I was trying to move forward. That was what this whole trip home was about. Moving the fuck forward. Getting away from all the bullshit I left behind in San Diego and trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do now. I was a woman who went from having everything to nothing. Colin had no right to judge me, nor did he have any right to assume he knew anything about me.
Tears began trickling down my face as my chest heaved with broken breaths.
“What now?” he asked.
“You’re just so insensitive!” I exclaimed.
I could tell my outburst got his attention as he whipped his head over toward me.
“You sit there in your expensive suit and your tailored coat and your genuine leather driving gloves and you assume you know everything about me, but you don’t know a damn thing, Colin. You think my happiness and my Christmas spirit are naive and traditional of some bubble-headed teenage girl, but you don’t have the first damn clue as to why it’s the only thing I have to grasp onto right now.”
Wiping at the tears falling from my eyes, I felt the dam burst. Tears rolled down my cheeks as my hands trembled, and soon, the car was filled with nothing but my sobs.
“You have no idea how hard things have been for me,” I said, sniffling. “You don’t have the slightest clue as to what this year has thrown into my lap. All I have is a negative account balance, a tanking credit score, and a bedroom at my parents’ house until I can figure out where the hell my life is going from here, and you sit there, accusing me of not understanding. Well you know what? I’m not the only one sitting in this car who doesn’t fucking get it.”
“Look,” he began. “I didn’t have to give you this ride. I didn’t have to let you stay with me. I didn’t have to keep you safe, and I didn’t have to feed you anything. But I did.”
“I get that,” I said.
“I also didn’t have to tell you about some nonexistent, perfect Christmas or even about my father, but I did,” he said.
“Yes, I know, but—”
“So, unless those tears are accompanying some sort of story you’re about to spill into my lap that forces me to see you in a new light, you can tuck them away and save them for another day of manipulation.”
“Fine, you want a story?” I asked. “I’ll give you one. I told you my boyfriend was a cheat, right?”
“Yep.”
“Did I tell you he cheated on me with my best friend before clearing out my savings account?”
I looked over at him with my reddened stare, and I could tell he was in shock.
“Yeah,” I said. “Forty thousand dollars gone in the blink of an eye. I’m sure that’s just pocket change to you, but it was a savings account I’d grown diligently since college. We were together three solid years. Three! We talked about children and buying a house. Hell, we even went house-shopping the day before I figured out he was fucking my best friend. Who also happened to be my roommate, mind you.”
“Abby, I’m so—”
“Save the apologies,” I said flatly. “At the beginning of November, I found him and her, just splayed out on the couch in our apartment. They looked like they were having the time of their lives. Let me tell you. Didn’t even realize I’d walked in until I called their names. I had to get over the cries of them calling each other’s names before they heard me.”
I could feel his gaze on me while his stone-cold stare slipped into one of pity. I hated it when people pitied me.
“I told my roommate to choose,” I said. “She couldn’t live with me and screw him, so she chose. She packed up her stuff and was gone two days later. Just like that. I met her in college, Colin. We weathered freshman year together. We got initiated into the same damn sorority. Sisters! We were supposed to be sisters. And of course, my stupid, naive self forgot my ex was attached to my bank accounts. Why? Because we were talking about getting married and buying a damn house. That’s why. He drained my savings and took everything I had with him, and he left me with nothing. No way to pay rent. No way to eat. No way to recover.”
“You didn’t have a job that could help you get back onto your feet?” Colin asked.
“Until four weeks ago, I did,” I said. “My landlord wasn’t budging on the rent issue, and I had credit card payments I was defaulting on, so I got desperate. I pawned Christmas gifts I got people just to be able to pay off the balance on the credit card, only to realize my landlord didn’t take credit card payments for rent. I got fired from my job four weeks ago. I couldn’t find another job in my field, and my asshole landlord handed me my eviction notice two weeks ago.”
“That doesn’t even sound remotely right,” he said. “What do—did—you do for work?”
“First off, once you default on a single rent payment, it’s up to the landlord what he or she chooses to do,” I said. “He chose to evict me. And second, I was a celebrity publicist. I’d just been promoted, actually. To the manager of the entire department. Wanna know what got me fired?”
“What?”
“Fact-checking. Lack of it, to be exact. I trusted one of my writers to fact-check a very serious story he was running on someone, and instead of going back behind him, I trusted him. We ran the story. It exploded until the celebrity’s P.R. person called my desk, and within five minutes, I was able to tank the story we’d
