Page 56 of About Last Night

The door to the break room opens and Willa peeks her head in. One look at us and she huffs. “You aren’t changed yet? I’ve somehow convinced Greta to sing karaoke at Dewey’s. We need to go before she changes her mind.”

“Hell, yeah we do,” Toni says. She grabs her clothes and follows Willa out the door without looking at me.

I watch the door close behind her and wonder what the hell I’m going to do now.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

TONI

Try as I might, I can’t get Shae’s jab out of my mind.

In a month or so, when you get bored with this loser…

I know Shae is a douchebag and said that to wind me up, but I didn’t need to be reminded that Audrey is out of my league.

“Toni, help me get the next round.” Greta grabs my arm and pulls me to the bar.

I knew it was only a matter of time before Greta got me alone. Max sees us coming and her eyes light up in the very uncharacteristic way they do when Max sees Greta. Max is pulling our beers out of the cooler before we order. In a move honed over years of bartending at her parents’ bar before opening this one.

“Only three, Max. Topo Chico for me,” Greta says. “I’m driving to Aspen tonight. One beer is my limit.”

“Cool. You can be my DD,” I say.

“The more things change,” Greta says.

Max opens three beers in quick succession. Greta slides one towards me.

“Audrey really undersold how toxic Shae is.”

“You can hardly blame her,” I say.

“Did you have any idea?”

“An inkling from a couple of things she said that night, but it was so much worse than I expected.” I take a long pull of my beer. God, it tastes good.

Max puts her forearms on the bar and leans in.

“Look, I know the chances of you listening to me are slim,” Greta says.

“What? That’s not true, I listen to you.”

Greta rolls her eyes and tries to hand her credit card to Max, who waves it away.

“I’ll be right back,” Max says before walking off to serve other customers.

“Be careful, Toni. I like Audrey a lot. But we just got a glimpse of the relationship she’s getting out of and you do not want to get in the middle of that right now. Audrey needs time to recover from what sounds, and looked, like an emotionally abusive relationship.”

“Yeah, I told her that too. She denied it.”

“Denied she needed time or denied it was abusive?”

“The second. Well, both, really.”

Greta’s eyebrows rise, waiting for me to elaborate. No way I’m telling her Audrey kissed me in the break room. She pours her Topo Chico into the glass of ice and squeezes the lime in it. I can see in her eyes that she’s processing everything. She sips the fizzy mineral water out of the tiny brown stirring straw, and puts down the glass.

“It would be hard for someone like Audrey to admit to themselves that they’ve been so thoroughly manipulated, and by someone they cared about.”

“Yeah, probably,” I say.

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