“This is nice,” I finally said.
“Yeah. It is. I’m sorry about your date, Jules.”
It felt odd to hear him call me by such a familiar name, but I didn’t hate it. It was soothing. “It’s fine. It’s just one more reason I can give my sister why I can’t trust her taste in men. And why this whole idea was a bad one.”
“Or it’s just one more step on the right path, and the universe is taking roadblocks out of your way. Imagine if Ever had been a decent guy, right? And paid for your meal. You would have seen him again.”
I couldn’t deny it, but I also didn’t want to agree either.
“He’d have pulled something like this in the future when you were invested. When it would have hurt instead of just stinging.”
I understood what he meant more than I wanted to admit. Rolling over, I pulled one of the thin pillows to my chest and hugged it tight. I missed being held. “I just don’t know if going through that pain more than once is worth it, you know?”
“I don’t know,” Forrest admitted. “I’ve never done it.”
My eyes widened. “And you’re over here giving me relationship advice?”
“Do as I say, not as I do?”
My mouth dropped open in outrage, then it turned into a laugh, and by the time I had calmed down, most of the frustration had melted away from my body. “Thank you,” I murmured.
“For what, sweetheart?”
I don’t know why my heart thrummed harder at the sound of the epithet that had once been so mocking. Maybe because now it just sounded kind. “For making tonight easier. I’m going to be eating old bread and canned soup for a month, but there are worse things.”
“Like what?” he asked.
I felt oddly safe right then, which was maybe why I told him. “Like realizing your ex preyed on you while you were a child. That this big, grand relationship you were in because you thought you were special was just because you were young and malleable. I’d rather be hungry than with a man who put an expiration date on me.”
“What’s his name?” Forrest asked. “Your ex.”
I leaned up. “Why?”
“So I can look him up. You know. Just to talk.”
Something about that made me laugh to tears, and I swiped them away with my hands. “I don’t know what you look like, but for some reason I’m picturing you like some Channing Tatum, hulking beefcake, and I would pay good money to see the look on his face when you showed up at his door.”
He snorted. “I can’t really confirm or deny that comparison, but I can hold my own in a fight, Jules. Trust me. And I feel like a talk would be more than productive.”
“I think so too,” I told him, smiling in a way I hadn’t in years. “But he lives in England, and I doubt I’ll ever see him again. Which is fine. Really. It’s better than fine. Because I’m here, and he’s not.”
“Well, if you change your mind, let me know. My best friend is a filthy rich surgeon, and he’d be more than happy to get me a first-class ticket for a good ass-whooping.”
“Thanks,” I said softly. I yawned, the sound loud enough for Forrest to hear, and he chuckled quietly.
“I should let you get some rest.”
“Can you turn the music up a little?” I asked.
“Yeah, sweetheart. I can. Try not to think about the scum of the city. There’s a lot of good things here too.”
“I know,” I told him, and what I didn’t say as my eyes closed and I started to drift, was that oddly, he was starting to become one of them.
Chapter9
Ididn’t expect things to change, and I was oddly comforted by the fact that they didn’t. My neighbor—Forrest—didn’t suddenly morph into a different person. He still stayed up too late and played his music too loud and had a laundry list of complaints about the noises I made over here in my little space.
And I still wanted out. There was still no heat, and as we crept closer to the holidays and toward the end of the year, the cold only got more permeating. I spent all my hours—asleep and awake—bundled in layers and using the space heater I’d purchased from a secondhand shop.