Next Stop Love by Rachel Stockbridge

Author:Rachel Stockbridge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rachel Stockbridge
Published: 2020-09-22T21:11:17+00:00

* * *

A few hours fighting public transit to get home hadn’t improved Julian’s mood. He didn’t even feel human anymore. Just a sack of skin containing a dense vortex of angry, confused devastation. He couldn’t get his movements under control. They were too fast, too violent. He forced his way through the sticky door of his apartment, letting it bang against the wall.

“Fuck!” Fabiana was perched on one of the wobbly kitchen chairs with one leg drawn up, a bottle of nail polish in her hand. A hot pink streak slashed across her bare foot. She grabbed for a napkin as Julian slammed the door and wrestled his coat off. “Look what you—” She cut herself off when she looked up at him, her frown sharpening. “The fuck happened to you?”

“Thanksgiving fucking happened to me,” Julian spat, shoving his coat in the closet. His sketchbook fell out of the pocket. Fucking useless piece of crap. He was fooling himself thinking he could get out from under a lifetime’s worth of shitty luck with one sketchbook of shitty art. He snatched it off the floor and hurled it at the trash can. It hit a cabinet instead and landed pages-first on the linoleum.

“Hey, whoa,” Fabiana said, eyes wide. “Chill.”

Julian rounded on her before he could think better of it. “I thought I told you to text me when you left Walter’s.”

“I forgot,” she said, wetting the napkin with nail polish remover and dabbing at her foot. By the looks of it, she’d been home for a while. She had changed into yoga pants and a sweatshirt, and her long hair was tied in a high knot. “So sue me.”

“How hard is it to type two words on your way out?”

“Shit, Jules. Give me a break. You’re not the only one who had a rotten night, you know. I was counting on Greyson bringing his new girlfriend to dinner so he couldn’t be as much of a dick, but she was—”

“In White Plains?” Julian finished for her. “Having dinner with her friends? Yeah. I know.”

“You—What?” Fabiana lifted her head, napkin suspended in midair. “How?”

Julian spread his arms. “Guess who else was there.”

Fabiana’s lip twisted in confusion. “In White Plains?”

“I take it Greyson left dinner early? Maybe said something about dropping in on his girlfriend?”

“Wait. You were there? With the girlfriend?”

“Yep.”

He could see the moment the realization dawned, her expression going slack. “And then Greyson—”

“Yep.”

Fabiana paled. “Fuck. Fuck. Are you serious? How do you even know his girlfriend?”

“She lives up here. We take the same fucking train. Every fucking day.”

“Holy . . . Since when?”

“I don’t know. Since I started at the art center. About three weeks.”

“You’ve been screwing around with Greyson’s girlfriend for the past three weeks?” Fabiana’s bare foot hit the floor as she leaned toward him in her chair. “After all that shit he pulled with you in high school? Are you stupid?”

“I didn’t—I wasn’t screwing around with her. It wasn’t like that. We’re just—We were friends. That’s it. Commute buddies.

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