by K. A. Linde
“She thinks I cheated on her.”
Lexi snorted. That was rich!
“I’m serious!” he cried angrily. “Take this seriously.”
“How can I when this is all a sham to begin with? You did cheat on her!”
“Not while we were married!”
“And who’s going to believe you?”
“I was hoping you would.”
“You thought I would believe that about you, Jack? After everything I know about you, you thought I would think you wouldn’t cheat on Bekah? Did you hit your head this morning?” Lexi asked, crossing her arms.
Jack rolled his beautiful blue eyes at Lexi’s dramatic behavior. “I thought I’d proven myself over the past couple of years.”
“You thought wrong. I know who you are, even if you are my friend. Even more so, I’ve known you too long. I’ve been there.”
“But it didn’t happen! You have to convince her—”
“Whoa, there!” Lexi cried, holding her hands up in front of her. “I’m never convincing Bekah of anything ever again.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t care! I don’t care! Can’t you just deal with this like everyone else?”
“How does everyone else deal with this, Lexi? I’m not everyone else. This isn’t a normal scenario or anything.”
“It never is with you,” Lexi remarked sullenly.
Jack sighed and stormed away from Lexi to the other end of the room. “Can we be serious for one goddamn second? My whole marriage is on the line.”
“You shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place!” she cried angrily.
She hadn’t been able to hold it back. He shouldn’t have gotten married. That was one thing she was damn certain of.
She shook her head, already riled up from the conversation.
“I knew it was a mistake to ask you about this.”
Lexi shrugged. She couldn’t agree more. “I don’t know how you could expect anything else from me.”
“Things are different.”
“You’ve been saying that for a long time.”
“But you know they are.”
Lexi tried not to glance at her left ring finger. She wasn’t ready to tell him about that yet.
“Maybe they are, Jack,” she whispered.
She should tell him! She knew she should tell him.
He walked back across the lounge to Lexi and sat next to her. “I’m sorry I bothered you. You shouldn’t have to deal with this. You have your own life. I know what we are now, but you’re all I have left. I can’t talk to anyone else about something like this. Lex, you’re my best friend,” he whispered huskily.
She diverted her eyes from the curve of his lips, those soft pleading eyes, the heady smell of him. She couldn’t help him. She wouldn’t.
He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and he was so close that she could almost taste the familiar scent she associated with Jack. It was like musky cologne, sex, and tension all rolled into one delicious mix. Her nerves cracked at the feel of his hand against her earlobe.
“Stop it!” she cried, jumping off the couch, feeling the heat and adrenaline course through her veins.
“Lex, I’m not doing anything!” he yelled back, unable to control his temper. “You’re the one accusing me of cheating on Bekah!”
Lexi stormed across the room in a fury. She had been so in control around him that she hated getting this heated. She knew what her anger did to him, even if they hadn’t done anything in two years.
She just wanted to punch something. Here he was—after all that shit they had gone through—requesting the same goddamn thing of her all over again. It was like he hadn’t even considered what this would do to her.
“I haven’t done anything in the past two years to make you believe I have cheated on her,” he growled, standing angrily. “Tell me I’ve done something that makes you think that.”
Pressing her palms to her temples, Lexi shook her head back and forth. “It’s nothing you’ve done in the past two years. It’s everything that happened the seven before that.”
“You can’t always hold me accountable for the past. You’ve done bad things, too, Lexi. I’m not the only one! So, stop blaming me for everything. I’m trying…I’ve tried to be a better person. I’ve been successful in fact. So, can you please stop acting like I’m the same nineteen-year-old boy who you knew all those years ago? It’s not fair to me. After all the effort I’ve put in, the fact that you can come to me like this…I came to you as a friend. You are the only person I can still rely on.”
“Okay, I get it,” she grumbled, turning around slowly and putting up her hands. “I’m sorry, all right? It’s easy to fall back into what we…were.”
“I know,” he agreed, diverting his eyes.
“It’s easy to forget the wedding…and everything else that happened afterward,” she said wistfully.
Well, it hadn’t been easy at first, but she had gotten there with time. When she was around him, she just forgot the rest of the world. Even though they weren’t romantically involved anymore, he still had that same pull that she could never deny. He was just so…Jack.
“It is.” He looked up at her from across the room.
Their eyes locked, and from that distance, she could tell from his crystal-clear blue eyes that he was thinking the same thing she was thinking. It was a good thing he was so far away.
“I’m glad we’re past that,” she murmured, never breaking away from his gaze.
“I agree.” His characteristic smirk crossed his face.
“I wouldn’t be able to be around you if we were anything but friends.” She hoped she sounded convincing.
“Definitely not.” He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tried not to look smug.
“So, I’m glad we have this…friendship,” she told him.
“Me, too.”
“It’s weird when you’re not in my life,” she admitted.
She wasn’t sure why she was admitting any of this right now. Maybe it was the familiar way he was looking at her. Maybe she was trying to pivot away from his ungodly request. Maybe it was the heated passion that sometimes flared up between them that she tried desperately to douse.
“I don’t like it,” he said, looking at her in a way that made it clear he was wondering where she was going with this line of conversation.
He ran his hand through his dark brown hair, letting each strand fall back into place. She wished it were longer. He used to let it fall into his eyes…those eyes. Now, it just hit his forehead. He looked good…professional. It suited him for the accounting career he had decided on, but it didn’t suit Jack.
The silence dragged on as Lexi and Jack stared at each other across the room. The tension was palpable. She didn’t know what to do or what to say. What Jack wanted from her, was out of the question. They had gone through too much and put up with too many years for her to agree to help him. It would only hurt the one relationship she hadn’t royally fucked-up.
“What are you going to do about the divorce?” Lexi finally asked.
“What should I do?” His eyes searched her face for the answers that she had never had.
It was a more in-depth, determined, focused question than could be answered in words. She could feel years of questions hanging in the balance. She could feel years of desperation forced between them. She could feel years of heartache, destitution, and irreversible need roll off of every syllable.
“What happens if you and Bekah get a divorce?” she breathed, barely above a whisper.
She couldn’t believe she had asked it. She was engaged! It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what happened. Why did she even have to ask him that question?
The stretch of space between them had felt like a hundred miles growing every day since he had said, I do. Yet, here she was, the day after accepting Ramsey’s proposal, feeling the distance between them dissipating. She wanted to ignore it. She desperately
wanted to ignore it. But what would she do if the Bitch no longer had her claws in him?
Jack looked down at the ground and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. She could see the thoughts running through his head. She could see what he wanted to say, but she knew he wouldn’t. She knew he wouldn’t say it.
“What do you want me to say, Lex?”
There was that pet name again.
She didn’t even know what she wanted him to say. And even if she did, even if she allowed herself the slip-up, what could be done?
“Nothing,” she finally whispered, turning away from Jack.
She tried to shut herself down, to think only about the memorable night she had had the day before. Yet, her mind kept wishing he would call out to her, but he didn’t. He didn’t stop her from walking away.
Five whole days of silence from Chyna.
It wasn’t the longest Lexi had gone without hearing from her. She had been in Milan for nearly two months after all, but this was deliberate. Chyna had walked out of that wedding with Lexi, Ramsey, and Adam, but Lexi hadn’t heard from her since.
Lexi couldn’t let this stand. She had tried reaching out to Chyna. She knew it would be best to talk things through before Chyna got to sit and stew. The woman could hold a grudge like no one else. But of course, Chyna seemed to be avoiding Lexi’s phone calls.
Lexi needed to make this right. Throwing on a pair of tennis shoes, she decided she was going to go over there and talk to her. She knew that Chyna was pissed about John, but that was over now. She was going to have dinner with John today to end things just like she had told him in the parking lot. The end.
She just needed to tell Chyna and hope that Chyna wouldn’t be a bitch about it. That would be great.
Lexi hailed a cab to head uptown. On a different day, she might have jogged to Chyna’s apartment, but she wasn’t in the mood. She needed to make things right, and she had too many thoughts swirling around in her head. Running would only make her obsess more about the situation. That was never a good thing.
The cab came to a stop in front of Chyna’s building. Lexi paid the fare and then stepped out onto the sidewalk. She walked up to the front entrance and saw Chyna’s doorman, Bernard, standing there.
“Hey, Mr. B,” Lexi said as she approached him. She liked that he was a constant staple of the Fifth Avenue apartment.
“Miss Lexi, it’s always good to see you,” Bernard said with a smile.
“It’s good to see you. Is Chyna up there…alone?”
“I feel like you ask me this every time you come over,” he said, his hand on the door. “Are you thinking she isn’t by herself in the middle of the afternoon?”
“Well, I just didn’t know if Adam was up there. That might not be the best thing for me right now,” she told him. Though she wasn’t sure why. She always seemed to divulge a bit too much information to Bernard.
“No,” Bernard said with a shake of his head as he pulled open the door. “She’s up there all by herself. Mr. Ward left earlier this morning.”
“And she’s still there, and she hasn’t returned my calls?” she snapped. She hadn’t meant it to come out so harsh, but it was so irritating. If Chyna was home alone, why couldn’t she just answer her phone?
Bernard certainly caught the irritation in her voice. “Have you done something, Miss Lexi?”
“No,” Lexi said quickly, running up the stairs and through the front door. She didn’t want to have this conversation with Bernard. She was already dreading having it with Chyna. “I’ll see you around, Mr. B.”
“Bye, Lexi.”
Lexi took the elevator to the penthouse suite, listening to the mind-numbing classical music as she went up. It dinged open on the top floor, and she walked down to the end of the hallway. She had a received key to Chyna’s apartment nearly three years ago, and she had never given it back. Under the circumstances, Lexi figured it would be better if she knocked.
Taking a deep breath, Lexi knocked on the door and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Nothing.
“Really, Chyna? You’re not going to answer the door?” Lexi called out irritably. “I’m here, and you’re not going to talk to me? How immature are you?”
And still nothing.
Chyna wasn’t leaving Lexi with any other choice. She needed to speak with Chyna. Lexi wouldn’t let Chyna stew any more than she likely already was. Lexi hadn’t come all this way for nothing. After knocking one more time without a response, Chyna pushed Lexi over the edge. Lexi procured the little gold key from her purse and slid it into the lock. Bracing herself for the conversation ahead, she twisted the knob and entered Chyna’s penthouse.
“Chyna!”
Lexi kicked the door closed behind her and walked through the foyer, which Chyna had already redecorated since she had gotten home from Milan. Her interior designer and resident gay best friend, Frederick, must have had his hands on the place. He was constantly redecorating Chyna’s apartment based on her ever-fleeting taste in décor. It all had once been white chic and modern, then it was black leather with a classic New York flare, and then Chyna had gone through this terrible leopard-print stage that Frederick definitely did not agree with. Now, it was decorated in muted tans and gorgeous reds, blues, and greens that popped from the rest of the subdued style.
The room still had the same collage of pictures from Chyna’s many travels. Lexi noticed a few new pictures that Chyna had added since returning home. One was of a landscape on a canal in Milan, and the second was of the coast. Lexi wondered if they had any significance. Why had she picked those two to bring back?
And just as she had the thought, the door to Chyna’s bedroom opened, and she walked down the hallway into the living room.
“What the fuck are you doing here, chica?” Chyna asked, crossing her arms over her thin body.
She wore nothing more than a lacy demi bra and matching lace back V-string underwear. Somehow, she managed to look even more beautiful than she did in some of her thousand-dollar designer dresses.
Lexi hated her every moment for it. How could her best friend be this gorgeous? It just wasn’t fair to the rest of the world. It certainly wasn’t fair to Lexi, who was so much shorter than Chyna. And Chyna was just supermodel thin and tall with perfectly perky breasts, sleek black hair, and gorgeous emerald eyes. Fucking ridiculous.
“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” Lexi asked. “I’ve been trying to call you all day, all week. You haven’t answered any of my fucking phone calls.”
“Oh, did you call?” Chyna asked, arching a masterfully groomed eyebrow. She tapped her finger against her arm. “I guess I missed it.”
“You’re not fooling anyone right now—certainly not me,” Lexi said, rolling her eyes. Why did Chyna have to be so difficult? Lexi had known that she was going to be, but standing here and seeing that she actually was made it more frustrating. “You’re angry at me. That’s why you haven’t returned any of my calls. You don’t have to pretend like you didn’t get them, Chyna. I know that’s not true. Why don’t you just admit you’re angry at me?”
“Fine. I’m angry at you.” Chyna shrugged. She grabbed a short silk robe out of a closet and tied it around her waist. “I mean, what the hell, Alexa? You had to hide things from me?”
“It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t purposely hiding things from you.”
“Oh, really? So, when were you going to tell me that you were seeing John?”
“I wasn’t seeing John.”
“Now, you’re going to try to play it off? Alexa, I know you way too well for that. I have known you for three years. I have seen all of the shit that you have gotten yourself into. I have seen Jack tear you apart. I have seen Ramsey tear you apart. I have seen you go back to both of them,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “Don’t try to act like I don’t know who you are. I know who you are. And you probably fucked John just because you knew he’d tried to sleep with me!�
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Oh no, she had not gone there!
Lexi was near to bursting with anger. “Chyna! Are you fucking serious right now? I thought you were my best friend. I thought you were the person who—yeah, told me all the shit I’d done wrong and opened my eyes to what the fuck I was doing, but I didn’t think you were judgmental. I didn’t think you ever judged me.”
“Well, you probably shouldn’t have hidden things from your best friend then, should you?”
“Really?” Lexi asked solemnly.
Chyna just shrugged her little shoulders and looked away from Lexi. “So, what do you want?”
“I want to clear this up,” Lexi told her. “I don’t want to lose my best friend. I don’t even want to be with John.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before keeping everything from me.”
“Chyna, you were gone! You were in Milan. I’d just broken up with Ramsey. I was a hot mess. Adam and I were hanging out, and I met John. He didn’t seem like the person you’d made him out to be. He didn’t seem like a bad guy!” Lexi waved her arms dramatically. How could she get this into Chyna’s head? “I didn’t know how to bring it up with you because I know how you feel about him.”
“We’ve known each other for years. I would think you could just bring it up to me like you have brought everything else up to me. You hid it because you were scared, just like you hide everything else because you’re scared. The fact that it’s John is just icing on the cake.”
“So, what? I kept one thing from you, and now, you’re going to hold a grudge against me forever?” Lexi cried in disbelief. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Sometimes, life isn’t fair.”
Lexi shook her head and tried to clear her mind. She couldn’t push Chyna any more than she already had. If Chyna cared enough to want their friendship to work, being the person that Lexi knew she was, then she would come around. If she didn’t, there wasn’t anything Lexi could do about it. It made her want to walk up to Chyna and shake her. Lexi just wanted to tell her to get over this nonsense.
It was just a guy! Sure, John had been the reason Chyna and Adam had broken up earlier that year, but Chyna leaving for Milan had been the reason they had broken up the second time. Chyna and Adam were back together now, but maybe she needed to look a little closer at herself before passing judgment on Lexi.