Page 21 of Unstoppable You

I could spend the rest of the night with my books, but instead I threw on a cute fit and called a car to take me to Sapph. I needed to kiss someone pretty, even if it could never be Delaney. There were plenty of blondes at Sapph and my eyes would be closed anyway. Yeah, that was what I wanted to do tonight.

So I did.

Chapter Nine

Delaney

“What wasthat?”Larison asked me after Delaney left, weighed down with enough books to crush a small car.

There was a lull in customer traffic, so we had a moment to take a breather before the last rush of the evening. I wondered if James had come in to see me on purpose or if she had just come in on a whim. I didn’t like to consider that she knew my schedule, but she might have. James was detail-oriented like that. She’d always been that way, even when we were kids. If you ever got assigned to do a group project with her, she’d automatically grab a pen and start delegating. I was actually surprised she wasn’t in a field where she could be in control. Where she could have dozens of underlings doing her bidding at her beck and call.

“That was nothing,” I said to Larison, giving her a look that made her smirk.

“Didn’t look like nothing,” she said, replacing the tape in the receipt printer.

“Well, it was,” I told her, moving from behind the register to rearrange one of the new release displays that had gotten jumbled up.

“Hmmm,” Larison said, loud enough for me to hear. I couldn’t give her anything or else she was going tothinkit was a thing. And it wasn’t. Just my former bully who had recently apologized to me buying some books at the shop that I worked at. No big. Sure, I’d wanted to throw the books in her face when I’d first seen her, but we got through it with minimal animosity on my side.

She probably thought I’d softened to her after the impromptu brunch, but that had only been pity on my part. Just being nice to her in that moment. One brunch didn’t change everything. I wasn’t letting her off that easy.

No doubt my parents would say I was being petty, but they were always too nice, and that had gotten them into trouble before. There were lots of awful people out there who would take advantage of kindness, and I’d seen it firsthand. There was a time and a place to be kind, and there was a time and a place to be smart and protect yourself.

Fine, let James come into the bookshop and buy a few things, let her come to book club, but I wasn’t inviting her to my birthday party.

Larison kept acting like she wanted to bring up the James situation again while we finished out the day and closed down.

“Thanks for covering for Holiday. I know we both appreciate it.” The other part-time employee, Holiday, was on a little trip with her girlfriend Danny this weekend.

Everywhere I looked, I was surrounded by happy couples and it was hard not to let it get to me. Even when I’d been with Connor, though, I’d still felt like things were different for me. Not once in four years of being together had he ever brought me flowers or showed up at my work to say hello, or anything like that. He’d never once planned anything for our anniversary, and I’d had to constantly remind him when it was so he wouldn’t forget.

And even then, he still forgot. But it “shouldn’t matter” and “anniversaries are bullshit made up by card companies.”

“You okay?” Larison asked.

“Yeah, great. Ready to start my weekend.” I gave her my sunniest smile.

“Doing anything fun?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. I’m going to be a wreck on Monday,” I lied. I didn’t have any plans. Well, any plans that didn’t involve myself in my comfiest clothes and my couch and eating my weight in delivery tacos and reading a lot of books. But that sounded sad when you said it out loud.

“It’s nothing but work for me and Jo this weekend.” Since Jo had her classes during the week, she usually filled in and helped on weekends when she could.

“Juniper is going to an animal sanctuary with her grandparents and I’m so jealous,” she said with a sigh.

“Me too.” I wanted to go to the animal sanctuary. That sounded more fun than whatever I was going to come up with to do this weekend.

Why couldn’t I do something other than books and tacos? There was nothing stopping me. Sure, I’d be out by myself, but that was fine. Other people did things on their own all the time. Did I need a partner or friend to do something fun? Hell no.

Feeling empowered, I was walking home when I got a message from Connor.Fucking Connor.

Instead of ignoring and blocking, I did the wrong thing and opened the message.

Dick. Right there on my phone. Blurry Connor dick.

I screamed and dropped my phone, watching in slow motion as it slammed to the sidewalk in front of my apartment with a terrifying crack.

Fucking mother fucking HELL. I surveyed the damage and made sure it still functioned. Sort of. The pic was followed up by two more messages.

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