Better Than Your Ex Read online

  “Fuck that. You don’t need alcohol to heal yourself,” she said.

  And I loved her for that. Fiercely. Loved how she guarded me and gave me a reason not to pour three fingers of vodka into my juice in the morning or break open a bottle of wine when I got home from work.

  She signed me up for yoga and refused to join me. And she talked. Talked and talked until I came back in my skin and could talk back.

  Except for one day. And I didn’t say anything at first. What would I say? Speak and distract me from my own thoughts? Do for me what I can’t do for myself? Help me, I’m crazy, I smell him, I hear his voice, feel his touch?

  Even in that moment when we sat in the hole in the wall bar with its shitty wine selection and heaven sent cheesesteaks. One sat between Junie and I. Our second one. She winked when she ordered it. I might have laughed. I couldn’t remember.

  I couldn’t focus on anything but what Cahir would feel like if he were there. The feel of his hand on the small of my back. His sigh of happiness. His other hand wrapped around the cheesesteak, confident as it made its way to his mouth. His thanks. I knew what he would say.

  “Thank God. How’d you know I needed this, Cash?”

  I blinked. It was real. Too real. And I was dizzy. Was I so deep in my mind that I could see and hear what I wanted most so vividly? No. No. It had to be-

  I turned in my seat and he was there. He took a bite of my cheesesteak and winked at me. Dropped a kiss on Junie’s forehead and laughed when she threatened him with bodily harm if he got steak juice or grease or ketchup or whatever on her forehead.

  Then he sat next to me.

  He smelled like…I thought I woke from a long sleep. A perfect sleep that almost went on too long. I almost smiled at him. Leaned into him. Kissed him.

  I almost cried.

  He saw it. His smile didn’t soften because he felt some kind of victory. It wasn’t pity either. We were wired to give each other what we needed most.

  “What are you doing here?” I was proud of myself. My voice was natural. Even.

  “Eating cheesesteaks. We’re ordering another one right?”

  “Abso-fucking-loutely,” Junie said.

  “And beer. This needs shitty beer.” He ordered some. A pitcher of it.

  “Why are you here?” My voice was a little tighter.

  “You’re not my girlfriend. Okay. I get it. I accept it. That that’s over. You never said you weren’t my friend. My best one.”

  I hadn’t. Trust him to find the loophole. If I weren’t an amalgamation of broken shards and jagged pieces, I would have smiled, teased him.

  I couldn’t tease him though. I couldn’t feel anything but relief that there was a way to have him without having him. A way to keep him close without feeling like I’d given up something that I couldn’t get back.

  “We’re still friends, Cash. Best friends.”

  There was too much insistence. An edge of desperation.

  I slid the rest of the cheesesteak over to him and ordered us another one.

  Cahir

  It was a risk to show up to drinks. But I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to live without her.

  Ridiculous. I said I would never feel like that about a woman again. I said once was enough and I would protect myself. But it was different. I knew who I was when Cash was around and when she wasn’t. I was still my own person.

  There was the sense that I dropped something though. Something I needed. Something that would be a bitch to replace. Like keys or a wallet.

  I couldn’t spend the rest of my life, shit, I couldn’t spend a week without her. So I said fuck it. I called Junie and believed her when she said she was only telling me where she and Cash were because she hoped Cash would fight, she hoped she would have a justifiable reason to swing on me.

  I thanked her. Genuinely. And told myself it would be unfair to Melody if I threw up in the trash can in my office.

  Cash looked like heaven and sitting beside her was my own personal kind of hell. Touch wasn’t the same. Eye contact wasn’t the same. Body language wasn’t the same.

  I knew, but hadn’t ever taken the time to really appreciate, how easy we were. No thought or preparation. Like walking out of your house with no jacket, no umbrella, and no clue what the weather was going to be. You just knew it would be fine.

  I tried. For the first time with Cash, I tried. And I knew I failed. Knew there was something I was missing. Some moment, some thing, some-fuck if I knew. But she did. And Junie did.

  So I told Cash I was taking her to the farmer’s market.

  She held my hand when I reached for it. She laughed. And still there was something.

  Couldn’t put my finger on it. Too much of a coward to ask.

  Chapter Four

  Cassidy

  The farmer’s market was…interesting. Funny. I didn’t know it would be so much fun to watch Cahir squirm. I didn’t know it would make me so angry to watch an otherwise intelligent man refuse to understand. How could he not know what he’d done?

  How could I be so stupid?

  I let him back in. I woke up fully dressed with him in my bed. I watched movies with him. I couldn’t cook with him but what kind of fucking line in the sand was that? He just told me where to meet him for lunch. Eventually he asked me about dinner.

  And because I couldn’t carve out the part of myself that I saved for him, I agreed. I put on a fucking dress. I touched up my makeup. I slid on heels and fluffed up my hair until it looked the way he liked.

  I held his hand when we walked into the restaurant. When we were led to a dark corner with a small table that reminded me of another table in another dark restaurant in Miami. No one paid me any attention in Miami when Cahir made me come between courses. They didn’t notice when I slipped under the table and proved that I was a little better at keeping quiet when I came than he was.

  Too much. I didn’t know memories could hit that way, hurt that way. I didn’t know they could break in the part of me that I thought was safe from onslaught, the part of me that could just be a friend and forget I was once a lover.

  “No.”

  It wasn’t my voice that stopped him. It was that I pulled my hand out of his.

  “No?”

  “I don’t want to sit there,” I said.

  He looked at the table. Back at me.

  There had to be a safe place. There had to be a way that I could do this and not feel like a coward. Not that that mattered. “The bar. Can we sit at the bar?”

  He shrugged. It wasn’t until we were close enough to the bar that was as intimate and dark as the rest of the restaurant that he laughed. A full belly laugh. The kind that ended other people’s conversations as they tried to figure out if they missed a good joke.

  “Miami? Is that it?”

  I hated him. Hated the way he knew me. “Sit down, Cahir. Let’s have a nice, friendly dinner.”

  “Oh, we will.” He held out my chair for me and before he sat, he ordered us drinks.

  He knew what I wanted even though I hadn’t told him.

  I ran my fingers along the edge of the coupe glass that held my aviation and listened to him laugh again. I hated when he laughed when I was upset with him. It guaranteed that I wouldn’t be able to hang onto my anger for more than a few minutes.

  “I thought that dinner had me strung out,” he said. “You can’t sit at tables with me anymore?”

  It should have been ridiculous to me too. I should have been able to laugh with him. To make light of it. To remind him how his ankles rolled and his calves knotted with Charlie horses when I made him come. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

  I’d had him. Probed beyond friendship and saw the places he didn’t even know he had. I gave him pieces of me and he made a home in them. He was gentle with me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a man that could be rough and gentle with me.

  That was gone, and I hadn’t cried about it. I tried to in the privacy of my own home. I trie
d to in Gran’s shop with her arms around me. I tried and I tried but the tears didn’t come until that night at the bar with the memory of him, the taste of him, the rightness of what we should have been, blazoned on my mind.

  My chair was loud when he dragged it over the floor and closed the space between us. “I’m sorry, Cash. I’m so sorry.”

  I knew what he was apologizing for. And it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough. I would have to fix it on my own.

  “It’s okay.” I dabbed under my eyes and prayed I didn’t look as crazy as I felt. “I’ll fix it soon. Real soon.”

  Chapter Five

  Cassidy

  The day was done. Delia was gone. Everyone was gone. Even Nadia. But the music was still loud as it poured out of my speakers. A newly opened bottle of wine sweat on the coffee table. The industrial sized fan whirred and the lights were bright every time the camera shuttered.

  “What are you doing?” Junie bounded into the room with a bag that smelled like Chinese food. “I thought you took all your pictures for social media already.”

  “I did.” I looked into the camera again. Striking the right balance of friendly, open, sexy, and not here for the bullshit wasn’t easy and I wasn’t sure I’d accomplished it.

  “Listen.” The bag made a dull sound when Junie dropped it on the coffee table. “I’m not feeding you if you can’t give me straight answers.”

  “Is it Chinese?”

  “Yeah. I picked some up for the bosses’s monthly strategy meeting and got some for us.”

  I nodded. Delia had been printing off a lot of charts that day. I should have realized what that meant. “Dating. I’m going to start dating.”

  “On the internet?” Junie’s face scrunched as if I’d just squatted and taken a shit in front of her. “How ghetto.”

  I laughed so hard I lost control of my body and pressed the shutter button on the bluetooth remote for my camera over and over again.

  Junie scrolled through them once I got hold of myself again. “They aren’t bad.”

  High praise from her. My work was done. I unpacked the Chinese food and handed Junie chopsticks. We got comfortable on the couch.

  “So explain this to me.”

  I slurped up some shrimp lo-mein. “What’s there to explain?”

  “Why are you dating?”

  “Because I’m single.”

  “You were single after Kevin.”

  “Touché, bitch.”

  She grinned. I wasn’t dumb enough to think that saying something clever would distract Junie from the fact that I didn’t answer her.

  I sighed. “I can’t sit in my apartment or at work all day thinking about what I lost. I can’t-”

  “I get it.”

  “Thank God. I don’t.”

  Junie laughed and ate some of my lo-mein. “Kevin versus Cahir. Not really much of a battle is it?”

  “Fuck.”

  “But the internet?”

  “What is wrong with the internet?”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing inherently wrong with low-hanging fruit either.”

  “Bitch.”

  “I’m just saying. Look around. Guy. Cahir. Fine. Colton. None of them have dating profiles.”

  “Isn’t that proving my point? At least in Cahir’s case?”

  “Is it?”

  I hated Cahir. I hated Junie too. “A man with sudden baby mama drama?”

  “You think that’s not on these dating websites?” She rolled her eyes. “You think Cahir brought you sudden baby mama drama?”

  “Secret baby?”

  “Have you been buying ebooks again?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend anymore.”

  “Fair.”

  I ate a dumpling and handed the box to Junie. I loved dumplings. Loved that no matter how shitty a Chinese restaurant was I could always count on the dumplings to taste the same.

  “So you get on a trash ass dating site. You find a man with maybe a little coin-”

  “-he has to have more than a little.” I sighed in pleasure when I found the orange chicken.

  “Again I say: Guy, Fine, Cahir, Colton. Do they use the interwebs to find love?”

  “They’re a small sample size.”

  “You’re really not good at being wrong.”

  I laughed. “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “What I do.”

  “Oh.” I turned to face her. I forgot that Junie had a separate phone just to collect men’s phone numbers. She had so many of them on rotation at any given time it was, she said, the only way to keep her life organized. “But what if I don’t want to go outside?”

  “Can’t be wrong. And you’re lazy. Wow.” Junie tsked and shook her head. “Fine. Try it your way. Live in the ghetto.”

  I smiled big. “It’s going to be great. You’ll see.”

  Cahir

  I saw Zion everywhere after I left her. I thought she put a homing device on me. Bugged my phone. Hired someone to follow me. The City was too big for me to see her as often as I did, to anticipate the sight of her every time I turned a corner.

  I didn’t think about what things would be like when Cash broke up with me. I didn’t think about seeing her out and about without me. Why would I? We were always together. And when we weren’t we were texting or talking about where we were.

  When I walked into the trendy French restaurant blasting music that could have been curated by no one but O’Shea, I missed a step and almost tripped in my shock. A riot of red brown curls. I couldn’t see her face but I didn’t need to. I knew it was Cash. I just didn’t know who the hell she was sitting across from.

  He was buttoned up. Wore a suit like mine. But not. She taught me what custom looked like, what care looked like, what luxury and a good tailor made a person look like. He didn’t have that. Probably got his hair cut at the mall. Probably read the menu online ahead of time and picked out the dishes she wasn’t allowed to order because he wouldn’t be paid for another few days. Couldn’t see them but I was willing to bet all the money I had on me (which was probably more than he made in a month) that his shoes were scuffed. Cash hated people that couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to their shoes.

  Changed my mind. I wasn’t going to the bar. I pointed to the table I was going to sit at, pretended I didn’t see the host roll his eyes. Ignored his smile when I palmed him a fifty for my audacity. I was too focused.

  I was perpendicular to their table. Cash looked like solid gold. He looked like a Cub Scout. When did she start liking men with cheeks that chubby? Was it a Winnie the Pooh fetish? She used to run her fingers along my cheekbones and tell me it wasn’t fair. She asked me once if she could do something gross. When I was done laughing at her question, at the fact that she didn’t know she could do anything to me, anytime, she licked them-my cheeks. When her tongue was back in her mouth, when she laughed, I showed her what gross really was. I swallowed her laughter, her screams, her sighs, her body.

  “What are they drinking?” I pointed at Cassidy and the Cub Scout.

  The server looked over at their table. “Umm…he has the house red. I think he asked the bartender to make something up for her.”

  “She hates it,” I said. The server laughed but I was right. Cassidy could drink like a fish if you gave her a cocktail she liked. My father said she drank like an Irishman and asked why I didn’t bring her around more.

  And house red. Of course he was drinking the house red.

  I scanned the drink menu and grinned when I found the drink Cash should have. “Send her this. Send Chubby Cheeks one too. And tell them their meal is on me. No, cancel their meal. Send them this.”

  I pointed to the menu items Cash deserved and probably hadn’t ordered.

  The server smiled. “What’s your name? I mean, who should I say it’s from?”

  I grinned for the first time since I walked in and saw the love of my-Cash-Cassidy-sitting with another man. “She knows my name.”

  “I like you,”
the server said.

  “I like you too.”

  “Now what do you want to drink?”

  “A whiskey.” I held my fingers close together then widened them. “And a whiskey. Impress me with your choice.”

  I got my drink at the same time Cash and the Cub Scout got theirs. Realized I wasn’t lying when I said I liked the server. She blocked me from their view until she announced who sent their drinks, then stepped away with a sweep of her arm. Dramatics. I liked dramatics.

  I loved Cash’s face. The emotions that played across it. Some fast, the ones she needed to hide, others slow. The anger. The anger bloomed the slowest.

  An angry Cash used to terrify me. I couldn’t reach through the anger when she was angry. I couldn’t touch her no matter how many times I ran my hands or my lips over her. But this…I loved it. Loved it because I saw what came first: longing. It passed over her face the fastest, but I recognized it. I felt it.

  I accepted the anger the way I used to accept her kisses-with gratitude. With a bit of amazement that it was for me.

  She enjoyed her dinner in spite of herself. Each bite a fight. A testament to the strength of her pride. And her focus…He tried. I had to give the Cub Scout that. He really tried. She dropped the line of the conversation so many times but he was right there to pick it back up, to try again. There to try to make her laugh again, to make her smile at him. But she forgot to laugh when she should. She didn’t smile. Or when she did it was a forced, gruesome thing.

  Because her attention was on me. Oh, her little looks were quick. The twitches of her hand as she reached for her purse, her phone, were subtle. The way she enjoyed the cocktail I picked for her, the one with 24 karat gold flakes in it, was muted. But I saw it all.

  And I knew. I knew she was still mine.

  Chapter Six

  Cassidy

  It was my eighth first date. No. My tenth? Twelfth?

  It was easy enough in the beginning. I created my profile and had a full inbox within forty-eight hours. I eliminated and blocked the worst of them: the ones that sent dick pics or asked where I lived and if I was up for some company. That was at least half of them. Then I deleted the ones that obviously couldn’t afford me or carry on a decent conversation with me. The ones that looked like they only had one flat pillow on their bed and didn’t wash their sheets. Or looked like they did have pillows and sheets but only because they lived with Mommy and Mommy wanted her little boy to have the best.