Page 167 of Come Apart
Chapter Thirty-Three
Alyssa shoves me onto the kitchen counter. I have no clue what's going through her head—if she hates me, if she's convinced I don't deserve a second chance—but she's here in my apartment.
It's something. She scans my freezer. "How is it possible you don't own a single bag of peas?"
"I outgrew peas almost twenty years ago."
She gives me side eye.
"You should have planned this better. Kept an ice pack on hand at the least."
"There's always next time."
She looks at me like I'm ridiculous. Then she slips back into her stoic facade.
She settles on a bag of frozen blueberries and moves towards me.
"He looks worse, right?" I ask.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-six."
"That's what I thought, but I figured I must have it wrong. Because there's no way a twenty-six-year-old man, a lawyer, would get into a fistfight at his office."
"You'd be surprised."
"Clearly."
She presses the bag of blueberries to my eyes. It stings, but it's nothing compared to the hole in my gut from her being away.
"He was insulting you," I say.
She shakes her head. "Uh-huh."
"Implying that you're some kind of harlot."
"Some really current slang there."
"He called you a slut," I try.
"I've been called worse."
"Maybe. But he went on about how you were using me. How you were already bored of me."
She raises a brow at that.
"And you believed him?"
"No. But the thought stung a lot worse than this black eye does."
She gives me a disbelieving look. "God, what the hell am I going to do with you? You hit him because he called your girlfriend a slut?"
"I hit him because he deserved it," I say. "And maybe I hate that he ever mattered to you."
She runs her fingers along my neck, sighing. "Not like you do."
"But really, he looked awful, right?"
