Page 1 of This Broken Heart

1.

Erin

I’ve officially reached a new low.

Quite literally.

I’ve been telling everyone I’m totally, completely, one hundred percentoverMatt.

I even started to convince myself.

And yet, here I am, squatting behind an orange stand in the grocery store.

Not my finest moment, but when I saw Matt come, I panicked.

He’s with his new girlfriend.

It’s been six months. He’s allowed to find someone new.

I just wish she wasn’t so skinny.

And beautiful.

She’s dressed to kill in a cozy little sweater dress and me? I decided to wear my Betty White t-shirt and sweats today.

Who dresses up to run errands, anyway?

“Erin?” This stealthy bastard snuck up behind me.

I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping he’ll just disappear.

Climbing to my feet, I turn around with feigned surprise. “Oh my God, Matt.” My enthusiasm is so plastic, so brittle, it could crack down the middle. “What are you doing here?”

He’s holding a bag of limes. “We’re having a few people over.”

The word ‘we’ hangs between us. It’s not ‘us’ anymore, it’s Matt and that other girl. Seeing him doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, but it’s hard to get over the sting of being dumped.

He tilts his head. “Were you hiding behind the oranges?”

“No.” My cheeks color. “I dropped my keys.”

“Ah.” He bites back a fond smile. “You always were a silly little duck.”

Silly duck.

It’s hard to understand how I went from being his girlfriend of five years, to being a silly duck.

I mean, I know why we broke up.

Matt laid that all out on the table. And it had nothing to do with ducks or silliness.

He told me he wasn’t sexually attracted to me anymore.

Admittedly, the spark had gone out for me, too. I just assumed it was because we were so comfortable with each other.

But seeing him in here with that skinnier, cuter girl…

It’s salt in a wound I thought had healed.