was a single mother who didn’t bring guys home to her kid—one of the many, many things I loved about her, although it made me feel like I was betraying my own mother somehow.

Jessica was also a stone-cold fox. Her dark hair fell in shiny curls down to her bra strap, framing her face perfectly. Her eyes were the color of coffee, her lips naturally full thanks to her heritage. Her Colombian mother was also a bombshell.

Jessica had plenty of curves and wore them well. Every man in the room almost dislocated his neck whenever she got up to use the restroom. Men hit on her at coffee shops, laundromats, fucking Chuck-E-Cheeses. Mostly she refused, but there were plenty of times she didn’t. And when she didn’t, I got a full rundown on the situation, not a detail or an orgasm left out.

But the details of what had happened last week weren’t like anything Jessica or Aiden had shared with me. Although they may not have been prudes, if they knew everything that happened, they’d look at me differently. They wouldn’t be able to help it. Sure, they both had their own demons, their own darkness, but it was nothing like mine. As hard as they’d try to understand it—and they would try, because that’s the kind of friends they were—they wouldn’t get it. I treasured their uncomplicated, normal and comforting friendship too much for that. I couldn’t live entirely in the world of my dark desires, I knew that all too well. I needed some kind of anchor, a sliver of sunshine to remind me the part I was meant to be playing, how much healthier and safer it was for everyone.