‘Doesn’t excuse him leaving you standing at the altar,’ Sienna said much more gently, despite the murder in her eyes.
‘Viatext,’ Astrid repeated, clearly still outraged.
‘No, it doesn’t. That was truly a low act.’
Sienna nodded. ‘Yes, it was.’
‘Well,’ Astrid announced, ‘you can string mine up.’
‘Were you jilted as well?’ Sienna’s big blue eyes blazed white-hot indignation.
‘No.’ Astrid gulped down her fizz, her green eyes sparking. ‘Unbeknownst to me, he’d already trotted up that aisle and merrily said “I do” to someone else.’
‘So…’ Bella’s eyes widened. ‘He turned you into the other woman?’
‘Too right he did. Made me feel like a piece of shit.’
Sienna shook her head, her full, pink lips flattening into a line of sheer outrage. ‘Are you freaking kidding me? He was already married?’
Astrid confirmed with a nod of her head. ‘He’s an artist too. All about creating the feels in people… Chase Miller can give youthe feelsalright. The kind you want F all to do with. Believe me.’
‘Chase Miller?’ Bella blinked, surprise in her voice as if she knew the name. And then, as if that piece of info had pushed her last button, she demanded, ‘What is wrong with these men? Doesn’t marriage mean anything any more?’
‘I don’t think men get the concept of commitment,’ Sienna mused. ‘Even the ones who seem to get it are just faking it.’ The observation earned an enquiring look from all three. ‘Sorry.’ She laughed brittlely. ‘That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?’
Bella leaned closer. ‘What happened?’ she prompted, her tone solicitous, encouraging.
‘My ex kind of just… discarded me. It wasn’t like some big, dramatic break up. I didn’t even get the chance to throw plates.’ She waved a hand in the air, as if to dismiss it all but sadness cloaked her words. ‘I mean, we were just kids but we were each other’s firsts, you know? And I thought we were going to have a life together but he hightailed it out of town without a backward glance. Like nothing we had mattered.’
Bella reached across to squeeze Sienna’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry. That’s terrible.’
‘Sucks ass,’ Astrid concurred into her glass.
After a few moments of silent enraged solidarity passed between them all, Sienna raised an eyebrow at Paige. ‘Can I bring you anyone’s head?’
Paige gave a half laugh and prepared to deflect but then surprised herself by how much she suddenlywantedto tell these women she barely knew her big ugly thing. Maybe they were misting the air in O’Hare with Valium to keep everyone calm or maybe it was precisely because theywerestrangers it made the telling easier.
‘I broke up with my ex, Harvey, after a brief, intense relationship and then he… posted naked pictures and videos of me online. He’d taken them without my knowledge or consent.’
If the gasp for Bella had been loud, this gasp swivelled every head in the café. ‘Revenge porn?’ Sienna hissed in disgust.
Paige nodded. It was as shocking now as it had been back then, sucker punching her all over again. ‘I’ve never felt sodegraded.’ Her gaze dropped to the table; she still found it difficult to meet people’s eyes when thinking about those images. ‘I met him at Oxford. He was studying IT and I was a third-year law student. It completely ruined my future career prospects. No prestigious law firm was going to take me on after that. Hell, not even a terrible law firm would. And I couldn’t bear staying on at Oxford, where everyone had seen the pictures. So I…’ She shrugged as she raised her eyes. ‘Dropped out.’
‘What a bastard,’ Bella stated, stumbling slightly over the curse as if she didn’t use it that often.
‘Absolutebastard,’ Sienna agreed with no stumbling, her lips a furious line. ‘What’s he doing now, do you know?’
‘He’s some kind of tech bro. Travels between London and Silicon Valley.’
Sienna rolled her eyes. ‘Of course he is.’
For a moment everyone was quiet as they studied the clutter of glassware on the table. Paige wasn’t sure if the others were considering their combined catastrophically awful taste in men, but she certainly was.
‘They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it,’ Sienna said eventually.
Astrid slapped her glass down, prosecco sloshing. ‘Damn right they shouldn’t.’
Sienna glanced around the circle and leaned in a little. Everyone followed suit. ‘What if we… Look I know this sounds crazy and I may be a little drunk.’ As if to underscore this, she hiccupped which caused a round of laughter before she got back on track. ‘What if we… took it upon ourselves to exact some… revenge?’
