Farrah thought one last fling with Blake would give her the closure she needed, but now her body craved him more than ever. It hungered for him to return, to fill her again, and when he wasn’t there, it turned its ire on her, torturing her with its insatiable neediness until she wanted to cry from frustration.
Her plan to fuck him out of her system, as Blake so succinctly put it, had hopelessly backfired.
But it wasn’t just her hormones. Farrah couldn’t stop thinking about the look on Blake’s face when she left. He tried to hide it, but she saw it clear as day: utter heartbreak. And even though he was the one who’d wronged her first, the sight wrenched her gut in a way it had no right doing.
“Farrah!” Kris’s voice shattered Farrah’s inner turmoil and caused her to jump.
As a result, Farrah knocked the half-empty glass closest to
her off the table with her elbow. She watched in horror as the glass tumbled toward the ground in slow motion, ready to splinter into a million pieces, before Courtney’s arm shot out and caught it at the last moment.
“All good.” She placed the now quarter-empty glass on the table. “Just a small spill.”
“Sorry.” The heat on Farrah’s cheeks intensified. She grabbed her napkin and was about to clean up her mess when their server swooped in.
“I’ll take care of it,” she assured the table.
“Sorry,” Farrah repeated.
“You never answered my question.” Kris’s mouth twitched, as if she were trying not to laugh.
“What was it again?”
“Did you ask Blake about your necklace?”
“Um, no.”
She didn’t ask him the other night because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer, but now, sitting here with her friends from Shanghai, the curiosity ate at her.
Would it be so bad to find out the truth? Maybe it wasn’t a big deal, and she was just hyping it up in her mind.
Farrah did a quick mental calculation. They were in the West Village, and Blake’s apartment was a ten-minute walk away.
She’d finished the design project a few days ago. Blake had said (via text) he didn’t need a final walkthrough, and she hadn’t pushed him for one. He should’ve moved back into the apartment by now.
Technically, she told him one night of sex. She didn’t say that was the last night they had to see each other. Besides, she had a valid question to ask him.
“Oh, no,” Olivia said. “I know that look. Your contract with Blake is done. Finito. You don’t need to get involved with him anymore. Forget about the necklace. Sammy was probably making shit up.”
“Sammy doesn’t make stuff up. And you were the one who brought up the necklace,” Farrah pointed out.
“Potato, potahtoe. My point is, leave Blake alone.”
“Too late,” Farrah mumbled.
“What?” Olivia frowned, then gasped. “No. You didn’t.”
That was the thing about best friends/roommates, especially one as detail-oriented as Olivia—they could read you like a large-print book.
“What’s going on?” Courtney tilted her head. Her mass of thick brown curls cascaded past her shoulder and over her arm.
“Judging by Farrah’s blush and Olivia’s glare, our girl has boned Blake Ryan recently.” Kris yawned and examined her flawless manicure.
“Wow.” Courtney mulled the revelation over. “This is like FEA 2.0.”
“No, it’s not.” The color of Farrah’s cheeks matched her friend’s merlot. “We had sex once. It’s not like I’m in love with him.”
Olivia and Courtney gasped at the admission; Kris sipped her wine with a smirk.