Pitch Perfect(49)

“It’s certainly the first time I’ve broken up with an audience.”

“It’s weird for me too, if that helps you guys at all,” Cassandra said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go?” she asked Simon.

“No. Stay,” Emmy replied before he had a chance. “I’m going. Simon, you deserve better, and if it isn’t with her, it’ll be someone else, but it’s not with me. You’re right, my relationship with the team was more important than my relationship with you, and you have every right to be mad at me about that. It wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry.”

“Thanks?” he said, obvious uncertainty turning the word from a statement into a question.

Emmy reached past Cassandra with the intent to hug Simon, but at the last moment she changed her mind. She extended her hand, and he took it. Exchanging a painfully forced handshake, they regarded each other, unsure how to proceed. They each dropped the other’s hand at the same time. She didn’t have anything at his house, nor he at hers. After almost four years, that was it. One pitiful handshake standing on the ugly carpet in a four-star hotel with one of Maxim’s Hot 100 standing in between them.

“Goodbye,” Emmy said, since see you later seemed inappropriate.

“Bye, Em.”

“See you later,” Cassandra concluded with a small wave.

Emmy nodded politely then turned back to the elevator bay. Once inside she checked her watch. They whole thing had taken less than ten minutes. She hoped the valet hadn’t gotten too far with her car.





Chapter Twenty-Four

“Who says that?” Emmy slurred, pointing a shot glass at Alex while the contents sloshed inside. “He actually said the team was more important to me than our relationship.”

“Was he right?” The five variations of Alex sitting next to her all gave her identical mildly condescending looks.

“Maybe.” She finished her shot and propped her chin on her hand. “But he was with another woman.”

Alex took a big swig off his beer and nodded sagely. “Did you catch them doing anything…untoward?” He smirked at his own word choice like he was proud to have chosen it over all the other options circulating in his head.

“Untoward?”

Alex shrugged, evidently giving up on politeness, and said, “Yeah. Did you catch them fucking?”

“No.” Emmy swirled her empty glass on the bar with one finger. “But her hair was messy. And she was glowing.”

“Literally?”

Emmy gave him a look that would make any elementary school teacher proud. “She’s not Tinker Bell.”

“Oh no? ’Cause I’m pretty sure she just spirited off your man.”

“Ha-ha. You’re funny.”

“If you can’t be hot, you gotta be something.” He took another swig of beer and winked at her. “Not that you’d know anything about that.”

“Was that a compliment or an insult?”

“Both.”

“You’re a complicated man, Alex.”

“Not really. Beer. Baseball. Boobs. This is the life of Alex Ross.”

“And a hint of bitterness.”

“A dash. It adds to the overall flavor.”

Emmy rolled her eyes. She’d arrived at the Bottom on the Ninth pub across the street from the stadium shortly after midnight. She hadn’t been expecting to find anyone she knew, hoping instead to quietly nurse a glass of wine and take a cab home.

Instead she found Alex sitting alone at the bar and joined him for a drink—his buy. Four whiskey shots later she was telling him all about her gong show of an evening, and he was listening as patiently as one could when they didn’t give a shit.

“You honestly think they weren’t doing anything?” Emmy stopped spinning her glass and waited for Alex to reply.

“Are you crazy? Woman leaving his suite that close to Cinderella’s curfew?” He shook his head and placed the now-empty beer he’d been nursing onto the bar. “Guy was cheating on you, no doubt in my mind. But that’s beside the point.”

“How is that not completely the point?”

“You said you went there to break up with him, right?” Alex called the bartender over with the wave of two fingers. He arched a brow at Emmy, both asking her to reply to his question and seeing if she needed a refill.

“Whatever you’re having,” she muttered.

Alex split his fingers into a peace sign, and the bartender brought two bottles of Stella, placing each on a coaster in front of them and removing the empty glasses and bottles they’d finished with. Once the bar was clear, Emmy felt far less like a burgeoning alcoholic.