The Ex Page 13

  Except then she notices Anna is holding her coat.

  “You forgot your coat,” Anna says, holding it out to her. Now that Lydia isn’t with her, Anna seems much more innocuous. There’s something sweet about her heart-shaped face. Maybe it’s the impending motherhood. “I wouldn’t want you to catch a cold.”

  “Thank you,” Cassie mumbles as she yanks the coat out of Anna’s hands.

  Anna hesitates, chewing on her lip. “Don’t feel bad about the costume thing. It’s not that big a deal.”

  “Yes,” Cassie says tightly, “it was.”

  “Okay, fine,” Anna says. “It was… weird. I was shocked when I saw you. But in the scheme of things…”

  “Lydia told me to dress as Cleopatra.”

  Anna blinks, clearly thrown by this piece of information. “Oh…”

  “She wanted to humiliate me.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  Cassie lowers her eyes. “I’m not so sure.”

  “You have to understand.” Anna puts a hand on her round abdomen. “Lydia has nothing against you. She just hates seeing Joel with anyone besides Francesca. Lydia’s very loyal to people she cares about.”

  “I’ll say,” Cassie mutters.

  “It’s a good quality,” Anna says. “Except when it makes her act like a bitch.”

  Cassie looks at Anna in surprise. She thought Lydia and Anna were really tight, and she didn’t expect to hear Anna badmouthing her friend. But it oddly makes her feel a lot better about the whole thing.

  “Anyway,” Anna continues, “don’t concern yourself with Lydia. The whole world doesn’t revolve around her. You make Joel happy, and that’s good enough for me.”

  Cassie manages a smile. “Thanks. You didn’t see Joel, did you? He sort of disappeared the second we got to the party.”

  Anna throws her head back and laughs. “You don’t know? He and Pete got bored of the party, and they went to watch football in the bedroom. My husband’s probably in there too. Hell, half the men will be in there by the end of the night.”

  “Oh…”

  Anna raises an eyebrow. “Would you like me to get him for you?”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “You can come back to the party, you know,” Anna says. “If you lose the makeup and the crown, you can be… um, a brunette Marilyn Monroe.”

  Cassie laughs for the first time all evening. “If only I’d thought of that.”

  “Come on,” Anna says. “It’ll be fun. And I told Lydia she had to quit being a bitch. She’ll be nice to you now. Nicer. She’s never nice—I’ve given up on that one.”

  “I think…” Cassie pulls on her coat, grateful for the warmth. “I may head out, actually.”

  Anna’s face falls. “Well, okay. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Cassie looks at Anna and decides she means it.

  “You work at a bookstore, right?” Anna says. “Or… you own it?”

  Cassie nods. “A used bookstore.”

  Anna grins. “You got any books for freaked out mothers-to-be?”

  “I think we’ve got a few,” Cassie laughs. “I’d be happy to put some aside for you.”

  “That would be great.” Anna beams at Cassie. “I’m glad Joel started dating you. Not that I didn’t like Francesca, but… well, it’s nice to have someone new in our group, that’s all.”

  Anna rests a hand briefly on Cassie’s arm, then smiles and pulls away. There’s no way Cassie would consider going back to that party, but it’s good to know at least one of Joel’s friends’ wives is on her side.

  Chapter 26: The New Girl

  Cassie sleeps fitfully after the party, tossing and turning all through the night. She texted Joel that she wasn’t feeling well and decided to head home, and although he did call her to make sure she was okay, she was disappointed he didn’t ask to come over to check on her. They’ve been spending more and more nights together lately, and she finds she misses him on the nights they aren’t together. Joel even cleared out a drawer for her last week to fill with her stuff so she doesn’t have to feel as much like a nomad.

  Of course, then she wondered if the drawer used to belong to Francesca.

  At nine in the morning, Cassie is awakened by a text from Zoe. She fumbles for her phone, and stares blearily at the words on the screen. It takes a moment for her to make sense of it, but then she’s wide awake.

  The store has been trashed. Call me.

  Cassie grabs her phone off the nightstand and calls Zoe, her heart slamming in her chest. The store has been trashed. She imagines the rows of books, painstakingly arranged, mostly by Cassie but many by Grandma Bea and even Grandpa Marv, shredded and burned.

  “Zoe,” Cassie gasps into the phone. “What happened?”

  “The place is a mess,” Zoe says. “Books everywhere. Paint on the carpet. I called the cops.”

  “Shit,” Cassie breathes. “How’d they get in? Did they break the window?”

  Zoe is quiet for a moment. “That’s the crazy part. The windows weren’t broken. The lock wasn’t damaged. They just… got in.”

  Cassie shivers. She feels the same way she did when she found the writing on her door. Someone is targeting her. Someone who knows where she works. And where she lives. And now can somehow get into her store.

  “I’ll be right there,” she tells Zoe.

  She’s tempted to hop in a taxi to get there as fast as possible, but she’s thinking about the cost of getting the store cleaned up, so the last thing she should be doing is springing for a taxi. She doesn’t need any unexpected expenses right now.

  When Cassie arrives, the sight of the store makes her stomach turn. Just as Zoe described, there are books everywhere. Half the contents of the store have been ripped from the shelves. They are lying on the ground, pages ripped and bent. Cassie steps over volume after volume, a lump growing in her throat. She keeps walking until she gets to the spot where Grandpa Marv keeled over from a heart attack all those years ago. She looks up and sees the word scrawled in black ink on the back of the empty shelf:

  SLUT

  No. Not again.

  The police officer—this one named Rogers—had been taking a statement from Zoe when Cassie arrived. He looks just as young as the last one did—not even old enough to grow a beard yet. And he’s just as jaded and disinterested in finding the culprit.

  “Lots of break-ins in this neighborhood,” Officer Rogers says.

  Zoe is infuriated. Her entire face turns as pink as the streak she added to her hair a few weeks ago. Well, maybe not quite that pink. “But this wasn’t a break-in. There was no sign of forced entry.”

  Officer Rogers raises an eyebrow. “And you’re sure you didn’t leave the door unlocked?”

  “I did not!” Zoe says indignantly, although truth be told, a couple of times Cassie has arrived in the morning to find the door hadn’t been locked the night before. “They had a key!”

  “Well, who else has a copy of your key?” the officer asks them.

  “Nobody,” Cassie says. She looks at Zoe.

  “Nobody,” Zoe says. “Just the two of us.”

  Yet somebody must.

  “And look at what they wrote!” Zoe points at the word scrawled on the bookcase. “This is clearly a personal attack. It’s a judgment on our sexual habits.”

  Cassie doesn’t appreciate the tiny smile on the policeman’s lips at Zoe’s assertion.

  “Listen,” the officer says. “I’ve got all the information. We’ll do our best. But if you never gave out a copy of your key, I’m not sure how someone got in. My advice is to change the locks.”

  “Thanks a bunch, Officer Obvious,” Zoe grumbles.

  Cassie lifts her eyes and that’s when she sees her peering through the door to the bookstore. Maureen the Homeless Lady. Watching them. An unreadable expression on her filthy face.

  Cassie nudges Zoe. “Hey, Maureen is staring at us.”

  Zoe tosses a glance behind her shoulder. “Oh. What�
��you think she might have seen something?”

  “Maybe,” Cassie says. She averts her eyes from the door. “Or…”

  She doesn’t say what she’s thinking, which is that it always makes her uncomfortable to pass Maureen every morning. She doesn’t like the way Maureen looks at her and occasionally laughs at her. Surely it’s mental illness or possibly drugs, but it still makes Cassie uncomfortable.

  Zoe explains about Maureen to Officer Rogers, who obligingly goes out to talk to her. Cassie lingers at the entrance to the store, once again certain Maureen won’t have anything helpful to add. But not absolutely certain.

  “Ma’am,” Officer Rogers is saying to Maureen. “Did you seen anyone enter the bookstore during the night last night?”

  Maureen hugs her giant coat closer to her body. “Nope,” she says. “Didn’t see nobody!”

  And then she cackles hysterically.

  “But you were here all night, weren’t you?” the officer persists. “You must have seen something.”

  “I didn’t see nothing,” Maureen says with a smile.

  Officer Roger does what he can, but it’s obvious this crime won’t be solved today or ever, and definitely not with the help of Maureen. When he’s gone, Cassie gets that now familiar rush of relief every time a police officer leaves her store without snapping handcuffs on her. She had been right not to call the cops about the incident at her apartment—there’s nothing they can do.

  Cassie keeps the store closed the rest of the morning, while they try to clean up. It will take ages to get the books organized the way they were before, but they try to at least get the books back in the correct sections. As for the word “SLUT,” Zoe scribbles over it with permanent marker, but Cassie can still tell what it says.

  “I wonder if it’s my roommate,” Zoe muses as she toys with the new ring she just got in her lower lip last month. That one looks painful—but they all sort of look painful. “Lindsey totally could have swiped my key and copied it.”

  Cassie picks up a sports almanac from the ground. “I think it was aimed at me.”

  “You?” Zoe laughs. “You’re not a slut. You’re practically a nun. At least, before Joel.”

  Cassie shakes her head. “There was… another incident. At my apartment.”

  Zoe’s mouth falls open. “Seriously? What happened?”

  Cassie tells her about the paint on her door at home. And how it was the same paint smeared on the door to their shop the other day. Zoe’s eyes widen as she hears the story.

  “Holy crap,” she says. “Why would someone do that to you?”

  Cassie hesitates. “I have an idea, but… you promise you won’t say anything to Joel?”

  “Sure, of course.”

  Cassie sighs. “I think it could be Joel’s ex-girlfriend.”

  “You think so?” Zoe pulls a face. “Didn’t you say she was some sort of gorgeous successful chef or something? Why would she still be pining over him all these months later?”

  “I don’t know, but…” Cassie chews on her lip. “Joel acts really weird about it whenever I bring up her name. I really don’t want to start accusing her of anything to him.”

  She doesn’t say what she’s really afraid of, which is that Joel might take Francesca’s side.

  Before Zoe can say anything else, they’re interrupted by a rapping at the door. Cassie goes to tell their potential customer that they’re closed for the day, but then she sees Joel peering into the store. She suddenly remembers they agreed to have lunch together. Before.

  She opens the door for him after a beat of hesitation. His eyes widen as he takes in the disarray of the store. “Christ, what the hell happened here?”

  “We had a break-in,” Zoe says before Cassie can shush her.

  “Wow.” He looks around. “The vandals sure did a number on this place.”

  “I know.” Cassie’s shoulders sag. “It’s pretty bad.”

  “This neighborhood isn’t great,” Joel points out. “Lots of crime. You literally have a homeless woman living a few feet away from your store.”

  Cassie’s cheeks burn. It’s not like she chose this neighborhood. Back when Grandpa Marv’s parents opened the store, it was a fine neighborhood. Those were the exact words he always used. A fine neighborhood. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “Right, of course.” Joel frowns. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I know.” She nods, pushing away her frustration. “Anyway, it’s taking us forever to get it cleaned up.”

  Joel is looking at something. She doesn’t know what it is until she follows his gaze to the front desk. She isn’t sure how they missed it before, but the word “SLUT” is written on top of the desk, in the same black marker.

  “Jesus,” Joel says.

  “We’ll get it cleaned up,” Cassie says, ignoring the tears suddenly pricking at her eyes. “But lunch probably isn’t a good idea.”

  “I disagree,” he says. “If you’ve been dealing with this shit all morning, you need a break.”

  She just looks at him.

  “Come on,” he says. “If you come to lunch with me, I’ll help you guys clean up after we get back. I’ve got nothing to do this afternoon anyway.”

  “Your boyfriend is way too nice, Cassie,” Zoe says. “I think you should take him up on his offer.”

  Cassie looks around the store, at the mess still on the ground. It would be nice to take a break. And even nicer to have Joel’s help while they’re cleaning this up all afternoon.

  “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 27: The Ex

  I’d like to talk to you.

  I spend far too long staring at the text message from none other than Joel Broder. I haven’t exchanged words with him since that engineered meet-up at Starbucks. He’s been dating Olive for a while now, and I figured I was the last thing on his mind. But apparently, I’m wrong.

  I write back: Sure. When/where?

  He names a location in the city that will be convenient for me to get to after work. It’s a bar. He wants to have a drink with me. After all these months, he’s asking me out for a drink. This is a very good sign.

  I spend hours picking out just the right outfit. I’m not as pretty as Olive and definitely not as young, but I clean up good. I pick out a dark red skirt that shows off my legs and my favorite Wonderbra, and I sock away some makeup in my purse so I can touch up my face right before we meet. At the last second, I spot a gray hair in my right eyebrow, which freaks me out more than I’d like to admit. I had resigned myself to the sprinkling of gray hairs on my scalp that are now concealed by my color treatment. Do I need to start dyeing my eyebrows too?

  For now, I’ll take care of this with a tweezers. But I certainly can’t let my eyebrows continue sprouting gray hairs. I have to look my absolute best if I even want to try to compete with Olive.

  I wonder what happened with Olive. Did they break up? Or did he simply realize how much he misses me and is testing the waters?

  When I show up, Joel is already waiting at the bar, clutching a Guinness in his right hand. That’s his favorite beer. I still remember all those little details about him. His favorite beer is Guinness. His favorite song is “The Distance” by Cake. His favorite dessert is apple pie. Does Olive know those things about him? I doubt it.

  He’s got his phone out, and he’s typing something. There’s a smile playing on his lips. He looks… well, great. I hate to say dating Olive agrees with him, but something does. He’s wearing his green scrubs and his dark hair is tousled, but there’s something more youthful about him than I’ve seen in a long time. Years, maybe. He certainly doesn’t have any new gray eyebrow hairs sprouting.

  He looks so good. So good it makes my chest ache. This is why I haven’t been able to date. I can’t get this man out of my head.

  “Hi.” I wave excitedly as I approach the table. “How are you doing?”

  Joel lifts his eyes from his phone. The smile drops abruptly
off his lips, but then returns. But it’s a different kind of smile. Unreadable. “Hi.”

  He stands up, and suddenly, we’re hugging. My body is pressed against his, my face in his shoulder, and his arms are wrapped around me. I haven’t hugged Joel in so long, and it feels so damn good. It’s like the last eight months just melt away. I want to cling to him and never let go.

  “It’s good to see you again,” I whisper into his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” he breathes.

  When he finally pulls away, we both drop into our respective seats. He flashes that unreadable smile at me again. “How have you been?” he asks.

  “Good.” I signal the waiter for a drink. “How about you?”

  “Good,” he says. “Same old.”

  “Right,” I say. “And how’s the hospital?”

  “Good. The usual.”

  “Masterson still counseling all the old people about sex?”

  Joel flashes me a tired smile. “Yep.”

  God, it’s good to talk to him again. When we’re together, the conversation just flows. It’s like we’ve never been apart. It can’t be like this with him and Olive. It can’t.

  “I heard it’s going to snow this weekend,” I say.

  “Oh yeah?” Joel rubs at the back of his neck. “Wow. That’s crazy.”

  “Yeah, snow in November!”

  “Yeah…”

  I wonder if we’ll be living together again by Christmas. It’s not so bad living with Nonna, but there’s nothing like sharing a bed with the man you love. And one thing I can say for sure, now that I’m here with Joel, is that I still love him.

  The waitress deposits my beer on the table. I take a long swig and get a nice, warm feeling through my whole body. This will be a night I’m going to remember. I’m sure of it.

  “Listen.” Joel traces a line on the table with a stray droplet of beer. “The reason I asked you here tonight is…”

  I lift my eyes, my heart leaping in my chest. Here it is. The words I’ve been longing to hear. “Yes…”

  “It needs to stop.”