Cosy
The whole scene at the hotel plays over and over again in my head all the way home. As soon as I walk through the door to my apartment, I burst into tears. My girlfriend status didn’t even last twenty-four hours. I was fine not getting serious with anyone until he came along and made me believe I could have more. Now my heart is shattered, and I’m doomed to a solitary existence.
“Cosy? Are you okay?” Nev’s slippered feet appear in my vision. They’re blurry thanks to all the tears.
I sniff and drag the back of my hand under my nose, which is a terrible idea since it leaves a snail-like trail behind. “I’m fantastic.”
“So, these are tears of joy?” She puffs on her e-cigarette. This one smells like cinnamon. Sometimes I wish I were a smoker so I could have a vice.
“Absolutely.” I peel myself off the floor and throw myself at my sister, sobbing into her shoulder.
She pats me on the back. “I have weed if you want to get high and talk about it. Oh, and I think there are a few of those gross coolers you like in the fridge. I saved those for you.”
Leave it to my sister to offer drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism for heartbreak. “I’ll pass on the weed, but the coolers sound like a good idea. What time is it?”
“Ten thirty.”
“Close enough to eleven.”
She puts her arm around my shoulder and leads me down the hall toward the living room. “Those coolers have at least five percent fruit juice, so it’s almost like a breakfast food. Come tell your big sis what that stupid man-boy did to make you cry.”
I flop down on the couch. “How did you know it was about Griffin?”
“Lucky guess. You’re not a big crier and usually it’s over losing your heart to someone. So, what did the bastard do?” She opens the fridge and almost climbs inside to retrieve a cooler for me.
“He has a pregnant ex-fiancée.”
She smacks her head on the freezer door on her way back up. “Ow! Say what now?”
“He has a baby mama.”
“Wow. How the hell did you find that out?”
“She showed up at the hotel this morning, right after Griffin offered to get me an internship in New York.”
She passes me the bottle with the cap still on. “Wait. That doesn’t even make any sense. Why would he offer to set you up with an internship if he has a baby on the way? Unless he’s a psycho.”
“He said he didn’t know about the baby until today.” I try to use the side of the coffee table to get the cap off like Nev always does, but all I do is chip off a chunk of wood.
“Here, let me do that before you break it.” She takes the bottle, caps it with one solid tap and hands it back to me. “How pregnant is she?”
“Really pregnant. Like there’s - a - basketball - attached - to - the - front - of - her - body pregnant. The not-knowing part I might be able to understand, but they couldn’t have been broken up all that long when he started dating me. And he didn’t even tell me about her. Then there’s the fact that he slept with you, probably right after they broke up. With my luck, he’s a serial killer too.”
“I find that unlikely. Oh and by the way, I forgot to tell you, I didn’t sleep with Griffin.”
I give her a look. “Don’t make jokes right now, Nev. I’m not in the mood.”
“I’m not joking. I hit on him, and we did some shots. He was super shitfaced. Like he could barely string words together. He said he was going to sleep off his drunk in his car, so of course, I wanted to see it, you know? I mean, he looks like money with the way he dresses, am I right?”
“You’re right.” I’m annoyed that my sister is taking forever to get to the damn point, but then that’s Nev.
“So we get outside, and his car was on my bang bucket list, so I figure I might as well get the check mark even if he was super hammered and his performance was probably going to suck.”
“Can we move this story along, please?” I take a very long draught from my bottle, effectively consuming half the contents in one gulp.
“Right. Yeah. So I asked if I could sit in his car with him, and he said, sure, but he was going to take a nap. I tried to kiss him, but he told me he needed to pee and that he thought he left his credit card in the bar, then he passed out cold. I tried to wake him up, but he was like, done. Anyway, I was light on cash, so I borrowed some of his and I may have snagged his credit card from the bar.” She takes another drag from her e-cigarette and blows cinnamon smoke in the air.
“You stole his money and his credit card?” I’m not even that surprised, which says something about my sister, I realize.
“I borrowed it without the intention of giving it back, which isn’t the same as stealing. Besides, all I bought with the credit card was some snacks, a carton of smokes, and a pizza. Guy drives a car that costs as much as a house around here; he wouldn’t even notice the money is missing.”
“Jesus, Nev.” I’m still trying to understand how borrowing without the intention of giving back is any different than stealing, but then, my sister’s rationale for things isn’t always logical.
“It was a bad night. What can I say?”
“Not much, I guess. It’s not like it changes anything. He still kept things from me and now has a pregnant ex-fiancée, who incidentally looks like the exact kind of woman who belongs on his arm. Even preggers, that bitch was gorgeous.”
“Well, that sucks. Maybe their beautiful genetics will create a monster of a child.”
“One can only hope.”
After a few minutes of silence in which Nev surrounds me with a cloud of cinnamon vape smoke, she pats my leg. “I guess it’s better this way, huh?”
“Better that Griffin has a gorgeous, pregnant ex-fiancée, as opposed to what?”
“As opposed to you getting all starry-eyed over him, and then he dumps you when he goes back to New York or wherever for some pencil skirt–wearing tightass who thinks diamonds make the world go around.”
“Yeah. So glad I didn’t get starry-eyed over him.” Obviously I’m being sarcastic, since I was totally falling for him.
“See, there’s always a silver lining.” She shifts on the couch and pulls a granola bar from between the cushions. “I was looking for this!”
I’m on my third cooler and realize I already have a headache. What’s worse is that I know it’s Griffin’s fault for all the sparkles and glamour he threw at me, and expensive alcohol. He was so right about the hangover not being as bad as long as I avoid the sugary cheap crap. But since that’s all I can afford, I send Nev out on a shopping trip.
I must be drunk, because I give Nev my wallet and tell her to buy whatever helps with getting over a guy with a baby mama. She’s gone for a while. Long enough that I polish off the last horrible cooler and text her to see if I have enough money to buy a bottle of Cristal.
She texts back to tell me she’ll see what she can do.
I get bored enough that I try her e-cigarette and almost cough up half a lung.
Then I start checking my other messages. It’s a bad idea, obviously, but good decisions don’t get made when drunk. I have a lot from Griffin requesting that I call him, asking if I’m okay, to please understand that he didn’t know about Imogen being pregnant.
She even has a stupid posh name, and I have a weird one that everyone thinks is a joke. I hate her even more now. I toss my phone on the coffee table and watch it light up every few minutes. Mostly it’s Griffin.
I don’t know how long my sister is gone, but it’s definitely a while. When she finally returns, she’s laden down with bags.
“Did you rob a store?” I hold the door open so she doesn’t have to struggle as much.
“I didn’t have to. Why didn’t you tell me you got a new credit card? I think I used it five times and it never got declined.” She has to walk sideways down the hall in order to avoid slamming into the walls.
“What’re you talking about?” I follow after her, suddenly panicked that she’s gone on a shopping spree I can’t afford.
She drops the bags on the counter with a metallic-slash-glass clang and clink, so she can pull my wallet from her back pocket. Flipping it open, she slides a black card out and slaps it on the counter. “This one.”
I pick it up. It looks brand new. And it has my name on it. “I’ve never seen it before.”
She makes a face and then it lights up with excitement. “Maybe he snuck it into your wallet without you knowing. Oh my God. How awesome is that? We should find out the limit, and you can charge a new car to it before he remembers to cancel it.”
“How much did you spend?”
“I’m not really sure.” She pulls out a bottle of Cristal, but the label is a different color than the stuff Griffin usually gets. Still, it has to be expensive.
“I need to cut this up.” I start rooting around in the drawer for a pair of scissors, so Nev does what she deems logical and swipes the card from the counter.
I try to wrestle her to get it back, but I’m drunk and she’s not. I’m forced to give up when she stuffs it down the front of her pants. Also, the intercom buzz goes off, signaling a visitor. “Are you expecting someone?”
“No. Are you?”
“No.”
We have a seven-second stare down before she pushes me out of the way and hightails it down the hall. She slams her palm on the button to let the random stranger in.
“If that’s a psycho killer, it’s on you,” I yell.
“That’s cool. I’m on it.”
An eternity later, there’s a knock at the door. My gut tells me who it is before they even have a chance to knock. I nudge my sister out of the way and press my eye against the peephole. On the other side of the door is Griffin. He’s changed since this morning, replacing his expensive suit with that stupid freaking band shirt from our first date and a pair of jeans. Such a fraud. How stupid does he think I am?
“Cosy? Please let me explain.” He bangs his head against the door a couple of times. His theatrics are epic.
I throw open the door and am completely unprepared to deal with the three-dimensional version of this man. My heart hurts so much, I’m worried I might actually be having some kind of episode. “There is literally nothing to explain, Griffin. You have an ex-fiancée, who you failed to mention. You couldn’t have been broken up for more than a handful of weeks when you asked me out. You took my V-card and acted like it was some big fucking deal when really, you’d already impregnated some worthy opponent with your superior spawn. Does that sum it the fuck up?”
“I don’t love her.”
“You must have liked her well enough to put a ring on her finger and stick your dick in her, though.”
“We haven’t been together for months. I don’t want her back.”
“How many months?”
He looks at the floor when he answers. “Almost six.”
My stomach rolls uncomfortably with that horrible truth. “And we’ve been seeing each other for nearly four of those. How awesome for me that I get to be the rebound.”
“You’re not a rebound, Cosy.”
“You were with her for four years, Griffin. I am most definitely the rebound.” I rub my temples, the throb growing exponentially.
“Just let me explain.”
I turn away from him, trying to inject some steel into my spine. I will not break down while he’s here. “Fine. Explain, but when you’re done, you’re going to erase my number from your phone and you’re not going to contact me again, because it doesn’t matter what you tell me, Griffin, I don’t want your toxicity tainting my life anymore.”
“Cosy.” His fingers brush my arm.
I whirl and shove him back. He stumbles, caught off guard. “You do not get to touch me. You lost that right when you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie.”
“You had a fucking fiancée weeks before we started seeing each other.”
“It was over long before that.”
“Except she’s having your baby, so that’s a bit of a complication, don’t you think, Griffin?” Now that we’re in the living room, I can at least keep some much-needed distance between us.
Nev slings her purse over her shoulder while glaring at Griffin. She gives my hand a squeeze. “I’m going to go for a walk. Call me if you need me to come back and help you get rid of the body.”
“Thanks, Nev.” I hold out my hand. She sighs and fishes the credit card out of her shorts, slapping it into my waiting palm.
“You’re an asshole,” she says to Griffin as she passes him. “I should’ve racked that card up to its limit while I had the chance.” And with that, she storms down the hall and slams the apartment door behind her.
Leaving me alone with the man who’s already torn my heart out. Now he’s going to eviscerate it.