Two Wrongs Make a Right by Chloe Liese

Author:Chloe Liese [Liese, Chloe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

Halfway to the apartment, I rush ahead of my friends with the excuse of needing to pee. I nearly face-plant twice, but I have to get home as quick as I can. I’m spiraling. I need answers.

“You made it!” Jules calls from the kitchen. “Tacos are here. Let’s get some sangria in you.”

Our apartment brims with Mexican food and mellow music, clusters of people talking, laughter on their faces. Jules knows my sensory threshold, and she’s pretty great about not exceeding it. Not too many people or too many sounds. Just enough to be enjoyable but not overwhelming.

I can’t even enjoy it, though. I can’t stop fixating on Jamie’s ex at the shop. That card she bought couldn’t be for him, could it? Was seeing us at Boulangerie enough to make her jealous? To make her want someone she can’t have anymore?

A small corner of my mind—the rational one—keeps telling me that I’m being ridiculous, worrying about my fake boyfriend being unfaithful to me or, worse, using me with this fake relationship to win her back. My rational brain is telling me you don’t make up with someone who treats you the way he said she did.

And to my rational brain’s credit, I’m pretty sure it’s right. What’s messing with me is how much I feel, how much I care. I’ve realized that if my fears about his ex were true, it would hurt. Deeply. And it shouldn’t. It shouldn’t matter to me what my fake boyfriend does. The man who’s the epitome of wrong for me—quiet, wrinkle-free propriety to my haphazard, daydreaming chaos, who uses five-syllable words and saves babies and eats four carbs a year, while I half-ass a career, spin my professional tires, and subsist on refined sugar and canned ravioli.

This is what has my hands shaking, my heart tripping inside my ribs. Despite my best efforts to rein this shit in, to keep our dates purposeful, our every touch solely for this fake relationship and the goal of revenge—I’m still invested, vulnerable, barely holding back tears.

“BeeBee.” Jules offers me a big glass of sangria. “What’s wrong?”

I take a giant gulp, hoping the alcohol will numb the pain. “What do you know about Jamie’s ex?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Uh. Not much. Why?”

“Tell me what you know.” I glance around the room and don’t see Jamie. He must still be hiding in my room with Cornelius.

“Okay,” Jules says slowly. “I remember Jean-Claude saying she’s a physician, too. But a surgeon. Cardiothoracic, maybe?”

Jamie’s ex is a heart surgeon. And I doodle hidden genitals on card stock for a living.

That faintest, silliest fantasy of Jamie Westenberg ever seeing me as more than the clumsy girl who hates vegetables and walks around with her underwear stuck in her dress dissolves, leaving a hollow ache beneath my breastbone.

“It’s whatever all his family does,” Jules says. “I know his dad’s famous for some procedure. And yeah, I think it’s for hearts. Why?”

It’s her. The woman at the Edgy Envelope has to be his ex.

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