“Fine, go,” Taylor said with a fake dramatic sigh, waving a corn chip at her best friend. “First Daisy skips out for the sake of a boy, now you.”
“First of all,” Brit said, tugging on her coat and pulling the ends of her blond hair out of the collar, “if you’re calling Lincoln Mathis a boy, you need to get your eyes checked. Second of all, I can’t spend one more minute watching you turn into a lump on that couch. It’s Friday night and you’re newly single. You should be wearing that red dress that makes your boobs look huge and working the club scene, not spending it with Sandra Bullock in your pajamas. I’ve done movie night four times this week. I need to get out, Tay. So do you.”
Taylor nodded toward the credits of While You Were Sleeping. “But Sandy gets me.”
“Well, that’s probably true,” Brit muttered as she rummaged in her purse. “She spent seventy percent of that movie thinking she was in love with the wrong guy.”
Taylor sat up and gave her friend a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Brit studied Taylor as she applied light pink lip gloss without a mirror. “It’s been almost a month since the breakup. You ready for some more tough love?”
Taylor’s eyes narrowed. “Bring it.”
Brit dropped her gloss back in her purse, then came out swinging. “Bradley’s not the guy for you.”
“Only because he’s caught in the web of an ex—”
“Oh, hung up on an ex, huh? Sort of like you?” Brit interrupted. “But no, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying that Bradley’s not the right guy because he’s dating his ex-girlfriend. I’m saying he was never the right guy.”
“Wait, what? How long have you thought this?” Taylor asked, sitting up straighter on the couch.
Brit shrugged, looking contrite. “Since pretty much the beginning. He’s a nice enough guy, but he doesn’t bring out your best self.”
“Meaning?” Taylor asked, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this.
“It’s just a gut thing,” Brit said quietly. “You were always so different whenever you were around him.”
“Which you saw, like, four times. And you know it was a weird situation. We didn’t want anyone to know we were dating.”
“And how long was that going to last? Until the secret marriage? Secret baby?”
“We weren’t going to have a baby,” Taylor snapped. “At least I acknowledged what I felt for Bradley. You ignore your feelings for Hunter.”
“Aha!” Brit said, pointing her finger. “You said felt. Past tense. I knew it.” She ignored the reference to Hunter altogether.
Taylor crossed her arms across her middle in a pathetic attempt to hug herself, feeling…wounded.
Her friend’s gaze softened. “I know you think you were in love with him. I’m just…I’m not so sure he was good enough for you.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Taylor. He broke up with you on the day he was supposed to move in. In a letter. Does that sound like the hero of the story to you?”
“You know what I’m sick of?” Taylor snapped, standing and grabbing angrily at the popcorn bowl before marching to the kitchen. “I’m sick of other people telling me how I feel. You and Nick don’t know who I love or don’t love. I think I know my own heart.”
Her friend’s gaze was pitying, and that ate at Taylor most of all. How dare Brit stand there and tell her she didn’t love Bradley? How dare Nick freaking Ballantine try to tell her she didn’t know her own happiness?
They didn’t get to decide what made her happy. She did. And she’d decided that Bradley was…
For an obnoxious moment, Taylor had to reorient herself to remember exactly what Bradley was to her, and why.
“Nick weighed in on this?” Brit asked curiously, tilting her head.
Taylor dropped the bowl in the sink and squirted some dish soap into it before flicking on the water. “That’s what you got out of what I just said?”
“Is that why I haven’t seen him all week?” Brit asked. “You guys fought?”
“We’re always fighting.”
“Yeah, but not usually cold-war style. You guys are more the fistfighting kind of enemies.”
“Believe me, if he could stomach my presence for more than five minutes, my knuckles would like nothing more than to collide with his weak chin.”
As though summoned, Nick chose that moment to walk in the front door. He paused for a split second when he saw the two women standing off in the kitchen, and Taylor thought he was probably debating a fast retreat.
Instead he shut the door behind him and pecked a kiss on Brit’s cheek as he unwound a red scarf from around his neck. “Brit. Good to see you.”
“Same,” Brit said, her voice all friendly warmth instead of drill sergeant hard, the way it had been a moment before.
They both ignored Taylor.
“You coming or going?” he asked, noting Brit’s jacket as he shrugged out of his own.
“Just leaving.”
Nick nodded, hanging his coat by the door. “Understood. The stink of mourning in this place can get oppressive.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m right here,” Taylor snapped.
Nick finally glanced her way, and she was annoyed by the little frisson of awareness that passed between them.
Other than a couple of chilly mornings where they’d silently passed the coffeepot back and forth, they’d barely spoken since their fight over Jessica and Bradley.
He was wearing the white shirt, black vest, and black bow tie he always wore while bartending at the fancy hotel. The getup should have looked ridiculous, but with his rough-edged good looks, he came across like the playboy best man at a country club wedding, the guy all the female guests secretly hoped to hook up with.
Taylor looked away from him as Brit made her way over, throwing her arms around Taylor.
“Don’t be mad at me, ’kay?” her friend whispered. “I’m sorry I was harsh; I just hate seeing you hurting.”
Taylor hugged her friend back, grateful for the apology. Brit had been harsh.
And though Taylor didn’t agree that Bradley wasn’t the guy for her, Taylor was a little embarrassed to see herself the way she’d been this past month through the eyes of her friends, and even Nick.
She’d been a moping, self-pitying, ice-cream-gobbling victim—the very antithesis of everything she’d ever stood for.
Winners don’t view life through victim glasses, Taylor.
She winced to think of what Karen would say if she could see Taylor now.
“I’ll snap out of it,” Taylor whispered back. “Promise.”
Her friend patted Taylor’s head comfortingly as she pulled back. “Take as long as you need.”
Brit finger-waggled a goodbye at Taylor, went on her toes to kiss Nick’s cheek, and was out the door before Taylor could register that her friend’s departure meant she’d be left alone with Nick.
She usually made sure she was in her bedroom before he got home, but she was realizing now they couldn’t keep going on like this.
Taylor wasn’t going to let some lecturing jerk who barely knew her make her hide in her own home.