I see Courtney push through the front door, her lips turned down in a frown as she glances at her phone. I fight to keep my composure, my heart racing so fast I have to take long breaths just to get my mouth to form the sound of her name. I finally call to her, and she does a double take when she sees me. She hesitates and looks in the direction of the parking garage, no doubt pondering her escape before realizing she’s trapped—forcing a smile and walking hesitantly toward my open window.
“Hey,” she says carefully. “Here to see Max?” she asks casually, but there’s a sliver of sadness in her eyes. She pulls her sunglasses down from the top of her head to hide it.
“No,” I say evenly. “I’m here to talk to you.”
Courtney glances at the phone still gripped in her hand. “Oh?” she asks, clearly caught off guard. “I wish I could, but I really have to get to—”
I cut her off. “I know everything.”
Her eyes blink rapidly behind the tinted lenses of her aviators. “I can explain.”
“Good,” I say as I reach over and push open my passenger door. “I can’t wait—get in.”
She pushes her sunglasses back up as she sits down, her eyes pooled with tears. They begin to trickle slowly like the water from a leaky faucet, then, as she starts speaking, they speed up like rainwater cascading down a gutter. “Please, Kate, you have to understand. I would never have done it unless I thought—” She stops abruptly as if finishing her sentence will break her.
“Thought what, Court?” I scoff. “Thought he was going to press his mouth over yours and give you the longest, most passionate French kiss of your life?”
“No,” she says between sobs. “I mean, honestly, I felt something from him—there was a connection. At least I thought there was. God, I was so stupid. Obviously, I couldn’t have been more wrong. And now I’ve ruined our friendship.”
“Well, that was going to happen either way,” I say definitively.
Her eyes register confusion, then acceptance, as she processes what I’ve said. “I know you probably won’t believe me, but I didn’t plan this. I never thought about Max that way until recently. I mean, I had just thought he was a nice guy and great for you.”
“He is still a great guy for me. Just because you want him for yourself doesn’t make him any less right for me. It just makes you a terrible friend.”
She blinks several times as if I’ve just slapped her. “I know,” she says quietly then blurts, “But . . .”
“But what?” I ask.
“But I need you to know that it was something that snuck up on me—I never intended for this to happen. I never thought I’d feel that way about him.”
Me either.
“And when I got the job with his company, I took it as a sign.”
Her words hit me hard and I feel like a clamp is tightening around my chest—my own insecurities about the universe bringing them together swelling as I realized Courtney was beginning to realize it too.
Courtney quickly fills the silence. “And so I had to make this awful choice—the friend who had always been there for me, or the man I thought I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.”
“Decisions, decisions,” I say sarcastically, looking down so I don’t have to see the sincerity reflected in her eyes.
When I look up again, I see her lips part as if she’s going to say something, but she doesn’t.
“Sometimes I feel like I handed Max to you,” I say. “I let you go to concerts with him while I stupidly buried my nose in some romance novel. While you guys were bonding over being adopted, I paid more attention to pictures of babies posing with dogs in my Instagram feed. I was so confident, so trusting. I was an idiot.”
“No, don’t say that.”
“What should I say, then? I introduced Max to you before my own mother. I wanted you to meet him because I cared about your approval. I wanted you to like him. Not fall in love with him!” I slam my fist against the steering wheel, causing the horn to blare, and Courtney jumps in her seat. “And you know the worst part?”
“It gets worse?” she says under her breath.
“He’s only fucking five feet eight and a half inches. Maybe five nine. You always said you wouldn’t be caught dead with a guy that short. With heels you are probably taller than him, no?”
“I don’t wear . . .”
“That was a rhetorical question, Courtney! I don’t give a fuck what shoes you had on when you were out trying to sink your claws into my fiancé,” I say, seething now.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her tears falling hard again.
“Me too,” I whisper, taking in her porcelain skin and bloodshot eyes, hating that she still looks beautiful despite the fact she’s been crying practically nonstop since she got into my car, remembering the night Max told me I had nothing to worry about. That his friendship with Courtney was just like mine with Liam.
“And now I’ve lost both of you,” I hear Courtney saying, her voice shaking so much my instinct is to reach over and console her, so I slide toward my door just to put more distance between us. “I want you to know something, Kate. My friendship with you, every bit of it was real. Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.” She wipes at her nose with the back of her hand and I reach for a package of tissues in my center console.
“Here.” I jam the Kleenex into her hand.