Page 115 of The Billionaire Is Back

Thankfully, I don’t have to answer that because our server trudges over with two more drinks on a tray. “Two old-fashioneds from the guy who looks like the guy in the rebootStar Trekmovies that I never got to see because I was too busy working to support my good-for-nothing ex-husband.”

“Yeah, I’ll drink to that,” Vera says. “Don’t make eye contact with him, though,” she warns before swallowing half the contents of the glass.

I wave at the guy who looks like Chris Pine’s lactose-intolerant frat-boy cousin, who, if I’m being honest, I would probably have gone home with a few years ago. But after Grady Barber, every other man looks like a pile of poo with dumb hair and stupid shoes. “Thank you! We like this kind!” I take a sip through the little straw and give him the thumbs-up. He nods and starts to get up. “Oh, shit, he’s coming over. Should we run?”

Vera barely even turns her head in his direction. “Nope. Not happening, Captain.”

He salutes us and sits back down.

“So, no text at all since you saw him yesterday?”

I am twenty-eight years old. Grady Barber has been inside of me. We have lived in a house together. And I’m still trying to prove to myself that life without him can be entertaining and fulfilling. I try to laugh, but it sounds like I’m coughing up a hairball. “Men! Can you believe it? Not even to check in.”

“What a dick,” she says under her breath as she watches me for a reaction.

I glare at her. Actually, I don’t think I can make my face move enough to glare at her, but I am not smiling. “Well, it’s only been twenty-seven hours. And I mean, I did tell him to give me space. Wait. Did I? Shit. I don’t remember. I wish he’d text me so I can tell him to give me space!”

“Yeah. What a dick.”

“Ohhhhh, come on…he’s not a dick.”

“I know that!” She polishes off her old-fashioned and starts chewing on an ice cube. “I’m just not sure how to play this! I want to support you?—”

“I know!”

“Because you’re my bestest, bestiest, most best friend in the entire world!”

“I know, and you’re mine! Forever and ever!” We reach out across the table to hold hands for a second before I go back to double fisting cocktails.

“But it feels like you guys will get back together, so I don’t want to be all,Well, it was obvious you guys would never work out, but hey, at least you gave it a shot!And then you’re back with him and you’ll be mad at me for saying that.”

“Wait, you never thought we’d work out?”

“What? Noooo, I’m just saying as a hypnothetical.” She reaches for the Sex on the Beach that I’m not drinking. “As a hypodermical. A humptydumptical. Why can’t I say the word?”

“Because you meant it for real because it’s what you believed all along.” I slap the tabletop, startling both of us. “You’re the one who told me to go for it with him in the first place, Vera!”

“What?! Did I? Yeah, that sounds like me.”

“If you hadn’t encouraged me to have fun in New York I wouldn’t be this miserable right now and for the rest of my entire life!”

“But hey!” She holds her hands up in the air, waiting for me to slap her a high ten. “At least you gave it a shot! Amiright?”

I keep shaking my head at her. Until I have to stop moving because I’m getting dizzy. I hold on to the edge of the table between us. Why do people do this? Come to bars to drink so they can prove to the world that they’renot miserable, when they can just stay home and bake things instead? It makes no sense to me. “I have to go. I should get back to the bakery to do a test run for the Shellibration cake.”

Vera’s face falls. I am certain that is her face falling and not my eyeballs losing the ability to view her face properly. “What? Now? Tonight? Come on, we’re having fun! You can’t work now.” I can tell she’s pulling out her phone under the table.

“Baking is exactly what I need to do right now.”

“But we haven’t even danced yet…” She glances down at her lap. “Right? We should dance!”

“Vera. You didn’t order what I asked you to order, did you?”

“I was going to order it in the morning.”

I scrub my face with my hand, the way Grady does sometimes, but without the sexy sound of his sexy palm scraping against his sexy facial hair. “I gave you a list and asked you to order everything three days ago. It was supposed to be in my kitchen this afternoon. You said you were there waiting for a delivery.”

“I was. I had something else delivered there this afternoon.”

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