“Damn it, Quinn.” She started to cry. “It’s not what you think. Just give me my phone back…now.”
“Not what I think?” I murmured, looking up at her. “So…you’re not having sex with this guy who…” I glanced down and starting reading her text aloud, “made me come so hard the last time you were in me I almost orgasm just thinking about it?”
“I…” She had no words to talk herself out of the truth.
An uncontrollable, hard laugh left my lungs. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Cora.” My ears began to ring. “I cannot believe you.”
This was impossible to process. My girlfriend had cheated on me.
“Quinn,” Cora started, but I held up my hand.
“No. Don’t even...just, no.”
“No. Please...just listen to me...”
I shook my head and threw her revolting phone on the table. “I think I’ve had enough of reading what you have to say, I don’t want to listen to any of it.”
“Damn it.” She stomped her foot in a pout. “How the hell did you know it wasn’t Zoey?”
My mouth fell open in shock. She was upset because she’d gotten caught, not because she was breaking my heart all over Jenny’s Crab Shack? I couldn’t freaking believe her.
“Because she’s sitting right there!” I helpfully pointed Zoey’s way.
Cora spun around and gaped at Zoey. Zoey jumped off her barstool, clearly startled. She hurried toward us, but I couldn’t handle her right now either. She knew; she had to know. How could she live with Cora and not know? How could she go with me to pick out a ring and not tell me?
Oh God, why had she let me do that and let me make a complete fool of myself?
I felt doubly betrayed.
Just then, the server, wearing a huge smile, approached our table. “I hope you guys have a big appetite tonight.”
The blood drained from my face. Life could not possibly get any more humiliating than it was in this second. Actually it could, because I was half a second away from puking my misery all over the floor.
But Zoey plowed into the server, sending the bucket full of crabs flying everywhere. I watched in a daze as she apologized to the waiter as if she totally hadn’t meant to tackle him.
“I should’ve watched where I was going,” she said as she crawled through butter sauce and crabs and shrimp until she curled her fingers around something she picked up and cradled to her chest. When she looked up, her eyes met mine.
I saw pity, and I couldn’t handle it. I whirled away and stalked from the restaurant.
“Quinn, wait.” Cora raced after me. She grabbed my arm and whirled me around.
“What was that? Was that a ring she picked up? Are you going to propose to me?”
Her eyes lit with a smile, but I snorted. “No.” Hell, no! “Because I never want to see you again. It’s over, Cora.”
This time, she didn’t go after me when I stormed away, and I wouldn’t have let her stop me if she’d tried.
Cora was a sobbing mess. It was hard to understand anything she was saying. I still wasn’t sure what had just happened between her and Quinn, but he’d been so upset, more upset than I’d ever seen him before.
Through all Cora’s tears, I finally understood that he’d seen something on her phone he was never supposed to see. So I grabbed her phone, and then I saw something I never wanted to see.
“Oh my God, Cora. You…you’re cheating on Quinn? Quinn?” I stared at her, wondering when she’d lost her freaking mind. “How…how…how could you?”
“I love him, Zoey. I swear I do. Quinn is the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. I don’t want to lose him. What do I do?”
“How about not having sex with other men?” That’d be a good start.
She huffed out a sound of irritation. “Those were just flings. Quinn’s the real deal. No one’s ever been as good to me as he is. I really do want to marry him. But I like sex. What’s so wrong with that?”
“Oh my God, Cora. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Marriage means monogamy. And you...you just lost the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
I turned away and left her in Jenny’s Crab Shack too, with Quinn’s engagement ring a little buttery but tucked safely in my pocket.
I cried a little bit, wandered around town a lot, refused to return to my apartment where Cora was. About an hour after everything fell apart, Caroline called, frantic.
“Oren just showed up here with a black eye and really upset, mumbling something to Noel about how Quinn will never forgive him for what he did. What the heck happened?”