I was supposed to be doing everything in my power to stop that from happening. But the mere thought of returning to the life I’d had before—if I was somehow successful—filled me with dread so deep my fingers went numb. This crisis was the reason I’d downed two martinis before Jessica even arrived. Five minutes late.
“Holy fuck!” she cried when she pulled me into her arms. I wasn’t a hugger. We didn’t have a hugging type relationship. Jessica might not have known just how fucked-up I was, but she was savvy to some of my problems with normal intimacy. She’d respected that completely ... until now. But I melted into the embrace nonetheless. It was familiar. Comforting. Right up until I remembered the reality of this situation. How much danger I was putting her in.
So I gently pulled myself from her arms.
Her eyes ran over me, bulging as she took in the dress I’d put on for the dinner. “Girl, I know you don’t worship at the altar of Gucci, so I also know you would not buy that dress, yet here it is, on your body.” She smacked her lips together in a chef’s kiss gesture. “Perfection. We have a lot to catch up on, it seems.”
I smiled tightly. “You have no idea.”
I was planning on at least getting a drink and some salad into Jessica before I dropped the bomb on her. But the three-carat diamond on my finger waited for nothing.
She yanked my hand across the table the second we sat down.
“Okay, either Pete got some taste and traded in your ring, or you have a lot more to tell me than you let on,” she mused, still clutching my hand.
I pulled on it so she’d let go and so I could take a large sip of my martini. “Pete is history.” I thought about his lifeless eyes staring at nothing, the skin cut off, exposing flesh and bone. “You were right about him.”
“Of course I was,” she rolled her eyes. “As much as I love hearing that, that is not what I want coming out of your mouth right now. Did you win the lottery and decide to get yourself a diamond and some designer duds?”
I swallowed. “No. I’m engaged.”
“You’re engaged?” Jessica repeated, not quietly.
I didn’t even glance around to see if the entire restaurant was looking at us, I knew they were. And the shrill, loud tone that bordered on a screech did not cause me to flinch because I’d been expecting it.
I nodded while taking a sip of my drink, needing the few seconds to school myself before lying to my best friend.
“How in the fuck did you cheat on Pete, break up with Pete, move in with a man and get engaged in the space of a month?” she demanded, obviously not content in the silence I was creating.
I put my drink down. I’d done a fuck of a lot more than that in the space of a month. “It just happened,” I said lamely.
Her eyebrow arched and regarded me for a handful of seconds before she spoke. “Now I believe that these things can just happen. Because I am a romantic. Because I believe in love at first sight. And because women can be rendered stupid by a big dick and a good fuck, especially if they haven’t had them in a while. They trick themselves into thinking multiple orgasms are a solid foundation for a marriage.” She took the drink placed down by the waitress, taking a gulp before she continued. “But you, Sienna, are not rendered stupid by anything.” Her eyes narrowed at me as she finished her little monologue, not at all breathless.
“Were you a swimmer in high school?” I asked, impressed and already desperate to change the subject.
Jessica was not having it. “It took you three months to let Pete call you his girlfriend,” she shot back. “Another year to meet his parents. Almost two more to move in with him. And then you took two months to decide to say yes to him when he proposed, only after you set out the proviso that your engagement would last for no less than five years.” She held up all kinds of fingers to help prove her points.
“I’m aware of all of this,” I said evenly.
“You’re aware then, that it is completely logical of me to come to the conclusion that you have been replaced with some very realistic clone or shapeshifter,” she protested, her voice still much too loud for the swanky restaurant.
“That’s the only logical conclusion?” I asked sarcastically.
Jessica’s brow furrowed. “Yes, since the other is my friend who had been ignoring me for weeks, only to meet up with me to tell me her life has done a complete one-eighty, hadn’t bothered to give me any updates.” There was a bite to her tone now. One I understood to be hurt cloaked in anger.