Page 5 of The Bridges I've Burned

I tried to think back. There was champagne, and did he have a cat? “I’m not even sure I remember, to be honest.”

More silence filled the air.

“I rest my case.”

I threw my keys on the table the second the front door shut behind me. Wine was calling my name, and I didn’t want to waste another second thinking about my shit date and his shit memory.

I’d bought this apartment a few years ago after my first big bonus. It was an old warehouse-style building with high ceilings and brick walls. Buying it had made me feel like a grown-ass woman, but now, walking around the cavernous space, I just felt…

Empty.

I could never fault Marin for finding happiness in North Carolina, but she’d been my person.

My best friend, my sister-in-law, and my grieving partner.

When my brother had died in a ferry accident six years ago, we’d clung to one another. She’d lost a spouse, I’d lost a sibling, and we’d leaned on each other in a major way.

And now, she was gone, too.

Not gone, I tried to remind myself.

Marin was getting married, and tomorrow, I would be traveling to the small island she and her fiancé called home and be by her side through all of it.

Every single minute.

All three weeks of them.

Jesus.

This Friday was Macon and Marin’s engagement party, and the wedding would follow three weeks after. Why so close together?

Why the hell not?

They’d originally planned on a fall wedding with the engagement party a couple of months earlier in the summer. But when the two crazy lovebirds couldn’t wait any longer, they just decided to move everything up and have it all together.

Personally, I think the whole thing was arranged just to force me to take a vacation, especially when the bride so expertly guilt-tripped me into it.

“I took a vacation last…” I tried to remember. Shit, when was the last one? “I’m planning one, I swear. I’m going to go to Paris.”

I could practically hear the eye roll.

“You’ve been saying that forever.”

“I’m trying to learn French. It takes time,” I argued.

She let out a sigh. “Like. the whole language? For a vacation?”

“No, just for fun,” I told her. “It’s a hobby.”

“All right, then enlighten me. Say something right now. In French.”

I let out an aggravated groan, and she laughed, knowing she’d caught me. I was pretty sure that the language app on my phone had uninstalled itself from lack of use.

“Years, Elena. It’s been years since you took a proper vacation. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Not since Daniel…

“I’ve been busy,” I deflected.

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