“Maybe stop being such an idiot, and things will work out for a change.”
I puff out a laugh and swat her away.
“Thanks a lot, Soph.”
She grins and opens her palm toward me.
“That will be a hundred bucks.”
I shove her shoulder and scoff.
“Your advice isn’t worth that much.”
She crosses her arms and winks.
“We’ll see.”
I can’t sleep.
I’m not even remotely trying to. I’ve just been lying in the dark for hours, staring at the ceiling, wondering if a lobotomy would feel better than this.
My bed has never felt this empty. I yearn to feel Connie next to me. Asleep and pressed against me, her skin warm and silky smooth against mine.
The fantasy is just as potent as a real memory. I ache for it. Ache for something simple but real. Ache for a domestic kind of life that I’ve never experienced before, even in childhood.
But who am I to think I even deserve that kind of life? Who am I to think I’d even know what to do with it if I everdidget it?
I sigh and turn to my side.
I unlock my phone and squint at the screen but don’t adjust the brightness. I want Connie’s face burned into my retinas. Burned so deep I see an imprint of her everywhere I look.
She posted pictures of the Hendrick’s party to her profile the other day. I wonder if she was contractually obligated or if she posted them out of spite. Because I’m deliberately missing from all of them. It looks like she never had a date for the event in the first place.
I stare at them nonetheless.
God, she’s so fucking beautiful.
Why did she even give me a chance?
Her earlier accusation comes back to haunt me.
“You never gave us a chance.”
The regret is heavy and painful.
I fucking blew it.
I let out another long sigh through my nose and turn off my phone.
Sleep doesn’t take pity on me.
I stare at the ceiling some more.
40
CONNIE
“Yeah, the movers just left,” I tell Jamie on the phone as I stroll through my new condo.
