Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
chapter one
I was indecent, the eyes of the street flying to my body.
I’d left my bomber jacket in the bar – the one I’d saved up three paychecks for, that I had promised to give Elle the day she turned thirteen. She used to wear it around the house whenever I visited home, her little frame absolutely drowning under all that leather. The one time I forgot it there, she hung it up on the closet door in front of her bed so she could look at it all week. Apparently, she had refused to wear it out even once, citing the fact that I hadn’t given her explicit permission. I don’t know why, but she worshipped that jacket. And for that reason, I always promised to protect it with my life.
But tonight, I threw that promise out the window. Along with every other one I’d ever made. I didn’t care anymore.
Elle was gone and my ex was marrying my best friend.
On top of that, he was still at the bar, ordering a fifth round of drinks to convince me that I should give him a “last hurrah” before he was officially off the market. He’d shaken his head, murmuring to my legs as he ran his hands all over my shell-shocked body. “I mean Christ, Isla, I didn’t expect you to come in looking this fucking good.” He looked straight down my cleavage, digging his fingers into my thighs as he groaned. “Come on, babe… I need to see those beautiful things bounce on top of me one more time. It’ll be like our last secret together. Which is kind of romantic. Right?”
You unbelievable piece of shit.
I should’ve known something like this would happen, but he’d managed to charm me over the phone. He had mentioned a new job. Paid bills. He looked good as ever when I spotted him through the window, wearing the Jackson Hole T-shirt I’d bought him last year on our snowboarding trip. And it had taken him a full minute to tear his eyes off of my body when I finally walked in wearing a new dress I shouldn’t have bought for multiple reasons – one being that I can’t afford a cup of coffee let alone a twenty dollar dress from H&M, the other being that I really, really shouldn’t have been considering the idea of anything sexual.
But I was running on a year without letting anyone touch me and Evan was someone familiar. I wanted sex, yes, but I’d settle for just the warmth of an embrace that could swallow me and take me somewhere else for a moment. Three hundred fifty days later and I still didn’t feel whole. And I knew Evan wasn’t going to be my answer but I wasn’t foolish enough to look for an answer anymore. I was just looking for a second free of heartache.
Instead, I got his bombshell dropped onto my skull.
“Look, I know this is going to be hard for you to process, but Holly and I got engaged last week.”
I blinked. What?
Holly? As in my Holly?
No, no, no. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Holly McPherson was the girl I’d known my entire life – the girl born on September Eighth, at six thirty-four in the morning, just a minute before me and in the delivery room next to mine. I’d spent entire months living at her house as a kid. From sixteen to eighteen, she drove me to school every morning, despite going to a different one. She blew off NYU to join me at Rutgers. We’d grown apart as of late. She hadn’t come to Elle’s funeral. But I would never call her anything besides my best friend in the entire world. She had been with me through all the trials and tribulations of my formative years, and both of the screaming, crying breakups I’d had with Evan.
But now they were getting married.
And all I wanted was to disappear.
I couldn’t tell if it was the news or the double margaritas Evan kept ordering, but I felt suddenly sick. I needed to empty the horror churning my stomach and I needed to do it as far from the bar as I could. Because knowing Evan, he’d come looking for me, and the last thing I wanted was for him to see me throwing up. I’d acted calm when he told me about proposing. Perhaps because I hadn’t yet processed his words. Either way, I didn’t want him to see me like this because I couldn’t possibly feel dumber. I was dolled up for him in curls, full makeup, a black dress too tight and sheer to suggest anything but sex – and I was seconds from keeling over to vomit my guts out.
“Isla?”
Fuck. My stomach lurched when I heard his voice down the block. Panicked, my eyes flew to a narrow alley between two buildings. It was dark as night, protected by a cast iron gate cracked barely an inch. Ignoring the sign, I pushed through it, disappearing into the shadows just as Evan came around. Ducking behind a dumpster, I watched him gaze inside, looking thoroughly intim
idated as he pushed at the squeaky gate.