Wasted Time (The Steel City #1)

32. Penny

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

penny

When it rains, it pours.

Just a week after the Pittsburgh incident, Gavin proved to be exactly who I feared he was in the final years of our relationship. Imagine my surprise, curled up on the couch with a glass of wine, snuggled next to the girls, when I scroll through Instagram and see a photo of him.

With a girl.

A girl that I know.

It’s funny. I had a feeling about her. Not that they were together behind my back, but that if anything were to ever happen between us, they’d probably wind up on my Instagram feed with their arms around each other at a wedding.

Michael and Sadie’s wedding, to be exact.

I stare at my phone, slowly lowering my wine glass to my lap. The girls are still chattering around me, but my eyes are zeroing in on the way his fingers dig into her waist. I focus on her smile, one that never reaches her eyes, on those painted lips that sweet-talked me too many times in the past.

His co-worker's friend. Emilee. Successful, loud, and a guy’s-girl, if I’ve ever met one. She’s nice enough, but I tended to keep an eye on her. There was always just something about her that had the warning bells going off in my head.

I haven’t even changed the address on my licence, but he’s taking other women to weddings?

“What?”

My eyes snap upward.

All three girls are staring at me.

Avery moves to stand. She has that look on her face, the one that matches what I feel swirling around in my gut. Horror. Betrayal. Disappointment. The swing of your stomach falling to your toes.

I haven’t uttered a word, but they know.

Tiffany angles her head, her eyes narrowing. “Who is she?”

It must be written all over my face.

I swallow but can’t find my voice. Instead, I flip the phone around to face them and take a sip of my wine. Immediately, they all zero in on the image. They lean forward, like their own version of the three-headed dragon.

The phone is snatched out of my hand. Avery is pinching the picture and blowing it up. Their heads are operating in sync as they move the phone from hand to hand. They’re studying the image. Studying her. It’s time for best friend duty and there is a cookie cutter approach that must be followed.

“He looks old,” Lauren declares.

Hit the guy first. He’s the one we hate the most.

“Thinning a bit at the front now, are we?” Tiffany adds, hyper-focused on what Avery’s doing to the photo.

“He looks good,” I murmur.

All three heads whip up to me.

“And?” Tiff asks, scanning me from my fluffy socks, Bowser sweatpants, and unwashed sweater. “You’re beautiful. And your body is rocking under there. You might forget that, but I don’t.”

They resume their dissection of this one, mundane photograph. A normal photo. A man and a woman. My man with another woman. It feels like a heavy weight sitting in my chest, pulling my heart down to my guts. I can’t decipher the feeling. It’s not something I’ve ever felt before. It's… complicated.

I don’t want Gavin. I don’t want that relationship back.

But a part of me still loves him, and I don’t want him with anyone else either.

“Who is this?” Avery asks without looking at me.

“Emilee Walter.”

Avery’s face falls. She drops the phone to her lap for a second, meeting my eyes with a bewildered look.

Lauren quickly swipes the phone from her thigh and gets back to work.

“ The Emilee?” Avery asks.

The one and only.

“Yup,” I say, popping the ‘P’ at the end of that word.

My stomach feels achy. Is she sleeping in my house? In my bed? Is he cooking her breakfast in the morning when she visits, the way Seth does for Ave? Is he happier with her?

“Who is Emilee?” Tiffany says her name like it’s disgusting, like she’ll catch something just from saying it aloud.

“A friend of a friend. I always joked that he’d be all over that if I ever left the picture.”

Lauren winces, but all three of them focus back on the photo.

“Her nostrils are weird,” Tiff says.

“I think it’s because of her crooked face,” Lauren adds, tucking her caramel hair behind her ear.

“You have better hair, better eyes, and a better smile,” Avery cuts in, listing qualities like it’s a competition. “She looks awful next to that human trash can, too. They deserve each other. It won’t last, babe. Don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t worrying.”

I was.

And bless them, we all have eyes. We can see she’s pretty. But she sucks. So does he. Sometimes being a little mean in the privacy of your own heartbreak helps the healing process.

He replaced me already. With a girl who had been waiting on the sidelines for years. She lives in Windsor. Did she move for him? How the hell could he move on that fast when I’m still spiraling out of control? Why her? Why wasn’t I ever good enough? He looks pretty proud to have her on his arm.

I swallow.

Yeah, that last thought does the most damage.

“Pen,” Tiffany says softly.

“It’s just weird,” I admit, hugging my legs. “So many years, and for what? It’s like he had her on stand-by. I don’t want to be with him, but I don’t want to see that, either.”

Lauren reaches over to place her hand on my foot, smiling sadly.

“Why does that picture make me want to punch something?” I ask, eyes burning. “Why does it make me wish I fought harder? I don’t want her in my house, touching my things. I don’t want her fucking my? — ”

The word gets stuck in my throat. He isn’t my anything anymore.

It comes out like the brutal, painful admissions that they are. These are my worst fears, come to life. I am not ready to think of him with somebody else yet. Even after all the ways he hurt me, a piece of me would prefer to keep being hurt every waking day so long as he doesn’t give his heart to another person. A small part of me still thinks of him as mine. I don’t want him to be, but I clung on for dear life only for somebody to be able to catch him within months.

There he is. With a girl that I had a bad feeling about. Almost like payback for something, like it’s my punishment for him breaking up with me.

“It would be weird if it didn’t make you feel that way,” Lauren says quietly.

“It won’t last,” Avery says again, her dark eyes studying my face carefully. “A tiger doesn’t change his stripes, Pen. Gavin is Gavin. He’s destined to be miserable.”

“And if not, he’s going to go broke buying boxes of tissues for those nostrils,” Tiffany says, in a tone so meaningful that it can’t not be funny. She ruffles her big, thick curls and lets out a scoff, reaching for a bottle of wine on the table.

A laugh explodes out of me. I’m sure Emilee has perfectly normal nostrils. I’m sure he hasn’t thought of me once while he’s made any decision about her in the last few weeks. He could have some common decency, or a shred of respect to not plaster his new girlfriend, or whatever the hell she is, all over social media until everything is over.

“Time for an unfollow party,” Lauren announces, pulling her phone from her pocket.

“Yes!” Tiff shouts, scrambling back toward the coffee table.

I watch my two friends unfollow my ex-boyfriend like it’s a theatrical performance. I smile, wiping away the stray tears. Avery throws her head back and laughs. She doesn’t need to join in, she unfollowed him the day she found out we weren’t together. She never told me, and I’ve never checked. I just know.

“Your turn,” Tiff says, eyes flickering up to mine. She passes me back my phone, which I take like it’s a bomb.

“Hold off,” Avery says, placing her hand atop the screen. “ Don’t do anything rash until everything is settled. It’s risky business pissing off a loser. They’ve got nothing left to lose.”

“Except for Emilee, apparently,” I mutter.

I lock my phone, desperately trying to ignore the horrible feeling in my stomach. It feels awful, but it is the kind of pain that allows you to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m hurting, and I’m tired, but I’m healing. Slowly, but surely, I’m healing.

Avery leans back, shrugging a shoulder. She brings her glass of wine to her lips.

“After everything’s settled, I’ll kill them both.” She lets out a happy sigh, meeting my eyes. “And I’m going to bury them so fucking far apart from each other.”