“Everything okay?” I ask raising my eyebrows.
“Everything’s fine,” she answers. “You don’t have to worry about me sneaking out again.”
She flips the phone over so that it’s face down on the table and asks, “Did you see the fifth and final season of She-Ra is out on Netflix? Maybe we should all watch that tonight.”
“I already watched them,” A confesses through a mouth full of bacon.
“A!” we both chide him together.
“What?” he asks. “You know Bow’s my dude.”
“And?” E counters with a disgusted shake of her head. “I can’t believe you betrayed us like that. You’re the worst.”
“How about that time when you watched the first season of The Magicians without me?”
“You mean five years ago when we were thirteen? What about it?” E demands.
I start picking up dishes as the twins argue with each other. Yep, I’m exactly back where I should be, I decide as I leave the dishes in the sink. Then I yell over their argument, “I’m going to the grocery store. Text me if you need anything. A don’t forget, it’s your turn to wash the dishes.”
“Maybe we should switch, since you won’t be watching She-Ra with us tonight,” E immediately shoots at her brother. “I’ll do the breakfast dishes and you can do the dinner ones.”
“You’re just trying to guilt me into doing the dinner dishes because there’s always more of them.”
They’re still arguing as I leave out the door. I wonder if they’ll be in the same positions at the table yelling at each other when I get back.
However, all thoughts of my stepsiblings’ latest squabble fly out of my head a few minutes later, when I see the black car outside Dr. Haim’s—I mean Dr. Prince’s practice as I head down Main Street.
There’s a woman climbing out of the car who looks awfully familiar.
She’s wearing a smart business suit and her platinum blond hair’s in a bun. But she has the same long legs and sultry manner as Ingrid, Rhys’s ex-fiancée…
Wait a minute, I realize, as she and Rhys embrace, despite all the current health warnings about not doing that.
That doesn’t just look like Ingrid. That is Ingrid. Here in Guadalajara. Hugging Rhys like a long lost friend.
Or a reunited lover.
I slam on the brakes.
What the….
Chapter Twenty
I’m cool Cynda. So unbothered, I don’t even stalk anybody I used to date on social media. So unbothered, I can’t recall most of their names. So unbothered, I probably wouldn’t recognize a few of them if they came up to me at a party and said, “Remember me?”
But when I see Ingrid hugging up on Rhys, I stop my car and leave it idling in the middle of the street.
He lied about them not getting back together!
Rage and pain rip through me, and unbothered Cynda is nowhere to be found as I tear toward them.
The blare of horns from the cars behind me brings both Ingrid’s and Rhys’s head up. And Rhys stiffens as I approach and Ingrid squints at me over her mask.
“You again,” Ingrid says when I stop six feet away from them.
Then she turns to Rhys with a quizzical look and asks, “Rhys, what’s going on? What is she doing here?”
I shouldn’t look. I don’t want to look. But my eyes drop down to her ring finger anyway. The one she waved in my face the last time we met.
And sure enough, there’s a ring on it. Even grander and bigger than the last time.
Last time I was cool Cynda. Shocked but determined to look like I wasn’t as I left the beautiful couple to their beautiful lives.
But this time pain stabs through me. I raise my eyes to Rhys, hurt beyond all belief. “I guess you two were on another break?”
Rhys just regards me stonily.
And we stare each other down as I answer Ingrid, “I used to work here. Before your fiancé bought my father’s practice and fired me. That’s what I’m doing here.”
Ingrid visibly jolts. Then laughs. Of course, it sounds like a beautiful tinkle even behind a mask. “Oh, so that is why you decided to move here and acquire this particular practice. I thought you saw something in the numbers that I didn’t.”
“Something in the numbers?” I repeat, really not understanding where she’s going with this.
“Oh, no! Have you really not told her yet?” Ingrid looks between Rhys and me, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “I’d figured that was the reason you broke up after what you told me about her.”
“What did he tell you about me?” I ask Ingrid.
Ingrid waits for Rhys. But he continues to just stand there, glaring down at me, like I’m the one who has some explaining to do. Why is he out here in these streets hugging up on his ex after claiming for two weeks’ straight he still hadn’t gotten over our fling?