Dirtiest Little Secret

“Baby violins are playin’ over here for you, girl,” Mandy said.

Ava ignored her and spoke to Katie. “How can you say I don’t have to take the job?”

“Because you don’t want it.”

“Of course I want it. It was, far and away, the best offer.”

“Even the best offer isn’t good enough if you have to spend every day doing something you don’t love. You’d just be settling.”

“Amen, girlfriend,” Mandy added. “I should know.”

Ava pulled in a breath to argue, but swallowed her words. Then reframed her thoughts. And that pulled her right back into depression. “None of this matters. I need a direction for my life, and I need an income. This job gives me both.”

Katie scoffed.

“Okay, spit it out.” She shifted in her chair to face Katie. “Just say everything you want to say to me in one piece. You’ve been tossing little snippets at me for weeks, and I’m obviously too dense to put it together. So just tell me.”

“Yeah,” Mandy said, “Get it out there, girl.”

“You need to go see him,” Katie said.

“I know. I will. I just have to figure out how to apologize for being a schizophrenic bitch.”

Mandy made a sound in her throat—half laugh, half good luck.

“It goes like this: ‘I’m sorry I was a schizophrenic bitch. Let’s talk about it in bed.’”

Mandy burst out laughing. “That’s a good one, girl.”

“Feel free to use it,” Katie told her.

“You know I will.”

“It’s more like ‘I’m sorry I was a schizophrenic bitch,’” Ava said, “‘but that doesn’t excuse you lying to me.’”

“He lied to you?” Mandy asked, then looked at Katie. “Why you tellin’ her to get back with a lyin’ skank?”

“Yeah.” Ava crossed her arms and tilted her head with a smirk. “Why?”

“Because he’s not a skank, and he didn’t lie,” she said, then turned to Mandy. “This guy is melt-in-your-mouth hot. He’s got a college degree and his own business. They were friends when they were kids—”

“We were not friends,” Ava said, “and he pretended to be something he wasn’t.”

“No, he didn’t. He showed you exactly who he was. You just didn’t see it. The same way you blinded yourself to who Matthew was.”

An uneasy sensation trickled into her gut. “What?”

“He gave you all the clues—the late nights with his buddies, the recreational drug use, the way he looked at other women, the way he bailed on you at functions and took over in meetings. You saw it because you told me about it, but you didn’t put one and one together to get two.”

Ava opened her mouth to argue, but memories were flitting in and out of her brain, making her realize Katie might be right.

“Matthew showed you he was a self-centered asshole the same way Isaac showed you he was caring and considerate,” Katie continued. “Isaac took care of you when he could have hurt you. He opened up to you about his guilt over his brother’s suicide. He let you help him in the shop. He took you to a home he hadn’t even shown his parents. Then he introduced you to the most important people in his life in a setting that would show you he was worthy. That’s Isaac the man, Ava. Not Isaac the rich kid he used to be, or Isaac the biker mechanic he is now. Just Isaac, the man.”

Now Ava was so confused, she couldn’t make sense of the truth. “Not telling me things he knew would be important is the same as lying.”

“No, no, honey.” Mandy shook her head. “Not telling you things because he doesn’t want to lose you? To me, that sounds like love.”

Ava’s breath caught. Her stomach clenched. She knew she’d been wrong, but maybe she’d been even more wrong than she realized.