Page 1 of The Spice Play

Chapter 1

Nelly

With a half-empty margarita in my hand that was missing far too much of its salt, I stared down at my phone and the Instagram post that filled its screen.

A rock sunk into the pit of my stomach.

The bar's low hum faded away as the news sank in. I felt the urge to run, to leave my drink and bolt before Rosie came back with our second round. The feeling gnawed at me, making my legs twitch.

Morris was getting married.

It shouldn’t have bothered me. At least, not in the way that itdid. But despite how awful of a person he was, it wasn’t exactly enjoyable to learn that my ex-fiancé was marrying my ex-best friend. It didn’t help close up any of those old wounds that had been taking their damn sweet time to heal. If anything, it tore at a handful of carefully placed stitches.

“Hello? Earth to Nelly.”

Pastel yellow nails waved between my phone and my face, dragging my attention away from the horrors on myscreen. Rosie stood at the edge of the booth’s table, one hand on her hip, her dark, dyed red hair hanging over one shoulder as she stared at me with an uncompromising, flat expression.

“I spoke to you like five times. My card’s not working,” she said, her brows creasing as her gaze dropped lower to the image up on my screen. “Who’s that?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I powered off the screen and reached into my purse, searching blindly for my wallet. “What’s wrong with your card?”

“Think the bank put another hold on it. I need to call them, but the bartender already made our drinks and is getting annoyed with me for not paying. I can pay you back.”

I plopped my wallet into her waiting hand. “More late-night ordering from random Japanese sites flag it up again?”

Rosie’s nose scrunched up as her lips pursed together, her fingers closing around the black leather. “You know, when you say it like that, it makes me feel like you think I should be ashamed.”

“There’s only so many times I can feel bad for you being scammed.”

She scoffed and turned on her heel, returning to the bar as she thumbed through my wallet.

The temptation to unlock my phone and look at literallyanythingother than what I’d seen, purely to take my mind off it as I sat there alone with nothing but my thoughts, was maddening — but I’d shut off the screen with the image still up. I’d have to look at it the moment it recognized my face.

Morris was one of those men who wormed their way into your heart when they had no good reason to. He wasn’t a great partner, he wasn’t some walking, talkinggodthat made every woman stop and stare, he wasn’t some princecharming that had swooped in at the right place and right time to whisk me off my feet. But hewassomeone I’d given five years of my life to, from the moment we met my freshman year of college until days after my twenty-third birthday. He was someone I grew with, someone Ilearnedwith, and in the two years that had passed since we’d broken off our engagement, I’d had to repair myself brick by brick.

And Ruby’s engagement to him felt like someone had just slammed a giant wrecking ball against all the hard work I’d done.

“You can’t bethatsour about me using your card. I said I’d pay you back,” Rosie said, her words breaking through the building storm in my head. She hoisted herself back into the raised booth after setting my second margarita in front of me, her fingers wrapped tight around a Long Island iced tea. She plopped my wallet back onto the table between us, the leather sticking to the epoxy atop the myriad of different printed images of newspapers.

“It’s fine.”

She rolled her eyes and placed her hand over my phone instead, dragging it back to her with a squeaking sound as my phone case rubbed against the tabletop. Across the bar, a group of men erupted into a fit of cheers, and the large screen played a slow-motion replay of someone scoring a touchdown from a million different angles. It snagged my attention just long enough for her to swipe open my phone and type in my password.

“Rosie…”

“Jesus,” she breathed, the sound barely cutting through the noise of Smokey’s Bar. The light of my phone screen lit her face and reflected off her red curls, and all I could manage was a sigh. “Why didn’t you say that Morris was engaged?”

“Because I’m still processing it.”

“Wait, is that…” With her thumb and index finger on the screen, she spread them, zooming in. “Oh my God, that’s Ruby, right?”

I nodded. Rosie had met both of them briefly before I’d called everything off — I’d only just started working for her in the last few months of our relationship, and since then, we’d grown increasingly close. She knew pretty much everything about me and Morris and what had gone down. She’d helped me pick up the pieces when I was still just a fresh face at her nannying business.

“Do you want me to kneecap him?” Her lips wrapped around her straw innocently as she passed my phone back, blinking as if she hadn’t said something utterly deranged.

“No, but thanks for the offer,” I chuckled half-heartedly. “It just feels a bit like a stab in the chest, you know?”

“Understandable. He’s a fucking asshole.”

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