Page 100 of Not You Again
She shoves a forkful of salad into her mouth while I stare blankly. She’s not wrong. I’ve never made her a scarf or a simple skirt or anything. She never asked. But neither had Kit, had he? My shoulders curl forward with defeat. “I’m a bad person, aren’t I?”
“Of course not,” Heidi scoffs as she repositions her legs on the plush carpet. “You know what you want, and you’re focused on the endgame.”
“I’m selfish,” I mutter to a piece of chicken on the tines of my fork. “I kept reminding Kit that I needed the divorce money. Like that was all that mattered to me.”
Heidi shrugs. “It’s why you did the show in the first place. I think it was brave of you to be so honest with him.”
“Really?”
She nods. “And it says a lot about him that he didn’t get petty about it.”
I swallow. Kit had never tried to undermine my mission. He offered an alternative, sure. But he never made me feel bad about my work or the time I spent on it. “Is it stupid that I kept waiting for him to just say the right thing, and I could get past all my reasons for saying no?”
“What was the right thing for him to say?” She tilts her head in question, fiddling with a piece of plastic wrap from a to-go container.
I stare at the bottle of vodka on the table, condensation slipping down the smooth glass sides and pooling at the base. Somehow, I still believe that if Kit said the right words in the right order, he’d loosen this knot still lodged in my chest. If he could just say them, I could let go of how afraid I was of loving him.
He apologized for leaving me the first time. He supported my ambition to the point of vetting assistants for me, of offering to be an investor himself. He sent me lunch because he knew I’d forget to eat if he didn’t. He noticed which of my dresses I made, always searching for the hidden pockets. And the night we decided to give in, he showed his hand—he knew every intricacy of my work.
I’m afraid of how deeply he knows me.
And perhaps the biggest fear of all: What if nothing he said would make it right? At least his brutal silence was something I was comfortable with, even if I drowned in it.
I whisper my reply. “I don’t know.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWOANDIE
The closet in our tiny apartment feels so much emptier with Kit’s three suits missing. I don’t know what law of physics makes it feel this way, but I hate it. I sniff to hold back another wave of tears as I pull more of my own clothes off the rack and teeter into the bedroom.
“How are you doing?” Kendra asks as she sits on the end of the bed. When the rest of the cast heard about what happened on decision day, my phone wouldn’t stop ringing. None of them wanted the dirty details. They all wanted to make sure I was okay.
“Trying to pull myself together.” I shove my clothes into my suitcase with an unseemly grunt. For the first time in a long time, there are no cameras to perform for.
Leslie leans in the doorway, his normally perfectly styled blond hair a mess, like he dropped everything to be here for me. “Have you heard from him since D-Day?”
I shake my head. “I don’t expect to. He’s very good at disappearing.”
“Patrick’s tried to reach him,” Kendra offers. “But he hasn’t heard back.”
“I’m not surprised,” I mumble. They let me finish emptying the closet in silence. I don’t know what else there is to say.
I zip up my suitcase. Before I can move it myself, Leslie takes over, heaving it off the bed and wheeling it out into the living room. I follow, wiping my nose with my sleeve.
“What do you think?” I ask Jamie, who’s at the small dining table, poring over my designs and schedule in preparation for Fashion Week.
He looks up with a mischievous grin. “It’ll be a lot of work, but I’m in if you are.”
“No going back now.” I return the fist bump he offers, and it makes me smile too. After returning to my work a couple of days ago, I realized I had too much on my plate to do alone. Jamie was thrilled to get the phone call, eager to get back to his own creative work, too.
Kendra resumes packing up the few items in the kitchen that weren’t show-provided. She plucks Kit’s drawing off the fridge. “Do you want to keep this?”
“I shouldn’t.” I walk over to join her and take the drawing from her. “But I can’t bring myself to get rid of it.” It reminds me of such a gentle, happy time. And I’m realizing I need more of those. I deserve that kind of comfort and safety in my life.
There’s a soft knock on the door. When I yell for them to come in, Cassidy and Steve enter. She’s carrying two trays of coffee orders from the shop down the street. “I heard you were all here.”
“Patrick’s on a firehouse shift.” Kendra shrugs. “He’d be here if he could.”
“How are you, Andie?” Cassidy asks as Steve hands out the coffees.