“Why do you hate me so much?”
She looked up, giving me a duh look. “Why wouldn’t I? Look at you. You have horrible taste in clothes, yet you feel so comfortable in your own skin. You’re the uncoolest person I’ve ever met, no offense. Yet you’re probably Sven’s favorite employee. Men like Chase Black throw themselves at you and have bathroom sex with you and fire people for you. You are way ahead of the game for our age, and you didn’t even go to a good college. You just . . . have it all together. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem natural for a twenty-six-year-old. It feels like you got a lot of shortcuts.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that my life is not all unicorns, hearts, and baked goods?” I was surprised by the fact I was yelling at her, and yet here I was—literally screaming at her. “I’m super insecure about . . . well, most things, really. I live in a tiny apartment with a dog I am mostly allergic to. My love life is a disaster, my mom died when I was a teenager, and I never fully recovered from her loss. To stay on top of my game, I pretty much had no social life for the past five years and focused on working my way up. Staying an intern wasn’t a luxury I could afford, as it meant I’d be homeless. Which was why I got a quick promotion from Sven, at the price of my working fifty-hour weeks. The grass is always greener through someone else’s Instagram filter. No one has their shit together. Fully, anyway. We’re all just pretending we know what we’re doing. Those of us who do it with a smile on our face just look like we’re enjoying it more.”
Nina sniffed. “Well, yeah, I guess, but . . .”
“You’ve been a petty, jealous, out-of-control bitch to me, Nina. And I cannot and will not allow anyone to treat me like this anymore. Enough is enough. To be honest, you probably deserve to get fired. You stuffed my bag with condoms, for crying out loud. But you know what? I don’t want your unemployment on my conscience, so I’m going to give you one chance. I’ll talk to Sven about letting you keep this position. He will probably listen, seeing as I’m the person who got picked on. But you have to promise me you won’t let the green-eyed monster get ahold of your mouth and say awful things to me ever again. Jealousy is like a fart. It stinks, we all have it, but it is best to keep it inside or release it when absolutely no one can see or hear us. Am I understood?”
She stared at me in shock, blinking the tears away from her vision.
“Nina, answer me.”
“Yeah,” she whispered, still mesmerized by the one-eighty I’d done. “I promise. I’m . . . I’m sorry.”
“You should be.”
“I am.”
There was a pause.
“Why are you doing this?” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, wincing. “You don’t have to. Yet you’re still nice to me, even when giving me shit.”
“Oh,” I said breezily. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for me. Being good makes me sleep better at night. It’s not that I don’t suffer from the same symptoms as you—jealousy, heartache, insecurity. They’re the side effects of being alive, pretty much. But I learned a simple thing recently. That gap between reality and our dreams? That’s where life is tucked.”
In the end, I couldn’t do it.
Walk away from Chase without clearing the air, no matter how badly I knew I’d hurt if I saw his face again. Plus, there was the small matter of giving him back his trillion-dollar engagement ring.
The worst part was that it wasn’t even a conscious decision. I didn’t go through the normal route of picking up the phone and calling or texting him to set up a time and a place. You know, like a sane person would. I just found myself going to his place after work unannounced.
I hoped—fine, prayed—I’d have a few minutes alone in the apartment so I could compose myself (translation: have a mental breakdown and wash my face). The odds were in my favor. I knew Chase’s schedule, and it included visiting his parents after work to check on his father.
The doorman at his building, an older gentleman named Bruce, knew me by face and showed me in. Guess that was the upside of being the uncoolest person in the universe, as Nina had dubbed me. I didn’t look like the type to empty a billionaire’s apartment of possessions and jewelry.
“Haven’t seen much of you lately. Mr. Black has been a bit of a sour face since you stopped coming.” Bruce led me to the elevator. I still had the key from our first rodeo. Chase had never asked for it back, and I hadn’t exactly been in the mood to initiate more conversation with him. I pushed Chase’s door open just as my phone pinged with a message.