It was finally time to meet Quinn, and I found her sitting at a table with her iPad while she waited for me. I ordered a skinny caramel macchiato and sat across from my best friend a few minutes later with my drink.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, sipping her chai tea latte.
I sighed. “How do you always know?”
“It’s what best friends do. Well, that, and you look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders. What’s going on?”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“Everything okay with you and Richard?”
I chuckled mirthlessly. Nothing would ever be okay between Richard and me again, but that wasn’t why I was upset. I shook my head, feeling the threat of tears behind my eyes.
“No?” she asked, placing her hand over mine across the table. “Veronica, talk to me.”
I stared down at the table, knowing that if I looked into the concerned eyes of my best friend, I’d lose it. “Richard and I are getting a divorce.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “What? What happened?”
I took a deep breath, held onto it for a moment, and then let it out with a whoosh. “Nothing happened, really. It’s not like one big thing happened and it was over. It’s been building toward this for a long time.”
“Jesus, Veronica. I had no idea. And here I am saying how best friends always know when something’s up.” She shook her head. “I always thought you two were perfect together. What changed?”
“He has just become this person I don’t even know anymore. He’s condescending and controlling and manipulative and I am just done with him.”
“When did you file?”
“I haven’t yet. I gave him the papers yesterday, but he’s refusing to sign them.”
“Fucking asshole.”
I nodded. “Completely. He told me that I’m stuck until he decides he’s ready to sign them.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’ll sign them.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ll fucking cut off his balls if he fucks with you.”
I chuckled, thankful to have such a loyal friend on my side. Leave it to Quinn to figure out the solution. I was briefly reminded that Jesse also had a solution that I never actually got to hear.
“I’m so sorry, Veronica,” she said, her eyes shining with sincerity.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Sure I do. I introduced you.”
I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t make me marry him, Quinn,” I reminded her.
“Stay with me,” she said suddenly, her eyes lighting up.
No fucking way I was leaving Jesse’s now that I was there.
I realized for about the ten millionth time that I was flirting with disaster, but I didn’t care. I had to see how things were going to play out with Jesse.
How was I going to tell her this one? Did I even want to tell her about Jesse? The answer was clear in my mind: fuck yes I wanted to tell her. I wanted to talk to somebody about it. I was dying to tell her – well, I was dying to tell anyone, really – about the “so goddamn beautiful that sometimes it hurts” comment. I knew I’d told myself it had been the wine talking, but he’d still said it. Even though he’d run off to see another woman, I could still convince myself that he meant those words when he said them to me.
“We’ll have so much fun together! We can gossip all night; we can carpool to work. It’s perf!” She was still going on about me moving in with her when there was no chance of that happening.
I didn’t have the heart to burst her bubble. I loved Quinn to death, but the thought of sharing the same space with her for days on end was a little overwhelming; she was loud, she could be raunchy and irreverent and obnoxious, and from what she told me, she had a lot of sex. Sounded like an even bigger recipe for disaster than shacking up with Mr. Drake.
“I actually left Richard yesterday morning. I’m staying with a friend,” I said, skirting the details.
“Who?” she pressed.
“Um,” I took a sip of my coffee followed by a deep breath. “Jesse Drake,” I said with a sigh. I didn’t even mean to sigh when I said his name. It just happened.
“What?!?!” she screeched. Like, literally screeched. Heads turned in our direction at her volume. “You’re living with Jesse fucking Drake?”
I shushed her. “I’m not ‘living’ with him. I’m just crashing at his place for awhile.”
“In his bed?” she asked, her voice still a little louder than I would’ve preferred.