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I HEADED STRAIGHT FROM the gym to my favorite Starbucks—the one I’d been avoiding since I got home. Even in a city the size of New York, it was surprisingly difficult to avoid the influence of a Larchwood. Tom owned this place. In fact, he frequented a secret little work space on the second floor, so despite my coffee addiction, I’d been heading all the way to Midtown when I wanted a buzz. Today—I marched straight inside.
“Non-fat latte please,” I ordered at the counter.
The girl looked up and my breath caught in my throat. It was Alecia, Tom, and my favorite barista. I’d seen her many times over the last few months, but never by myself, and Tom and I never stalled long enough to talk—we had to make sure she thought these trips of ours were strictly professional.
“Hey,” she said brightly, “it’s...Jenny, right?”
“Sure.” I didn’t even bother to correct her.
She took my money and hurried to give me my change as a line piled up behind. “Not with Mr. Larchwood today? As a matter a fact, I haven’t seen him much lately either.”
Interesting. So Tom had been avoiding this place as much as I had. That probably meant it was safe to continue frequenting to my heart’s content.
“Nope. Just me.” I flashed her a little smile and dropped my change into the tip jar. “Keep it.”
As I headed out onto the bustling sidewalks, I felt a strange feeling of calm washing over me. The feeling you got when whatever had been plaguing you was either resolved or replaced.
In this case, it had been replaced. And not with a healthy acceptance.
But with rage.
How dare he cast me aside the second things got rough! The second that the tables turned, and our relationship became a risk for him. Welcome to the club, buddy! That was the razor’s edge I’d been walking since day one, and you didn’t hear me complaining.
I barreled right through the middle of a happy couple, mumbling my apologies as I stormed down the cement.
What was more—Michael and Rose were still together. That’s right—Michael was in the exact same precarious position as Tom, but he had decided to stay with Rose. Granted, he had never really cared about work in the same way as Tom, but he did it anyway because he cared so deeply for Rose that the thought never crossed his mind. I couldn’t picture a scenario in which Michael would ever look at her and say the word, ‘goodbye.’ He had a hard enough time saying it when he dropped her off at the end of one of their countless, adorable dates.
I took a scalding sip of my latte, ignoring the instant burn on my tongue and the way a great deal of it splashed down my jacket thanks to my shaking hands.
Well, no more! I was done being ‘fine’ over Thomas Larchwood. I was better than that. I deserved better than that. And I was going to get it.
I got back to the apartment on a strange high, staring around like a general taking in the field just before a big battle. The next second, I downed the rest of my latte and rolled up my sleeves. There was work to be done.
The papers were the first to go. I saved all my computer documents, then filed them away for later use. When I was finished with that, I gathered up every paper replica from around the house and filed them neatly away into little boxes that I shoved into the back of the closet. Somewhere, Patti Macer had begun to cry, though she didn’t know why. But I didn’t care. I had completed an ungodly amount of work over the last two weeks. Enough that if I were to sit on my ass for the next two weeks and make prank calls to China, no one would even blink.
Next to go was the furniture. I dragged my desk back into my room, rolling my chair in after it. There was no reason to have a separate office at home, much less in the living room. And I would not be held captive to my avoidance issues any longer. I shoved the two lamps I’d been using back into their respective corners and skipped off to return Rose’s stapler.
A moment later, I returned and assessed the situation. Our living room was back to being our living room. There was no evidence that this place had been the scene of a mental break down for the past two weeks; everything looked just as it should.
Everything...except me.
I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror and froze.
A sad girl stared back at me. The same sad girl who’d gotten dumped on the beach. Who’d mailed back a pair of diamond earrings the second she’d gotten home. Who’d cried herself to sleep every night ever since.
That sad girl...would have to go.
Pouring myself a large glass of wine—an indulgence I’d been denying myself lately because it usually made the crying fits worse—I rushed to the bathroom and pulled out a large box from the corner of the cabinet that Rose and I kept for self-esteem emergencies.
“Where is it...where is it...?” I mumbled as I rooted around. “Aha!”
At last, my fingers found it, and I pulled out a large box of flaming red hair dye.
I glanced in the mirror one more time, wondering if this was going to be one of those ‘regret it in the morning’ types of decisions. But I’ll tell you the truth, I could have sworn, that sad girl threw me a wink.
An hour later, I was sitting with my head over the sink, reading a magazine as my hair dripped down a molten stream of red. There was a jingling of keys and the door pushed open. A few seconds later, I heard Rose come inside.
“Jen? Are you here?”
“I’m in here,” I called back, reading through an article while simultaneously wondering if hair dye could ever expire.
“When I saw the living room, I thought we’d been mugged,” she said as she walked down the hall, “it looks so bare—AH!”
I dropped my magazine in surprise as she covered her mouth with a scream. The next second, she clutched weakly at her heart.
“Oh my goodness—I thought I’d stumbled in on some ghastly suicide attempt. What are you doing? It looks like your head is bleeding...”
I bit my lip nervously, waiting for her reaction. “I dipped into the self-esteem box.”
She raised her eyebrows knowingly. “Ah, I see. So as it turns out, someone wasn’t feeling quite so fi—”
“Don’t say it!” I held up my hand, cutting her off. “I’m turning over a new leaf. A bright red leaf.”
“I can see that.” She perched on the counter. “And was that a Starbucks cup I saw in the trash? Don’t tell me you went all the way down to Midtown...”
“Nope,” I said proudly. “I ducked into the one right here on my way back from the gym.”
She grabbed her cheeks in mock amazement. “The gym too! Jenna Harks, you are just blowing my mind right now. Is there anything you can’t do?”
I chuckled and swatted at her as I tried to stand up. “Can you help me out with this hair situation? I’m can’t be positive, but I’m pretty sure I left it in too long.”
She threw on an old sweatshirt over her fancy dress and helped me gently wash the dye from my scalp. It did indeed look like I was bleeding out from the cranium and I shut my eyes as her fingers worked the red through.
“So how was your date?” I asked quietly.
Don’t get me wrong, I was incredibly supportive of Michael and Rose as a couple. They were absolutely wonderful together, and I couldn’t think of a better match. But lately, well, I hadn’t been asking about their budding romance, and Rose certainly hadn’t been volunteering the information out of respect. She seemed very hesitant to talk about it now.
“Uh...it was...fi—”
“Don’t say fine!” I laughed.
She cracked up. “Geez, you’re right. It’s a perfect go-to. But...” she cast a wary glance at me from the corner of her eye, “well...it was amazing, Jenna. I’m in over my head with this guy. I don’t know what comes next.”
I smiled to myself, both happy for them and happy that I could honestly say that without wanting to cry. “Well, Michael’s crazy about you—we all know that.”
“It’s more than that,” she mused, fingers working through my hair, “I’m crazy about him.”
My mouth fell open in false surprise. “No! The notoriously single Rosalie Bell falling in love with a mere mortal? Honestly, Rose, you’re like the George Clooney of Manhattan. You really willing to throw that all away?”
She laughed softly, eyes still back with Michael at dinner. “But that’s the thing, isn’t it? He was basically the male version of me, and he was willing to throw it all—” She stopped suddenly, staring at me in horror. “Jen...I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking—”
“It’s okay, really.” I stood up and took the towel from her hands, patting myself off. “I’m going to blow dry this for a minute to see how it turned out.”
She nodded quickly, squeezing my hand before she headed back down the hall.
The second she was gone, I cast a quick look in the mirror.
How were we hanging in there? Was the sad girl back? (I found it was easier to deal with my emotions when talking about them in the third person.)
Well lucky for me, ‘sad girl’ was most definitely not back. In fact, I didn’t really recognize the girl staring back at me. The red had done something strange to all my coloring, making me look paler, but more vibrant all at the same time.
I flipped on the blow dryer and was thrilled to see that the shade didn’t at all diminish. It was still waves of fire, cascading down my head. When it was dry, I fluffed my bangs, then walked casually out to the kitchen to get a first reaction from Rose.
Her jaw fell open, and she dropped the other crumbling half of a cookie. “Oh my gosh! You look...well, you look hot. That’s all there is to it.”
“I know, right?!” I squealed, jumping up and down.
I didn’t know where exactly it had come from, but at some point between breaking my knee and being called ‘Jessica,’ I’d found exactly the bump I needed to push me over the hill.
“I can’t wait to see how it looks with that pantsuit I got you from Sachs...” She jumped to her feet excitedly. “In fact, I’ll go get it—you need to try it on right now!”
She leapt up from the counter, leaving the bag of cookies behind her as she headed for my closet. I beamed to myself, flipping my new fiery locks as I reached into the bag myself.
Then all at once, I pulled back my hand. My face hardened like burnt steel as I picked it up and tugged open our third story window...
...and dropped the bag of Oreos outside.