Page 6 of Hot Shot

“Technically, nothing was mine, so I took whatever the fuck I wanted.” The glug of whiskey doesn’t even make my face scrunch up, thanks to the fact that I’m very, very drunk. This is further impressed upon me when I stand up, listing a little on my way to her side.

I rummage around in the bin, pulling out a small throw pillow that saysBest Girlfriend Ever.

Holding it up for Jessa, I cock an eyebrow. “Seriously. He got this for me for Valentine’s one year.”

I throw the HomeGoods reject into the fire with enough force that the logs topple, sending a plume of fire and embers up to the heavens. I’m already elbow deep in the bin again.

“He meant well,” she answers.

“His intentions don’t mean shit tonight.” Wadded up Oxford sweatshirt in my hand, I line up and shoot it smack into the middle of the fire.

He really did mean well. My sweet, kind, lying ex liked me not working, not for any misogynistic reason, but a practical one—we loved to travel and a teacher’s schedule isn’t conducive to spending Novembers in Mallorca. He has a classic, Ivy League, Chad sort of job at his father’s company, working in hedge fund investment property high yield whatevers, which was part time at best. He could leave whenever he wanted, which left me curious as to how he could manage any accounts. Because I think he had accounts? I never was sure. But I was left alone alot to do whatever I wanted, which most of the time was nothing. I had no real friends to speak of, and while Jessa would come visit or I’d go see her, I otherwise had nothing to do outside of spa days and Pilates and cooking and lots and lots of reality TV. I can’t deny that it was fun to lay around like a hoss cat and get manicures for the six years in Boston after college, even if it did get tedious. We traveled. We went out. It was fine.

That really sums up Davis and me.

Fine.

So when he dumped me at the altar for the best man, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I didn’t have anything to do. My whole life revolved around him, and I lost myself somewhere in the shuffle. Didn’t think I’d move back to my hometown. Didn’t think I’d be living with my mother at twenty-nine either, but life was full of fun little surprises like that.

I learned the lesson just when I thought I had it all figured out.

The universe is sorude.

Davis thought he could have it all—me as the little wife and Henry as his side piece. And why not? For ten years, he fooled me, and I lived with the son of a bitch. His family was none the wiser, and if it had gone to plan, they would have been satisfied and his inheritance secured by way of his bullshit union to me. He’d have his cake and eat it. Really, he thought of everything.

Guess the only thing he didn’t consider was me.

Jessa unfolds the flaps of a box and peers inside. “This one’s all books. Should we toss the whole thing on?”

I gape. “How dare you suggest such a thing, Jessamine Hastings.”

She rolls her eyes. “They’re Davis’s finance textbooks.”

“Oh. In that case—burn, baby. Burn.”

We giggle, taking his stupid schoolbooks in arm to tear out the pages and toss them into the fire, watching the flames eat them up.

God, it’s so satisfying.

See? I’m coping. It’s been weeks since it all fell apart, and I know exactly how I feel—I’m hurt and I’m sad and I’m fuckingpissedthat he lied to me for so long. He let me live in that lie right along with him. And when put to the screws, he discarded me.

I still haven’t acknowledged the sliver of relief beneath the pain of his betrayal and my heartache.

At least I found out before it was too late.

“Did you leave anything at the apartment that wasn’t nailed down?” she asks, ripping out a handful of pages to feed the hungry fire.

“He was onmyhoneymoon withHenry. I left the place looking like a Whoville house on Christmas Eve. Not even a crumb for a motherfucking mouse.” I close one eye so I can watch the fire dance and sway and destroy without seeing double. It’s true—my cousin Remy and I drove the Audi Davis bought me to the apartment Davis paid for and filled up a U-Haul with everything we could carry, all of which was paid for by—you guessed it—Davis. “I think I have some dishes in here. Those should be fun to smash.”

Inspired, I go digging for them, dumping over boxes until I find the one I’m looking for.

If we want to get technical, ownership is Davis’s. I purchased the dishes—and most everything in the pile of boxes—with a credit card under his social security number. ButIstill picked them out. I picked all this shit out. This is all I have left, and none of it is mine.

It was so much fun jet-setting around the world with my rich boyfriend, I didn’t realize that over the course of the last ten years, I’d lost myself little by little, bit by bit.

Not until he was gone.

I pick up a dish and throw it into the bonfire. The pitch of the crash it makes sounds like victory.

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