one
Cheater, Cheater, Pad Thai Eater
My boyfriend is fucking my assistant.
Scratch that.
Myex-boyfriend is fucking myex-assistant.
On my couch.
In my apartment.
I snap my mouth shut, unable to look away. She’s bouncing on his lap making ridiculous porn star noises with her eyes closed tight. The sweet and spicy scent of pad thai from my favorite restaurant wafts up from the bag clutched tightly at my side.
Wonderful. Now this smell will be forever associated with the feeling of cold, immobilizing heartbreak.
Jason grunts, throwing back his head and tossing his wavy blond hair.
“Alexis.”
The sound of her name from his mouth yanks me out of shock. My pumps click as I take two tentative steps forward.
“I’m home,” I say, because what the fuck else do you say when you find your boyfriend cheating on you?
Ex-boyfriend.
I must not have been loud enough to overcome Alexis’s very obviously fake orgasm because neither of them stops. He’s not even touching her clit. That thought surges through me and lights a fire of anger. It’s not the fact that he’s cheating, not their betrayal, but that he doesn’t even have the decency to fuck her right. Not as if he ever fuckedmeright, either.
That fire powers my body like a steam engine. My heart thunders so loud it drowns out the movie blaring on the TV. I take two more determined steps, then flick on the dining room light.
“Hi, honey, I’m home!” I say much louder, my chest aching from tight fury radiating heat.
“Oh, fuck!” Jason shouts as he shoves Alexis off his lap.
She shrieks as she falls back, her head hitting the coffee table with a loudthunk. She doesn’t get up from where she falls on the dark, artsy rug. Is she dead? Part of me hopes so, but probably not.
Jason comes running around the couch, a pillow pinned to his hips as if I’ve never seen him naked before. “Syl, baby, you—I’m sorry, it wasn’t—”
“Stop right there,” I say, holding up the takeout bag. “Unless you want third-degree pad thai burns on your dick.”
He swallows hard. “I can explain.”
Despite the inferno thrumming through my veins, I’m so collected on the outside I feel like a robot. “Don’t bother. Pack your shit and be out of here by tomorrow night.”
His nostrils flare and he stands upright. “You can’t just—”
“This ismyapartment.”
“Where am I supposed to go?” he practically whines, his face flushed red.
I snort at how pathetic he sounds. I feel like I’m seeing a side of him I’ve never seen before. No—that I pointedly ignored because I thought I was in love with him.
“Maybe Alexis has a spare room for you. I pay her well enough.”
Jason shrinks a little. “Baby, please. Let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say, despite having a hundred thousand more words I want to hurl at him along with the pad thai. The image of him screaming in pain, searing noodles clinging to his junk like an octopus as I berate him, sends a thrill through me.
