Curious, she removed the tissue paper from the top of the bag, peered inside.
And laughed.
It was a Christmas ornament designed to look like a letter to Santa, with swirly red cursive writing that read:Dear Santa, Sorry about all the F-bombs. I’m a teacher and this year wasCRAZY.
Still laughing, Fiona peered up at her friend. “I love it. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.” Liz pried the cork from the bottle. “It’s plastic, so it won’t break if Wanda knocks it off the tree.”
“I guess that means I’ll have to get a tree.” She’d been debating whether or not to bother with one this year. Wanda wouldn’t mess with it—she stopped climbing the tree a few Christmases ago—but if she bought a tree, she’d also have to buy all the trimmings, and she wasn’t sure she had enough room in her budget for that. Maybe a small, sparsely decorated tree, and then she’d hit the after-Christmas sales to load up on supplies for next year.
As if on cue, Fiona’s phone chimed with Dennis’s ringtone, and she ignored it, like all the other calls he’d made today. Still, her stomach sank while her pulse jumped, and she hated the fact he had that kind of power over her months after their breakup.
“Is that the asshole?” Liz set two glasses on the counter. A rhetorical question, considering she’d helped Fiona select the shower scene music fromPsychofor his ringtone.
“The one and only.” She sent the call to voicemail without even looking at the screen. He must not be working today, because he’d been calling practically nonstop since around eight this morning.
After their breakup, she’d considered blocking his number, but there were so many ways to get around a block that it seemed like an exercise in futility. At least this way, the caller ID let her know not to answer the phone.
Her friend made a face as though she’d smelled something bad, her default expression whenever the subject of Dennis arose. “I’m surprised he’s not texting like he usually does.”
“He only sends texts when he’s confident they can’t be used as evidence.”
When they’d been a couple, he’d constantly sent messages to see where she was, what she was doing, and who she was doing it with. At first, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal, because he’d acted as though he was only interested in how her day was going. But as time wore on, the messages adopted a more overbearing tone, and she started to feel as though she were living under a microscope. Heaven forbid she was doing something he didn’t like, or was with someone he didn’t approve of—like Liz. When that happened, there was hell to pay whenever she got home.
Liz poured wine into the glasses. “What’s he pissed off about now?”
“Who knows?” Fiona toed off her dress flats and pushed them under the coffee table. That was a big fat lie, because she knew exactly why he was calling, and she didn’t want to deal with it. “I’m guessing it has something to do with his visit last night.”
“That was you?” Her friend’s eyes widened. “I heard there was some sort of dust-up in one of the buildings. What happened?”
“It really wasn’t that big of a deal.” Fiona crossed to the kitchen and leaned against the counter. She’d been hoping to avoid this conversation, mostly because Liz would blow it out of proportion, but she didn’t see a way out of it now. “I don’t even know if I’d call it an argument.”
Liz rolled her eyes so hard her prescription probably changed. “Why didn’t you call me? Better yet, did you call the cops on the cop? Please tell me you did; it would make my frigging week.”
Much to her friend’s disappointment, Fiona shook her head. “No, it didn’t get that bad, but for a little while, I thought Dennis and Joe might duke it out in the hall.”
A part of Fiona that she refused to acknowledge had wanted to watch Joe beat the stuffing out of Dennis. Given Joe’s muscular build and his air of self-assurance, he certainly seemed capable of doing it. But in the end, it would have only made matters worse. Joe would have ended up with an arrest record and time in jail, while Dennis would direct his full fury at her and make her life even more difficult.
She still didn’t understand why he was trying to re-insert himself into her life. More than six months had passed since she moved out of their home, and nearly three months since she’d last heard from him. After all this time, why did he suddenly decide they were meant to be together?
Liz’s brows drew down in confusion as she put the bottle back in the fridge. “Who’s Joe?”
“Hot Guy. He came upstairs because Dennis was making so much noise, he could hear it inside his apartment.”
It took a lot to leave Liz speechless. When she finally regained the power of speech, she said, “Are you telling me that Hot Guy came up here last night and this is the first I’m hearing about it?”
“There isn’t much to tell.”
“And here I thought we were friends.” With a huff, Liz shoved a glass of wine into Fiona’s hand and then pointed to the sliding glass door. “Balcony. Now. I want to hear every last detail and don’t you dare leave anything out.”
As they made themselves comfortable outside, Fiona gave a play-by-play of the previous night’s events, from the time Liz left her apartment to the moment Fiona watched Joe go back downstairs to watch his hockey game.
When she finished, Liz stuck her lower lip out in a pout. “Damn, I miss all the fun.”
Fiona shot her some side-eye. “Dennis is never fun, especially when he gets angry like that.”
To be fair, Dennis had never physically harmed her, but there had been occasions, mostly toward the end of their relationship, when she’d worried that he might. Most of the time, he preferred to screw with her head and make her feel lower than the dirt beneath her shoes. But last night he’d truly scared her, especially when he’d kicked the door so hard she thought it might fly off the hinges. God only knew what he would have done if he’d gotten into her apartment.
