Chapter Sixteen
Amanda stopped just outside the ladies room. The guy who’d hit on her on Friday was standing next to the door with his arms crossed over his chest and a knowing smirk on his handsome face. “I guess you skipped step one and went directly to full-out, man-hating bitch mode.”
Her eyes narrowed. She hadn’t skipped step one. She hadn’t even gotten to step one yet. “Go fuck yourself,” she spat at him before slamming both hands into the bathroom’s swing door. She gave zero fucks what he thought of her. Wasn’t sure why he’d taken the time to rub the breakup she’d predicted into her face. Asshole.
Before Amanda had even managed to cross the threshold, the tears she’d been holding in check started to fall. She somehow managed to stifle an anguished sob until the door swung shut behind her. Thank God Jacob hadn’t followed her. She wouldn’t have been able to force herself to say another cruel thing to him no matter how loudly her sister’s threats rang in her ears.
“That was brilliant,” Tina said as she burst into the ladies room a moment later. “He left all pride and swagger as usual, but for a minute there, I thought he was actually going to cry.”
“If you value your life, you’ll get the fuck away from me,” Amanda said in an animalistic growl. Her hands balled into tight fists and her eyes narrowed into slits. She wanted to hit something—hard—and Tina’s face would serve as the perfect target.
“You did the thing properly, at least,” Tina said with a self-serving chuckle. “He’ll never take you back after that public humiliation. Half the bar was recording it on their phones.”
Amanda’s stomach clenched, and she pressed her fingertips against her quivering lips. How could she have been so heartless? And to Jacob? He was always so good to her. Had she really called him stupid? An idiot? She knew how sensitive he was about his intelligence, and she’d fucking used his greatest weakness and insecurity against him? How could she have done that to him? In front of all those people?
But she had to go for the death blow, otherwise he wouldn’t have left. She’d had to break him to save him.
Oh God, Jacob, I’m so sorry.
With a wave of crippling grief, her stomach lost its battle and she raced into a stall, barely making it to the toilet before she heaved up everything she’d eaten in her entire life. Tina left Amanda sobbing and puking her guts out, kneeling on a grimy bathroom floor over a less-than-sanitary toilet. Amanda was surprised her sister hadn’t snapped a picture of her triumph before she abandoned her.
Tina had won. As usual. The bitch who always fought dirty had won.
So this is what rock bottom looks like, Amanda thought as she used cheap, scratchy toilet paper to wipe her mouth. It’s better than I deserve.
Thinking of what she’d done to Jacob brought on a new set of tears. She wasn’t sure how long she sat on the floor of the stall crying—several women entered the bathroom and a few even tried to help her—but she was completely inconsolable. She just wanted to cry until she was so dehydrated she couldn’t make any more tears.
It was Leah’s voice that finally reached her.
“Amanda, it’s me, honey. Unlock the door.”
“Leah?” Amanda croaked. Her throat felt as if she’d taken up sword swallowing as a new hobby.
“Tomás called and said you’d been crying in the restroom for over an hour and needed me to come get you. What happened?”
“I broke up with Shade.” She sniffed. The entire time she’d been focused on Shade, not Jacob. Making herself believe she was tearing apart the rock star—who must have a heart like a polished diamond—had been the only way she’d been able to get through that ordeal. But that rock star had looked like Jacob and acted like Jacob, and the pain in his expressive blue eyes had definitely been Jacob’s.
“Oh God,” she sobbed and curled into her knees, covering her head with folded arms as the tears began to flow again. She felt as if someone had kicked her in the stomach a few hundred times. But what was worse was that she knew she deserved any pain she had to endure.
“Amanda,” Leah called through the narrow crack in the door. “Open up and let me in.”
Amanda shook her head. She didn’t want Leah to make her feel better. She wanted to wallow in this misery.
“If you don’t unlock the door, I’m calling the fire department,” Leah warned. “You wouldn’t want a bunch of sexy firemen to see you with crying-jag face, would you?”
Amanda didn’t give a fuck, but she figured she’d already hurt one person she loved today. She wouldn’t want to upset Leah too.
Amanda wiped her face on the hem of her shirt and pressed her hand against the wall to gain enough leverage to get her wobbly legs beneath her. Her stomach heaved, but she didn’t have anything left in it to hurl. She swallowed against a parched throat and released the bolt with a trembling hand. The door swung out, and Leah peeked around the green metal. Her jaw dropped, and she scurried into the stall to join Amanda, bolting herself inside.
“Oh God, sweetie, you’re a mess,” Leah said, but she didn’t try to clean Amanda up with cheap toilet paper. Instead, she immediately folded Amanda into a comforting embrace, setting off another flood of tears. “It’s going to be okay,” Leah repeated over and over again, but her words didn’t mean a thing to Amanda. It decidedly was not going to be okay. Nothing would be okay ever again.
When Amanda’s sobs turned to sniffles and her full-body quaking lessened to occasional shudders, Leah drew away and stroked Amanda’s tear-drenched hair from her cheeks. “Tell me everything that happened. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Nothing will make me feel better, Leah.” Well, maybe if a meteor shot out of the sky and struck her sister dead . . . No, even that would suck because Julie would have to go through the pain of losing her mother. And even with Tina out of the picture, Jacob would never love Amanda again. Not after the heartless things she’d said to him.
“I promise it will, sweetie.” Leah glanced around their less-than-inspiring surroundings. “But maybe we should go home first. It smells like vomit in here.”
“That would be my fault too,” Amanda said dully, her energy completely sapped.
She allowed Leah to lead her out the back exit so there’d be fewer prying eyes burning into the back of her neck. Thankfully, the asshole—Anthony was his name, she recalled—was no longer leaning outside the bathroom door. She probably would have kicked him in the nuts if he’d still been there. Because Amanda was too shaky to find her keys, much less drive, they took Leah’s car, leaving Amanda’s in the parking lot.
The distance to Amanda’s house wasn’t far, but as soon as Leah turned out of the parking lot, she said, “Start talking.”
“I don’t know where to start,” Amanda said, clutching her small purse to her chest. The phone inside had been silent for over an hour. Part of her had hoped that Jacob would call and fix the mess she’d made—that Tina had insisted upon—but part of her was glad he hadn’t. A clean break would be easiest for all of them. If she kept telling herself that, maybe she’d start to believe it.
“Start at the beginning.”
Amanda told Leah about setting off Jacob’s alarm and spending Friday night and Saturday morning alone with him.
“That morning, he told me he loved me,” Amanda said, the ache in her chest so sharp, her heart struggled to beat.
Leah pulled into Amanda’s drive, put the car in park, and turned to study her. “I’d say that’s fantastic, but I’m assuming this story doesn’t end well.”
Amanda shook her head miserably.
“Why don’t you go wash your face while I make you a chocolate milkshake? We’ll talk all night if you need to.”
Amanda smiled at Leah. She was already feeling more rational. Leah was a soothing constant in her life. She wasn’t sure what she’d do without her. “Thanks for rescuing me.”
“You’ve rescued me plenty,” Leah said, opening the door and climbing out into the balmy night air.
Cicadas cried repetitively to the summer sky. Crickets filled in the chorus with higher-pitched chirrups. The scent of freshly cut grass drifted over from a neighbor’s yard, and a dog up the street barked a sharp warning. Nothing unusual about any of those things—Amanda must have experienced them hundreds of times—but she’d never taken note of how comforting the mundane could be. Amanda was glad Leah had brought her home. She wrapped the familiar around her like a protective cocoon.