: Chapter 22

I’d done it.

I stood up for myself.

Martyr Maddie no more. I went against Chase Black. Flat-out refused him. I cut things off with Ethan. I even sent Katie a message, explaining how okay I was with her dating my ex-something. I was taking a proactive stance in my life.

So why was I feeling anything but empowered?

I’d always thought standing up for myself would feel celestial. Like a fully grown butterfly bursting out of a cocoon, flapping its colorful wings. In practice, I felt grossed out with myself by the way I’d turned Chase away on the day he’d hurried to the clinic to take a paternity test. I felt so empty I could feel my bones rattling inside my body as I set foot in the studio the next morning. New York Fashion Week was mere weeks away. August had bled into September, and my sketch was ready and submitted to Sven. We were supposed to start stitching the dress today. The model was supposed to be on her way to the office. Sven told me he had taken our discussion about the sketch to heart. Not only had he not made one change to my sketch, but he’d also suggested we use an everyday woman to model the dress. And by “everyday woman,” he still meant a nineteen-year-old, ridiculously gorgeous model with perfect skin and silky hair. But unlike most runway models, she was a whopping size six. Super skinny and fit to the rest of the world, but on the curvy side in fashion standards.

All I had to do was see the production of the dress through, stage by stage.

“If it isn’t the office mattress. Grab a ticket, gentlemen. Everyone gets a lay,” Nina proclaimed as I skulked into the office. We were the only two people in. Everyone else at Croquis liked to be fashionably late. Yesterday, Nina had reached an all-time-bitch level. The type normally saved for Korean high school dramas and daytime soap operas. When I’d gone downstairs to buy a salad, condoms had spilled at my feet from my shoulder bag. She’d crammed them into it when I wasn’t looking.

“Shut up, Nina,” I said tiredly, collapsing into my seat and powering up my laptop.

Realizing I’d actually answered her back, Nina whipped her head around, twisting her mouth in distaste. She was wearing a Stella McCartney black day dress paired with flat Louboutins. “So now you have a mouth? I mean, for more than blowing important men? Figures.”

Figures? What did she mean?

“Seriously.” I rolled my eyes, fed up with her crass behavior. “That mean-girl cliché is super early 2000s. It’s 2020. Throw shade. Finstagram me. Graduate from petty slut-shaming me. This is getting real tiring.”

“You’re so lucky to not have any principles,” she continued, undeterred. “I bet I could get where you are if I chose to let the right people in the industry get a piece of me.”

I snapped my laptop shut. “Nina,” I warned, finally taking a good look at her. She was shoving pictures of her with her lobbyist boyfriend into a cardboard box. Her eyes were red. She was . . . oh God, she was packing.

“Spare me your victory speech, okay? I got fired yesterday, as you’re well aware. Sven handed me my notice personally. Said something about Chase Black bringing his attention to the HR manual of Croquis. Apparently, Mr. Black read the entire thing yesterday while waiting at the clinic for some type of results—for what, he wouldn’t say. Hopefully for chlamydia. And hopefully it turned out positive. Anyway, Chase was super happy to let Sven know I am apparently bullying you.” She sniffed. But I knew she was talking about the paternity test. “Whatever, I don’t even care. My first-choice internship was Prada, the second Valentino. Croquis was my fifth choice.” She quickly wiped a tear that slid down the tip of her nose.

I stood up, making my way to her. She grabbed one of the boxes and turned her back to me. I tugged at the fabric of her sleeve. “Look at me,” I said harshly. No sign of Martyr Maddie in sight. I was pissed, and I owned it.

She looked down, shaking her head.

“Nina.” My voice grew sharper. “You are bullying me.”

“It’s just banter!” she cried. Bullshit.

“Why do you hate me so much?”

She looked up, giving me a duh look. “Why wouldn’t I? Look at you. You have horrible taste in clothes, yet you feel so comfortable in your own skin. You’re the uncoolest person I’ve ever met, no offense. Yet you’re probably Sven’s favorite employee. Men like Chase Black throw themselves at you and have bathroom sex with you and fire people for you. You are way ahead of the game for our age, and you didn’t even go to a good college. You just . . . have it all together. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem natural for a twenty-six-year-old. It feels like you got a lot of shortcuts.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that my life is not all unicorns, hearts, and baked goods?” I was surprised by the fact I was yelling at her, and yet here I was—literally screaming at her. “I’m super insecure about . . . well, most things, really. I live in a tiny apartment with a dog I am mostly allergic to. My love life is a disaster, my mom died when I was a teenager, and I never fully recovered from her loss. To stay on top of my game, I pretty much had no social life for the past five years and focused on working my way up. Staying an intern wasn’t a luxury I could afford, as it meant I’d be homeless. Which was why I got a quick promotion from Sven, at the price of my working fifty-hour weeks. The grass is always greener through someone else’s Instagram filter. No one has their shit together. Fully, anyway. We’re all just pretending we know what we’re doing. Those of us who do it with a smile on our face just look like we’re enjoying it more.”

Nina sniffed. “Well, yeah, I guess, but . . .”

“You’ve been a petty, jealous, out-of-control bitch to me, Nina. And I cannot and will not allow anyone to treat me like this anymore. Enough is enough. To be honest, you probably deserve to get fired. You stuffed my bag with condoms, for crying out loud. But you know what? I don’t want your unemployment on my conscience, so I’m going to give you one chance. I’ll talk to Sven about letting you keep this position. He will probably listen, seeing as I’m the person who got picked on. But you have to promise me you won’t let the green-eyed monster get ahold of your mouth and say awful things to me ever again. Jealousy is like a fart. It stinks, we all have it, but it is best to keep it inside or release it when absolutely no one can see or hear us. Am I understood?”

She stared at me in shock, blinking the tears away from her vision.

“Nina, answer me.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, still mesmerized by the one-eighty I’d done. “I promise. I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“I am.”

There was a pause.

“Why are you doing this?” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, wincing. “You don’t have to. Yet you’re still nice to me, even when giving me shit.”

“Oh,” I said breezily. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for me. Being good makes me sleep better at night. It’s not that I don’t suffer from the same symptoms as you—jealousy, heartache, insecurity. They’re the side effects of being alive, pretty much. But I learned a simple thing recently. That gap between reality and our dreams? That’s where life is tucked.”

In the end, I couldn’t do it.

Walk away from Chase without clearing the air, no matter how badly I knew I’d hurt if I saw his face again. Plus, there was the small matter of giving him back his trillion-dollar engagement ring.

The worst part was that it wasn’t even a conscious decision. I didn’t go through the normal route of picking up the phone and calling or texting him to set up a time and a place. You know, like a sane person would. I just found myself going to his place after work unannounced.

I hoped—fine, prayed—I’d have a few minutes alone in the apartment so I could compose myself (translation: have a mental breakdown and wash my face). The odds were in my favor. I knew Chase’s schedule, and it included visiting his parents after work to check on his father.

The doorman at his building, an older gentleman named Bruce, knew me by face and showed me in. Guess that was the upside of being the uncoolest person in the universe, as Nina had dubbed me. I didn’t look like the type to empty a billionaire’s apartment of possessions and jewelry.

“Haven’t seen much of you lately. Mr. Black has been a bit of a sour face since you stopped coming.” Bruce led me to the elevator. I still had the key from our first rodeo. Chase had never asked for it back, and I hadn’t exactly been in the mood to initiate more conversation with him. I pushed Chase’s door open just as my phone pinged with a message.

Sven: Bad news. The Dream Wedding Dress model never showed up. She was on location.

Maddie: Crap! Can we reschedule?

Sven: We don’t have time. We need to start making it tomorrow if we want to get everything on time. Aren’t you a size six?

Maddie: Sure. I’m also half her height.

Sven: Send me your measurements. I’ll adjust it accordingly when the prima donna can finally see us for a fitting.

I gave him my measurements and hit send. For the next hour, I gave myself a tour of Chase’s apartment, filing everything away in my memory, knowing it was the last time I was going to visit him. For real, this time. The azaleas, as I’d suspected, were nowhere to be seen. Not in any of the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the living room, or the kitchen. Finally, I collapsed on his couch, stared at the ceiling, and let out a sigh. I didn’t remember the exact moment I fell asleep. By the time I was jarred awake, my phone indicated it was close to one in the morning. I heard Chase messing with the lock outside his apartment and sat up straight, prying away the bits of hair that stuck to the dry saliva on my cheeks.

I heard his keys drop to the floor, a groan, and then a woman huffing and picking them up for him. A woman.

Déjà vu of the day Chase had walked into his apartment with a stranger slammed into me. I darted up, ready for a fight. Not that there needed to be one. We weren’t together anymore. Or ever. Yet I couldn’t help but think of him as mine.

“Hold still,” the woman murmured. He hiccuped. He was drunk. The door was pushed open. Chase came tumbling in, his black dress shirt ripped open, supported by a slender woman who clutched his shoulder to keep him upright.

“Didn’t take you long to get over me,” I said, my fingers balling into a fist beside my body. Every one of my muscles shook with anger. “Again.”

He lifted his head at the exact same time the woman did. They both stared back at me.

Katie.

It was Katie.

God, I was such an idiot. Now was a good time to put the engagement ring on his table and run for my life. Still, I was rooted to his floor.

“You’re here,” he said tonelessly.

“You’re . . . drunk,” I retorted, looking at Katie with what I hoped was an apologetic expression.

She smiled, depositing Chase against the door so she could come and give me a small squeeze. “Hey. Don’t worry. It’s not awkward between us at all. My brother felt a little worse for wear after work and decided to go drinking with some friends. I dropped by the bar he was at before I went home and found him like this. Figured he’d need a good night’s sleep before the hangover kicked in.”

“Good call.” I nodded.

“I’ll leave you two to it.”

Katie left, and then it was just Chase and me. A very drunk version of him, anyway. I felt furious with the universe for bringing Chase to me like this. Barely coherent, when there were so many things I wanted to say to him in what was going to be the last time we ever spoke.

I slid the ring off my finger. It was weird. Throughout the weeks we’d been pretend-dating, I’d been careful to remove it at work, but I’d enjoyed flaunting it practically any other time. While I was on the subway and went out with friends and took Daisy for walks. I saw other people checking out the engagement ring while I held the pole on the train or flagged a taxi or flipped a page on my Kindle while waiting for a hair appointment. I could see the wheels in their heads turning. The stories they made up for this spectacular ring. I loved this part the most. The guessing part. My wedding obsession, I realized, was also about the meet-cute. The falling-in-love story. I’d wanted to sit each of them down and tell them about Chase. About how funny and gorgeous he was. About how fiercely he loved his family, how deeply he cared for his niece.

“So I thought I’d stop by and give this to you.” I handed him the ring.

He ignored my outstretched hand, blinking as he tried to focus on my face. “Keep it.”

“Chase . . .”

“Sell it. Give it away. You earned it.”

I shook my head, my heart clenching painfully. “It’s too much.”

“I won’t return it.” He staggered to the living room, collapsing on the couch and turning on the TV. ESPN was his default channel. “I can’t even look at it.”

He looked so tired that I thought arguing with him about this was less kind than keeping the ring.

“Listen.” I sat down next to him, feeling that he was drifting away from me and wanting to anchor him. “About Nina. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, I really do, but please tell Sven to give her her job back. She needs it, and I don’t want to get into this with Sven.”

“What she needs is a lesson in manners,” he slurred, frowning at the TV boyishly. “And maybe a sugar daddy to pay for all that Prada she was parading around. I looked her up on Instagram. Is this you being Martyr Maddie again? Because I won’t stand for this kind of bullshit on your behalf.”

“We reached an understanding.” I slid the ring back onto my finger before realizing what I was doing. I ignored the warm current that ran through me as I did.

“Will it make you happy?” He swung his head toward me. The vulnerability in his expression nearly broke me. I nodded. “Fine. She can have her job back. I’ll talk to Sven.”

“Thank you.”

“But I’ll also give him some friendly advice to make you her boss. Seems fair, everything considered.”

I didn’t argue.

“How’s your dad?” I asked, stalling. Leaving him like this, drunk and bitter and hurting, was impossible.

He gave me half a shrug. Right. Stupid question.

“I just want you to know I’ll be there for you and your family, no matter what. As a friend.”

“I don’t want to be your friend.” Chase held my eyes, sobering up for a fraction of a second. “I want to be your everything. Even that’s not enough. So thanks, but no thanks.”

He is drunk, my mind screamed at me as my heart lurched for him. Plastered. Hammered. Tanked up. He doesn’t mean it.

I pulled him into an awkward couch hug, kissing his neck, inhaling his Chase smell, diluted by the alcohol he’d consumed tonight. “That’s a lot to ask.” I smiled sadly, pressing a kiss below his ear. I felt his words inside my body as he answered me.

“It’s more than I deserve.”