Page 124 of Desserts for Stressed People

She looks at me as if I’m a human-sized cockroach.

Swallowing to help the saliva lodged in my throat go down, I force a deeper grin on my lips. “Just...invite him to your next birthday party.”

Her brows furrow for a moment, but without another word, she turns around and walks away.

* * *

My phone ringsas I enter my apartment, grocery bags hanging from both my hands. It’s Emma and Olivia on a video call. Dropping one bag to the floor, I answer.

“Hi,” I wave at the screen, and they both wave back as they greet me. Olivia flew back to Sydney a few days ago, and who knows how long it’ll be before I see her again. I miss her already. “How are you?”

Olivia groans. “Work is hell already. My new boss hates every single one of my ideas.”

Emma joins with a similar nasal noise. “You’re preaching to the choir. Today, I lost a sale that was practically done.”

“Sorry, guys.” With a frown, I walk to the fridge. Once I open it and grab a soda, the silence of my apartment is deafening. I steal a glance at the chocolate bar on the top shelf, next to a bunch of kiwis and a jar of brown rice. Though I don’t deserve anything, I’ve been having dessert anyway. I don’t think I would have survived the last two weeks otherwise.

When I turn to Emma and Olivia, they’re staring at the camera in silence. “What?” I ask.

“Well...how are you?”

I try to ignore Olivia’s tone. As if she’s talking to an unstable patient who escaped the psych ward. “I’m fine.”

Emma tilts her head. “That’s not true, Heaven.”

“I am.”

“Heaven...”

I sigh, slamming the soda on the table strong enough that some spills out and lands on the white surface, the bubbles frizzing against it. They magnify a spot dirty with chocolate ganache—so tiny, I would have never noticed it otherwise. It irks me. No, more than that—it feels like someone’s clawing at my skin, scratching the back of my eyes and pinching the inside of my throat.

Walking to the sink to fetch the closest sponge, I nod. “You’re right. I’m not fine. It’s been twelve days, and I never heard from Shane again. Basically, we spent the same time together as we did apart. So it’s over. The best thing that ever happened to me is over, and it didn’t last enough for me to even call it a relationship.”

As my voice gets shrill, I continue, “And the worst part is that this is all my fault. All me. I’ve taken the most amazing man to ever land in front of me, and I lied to him. I deceived him enough to turn him into a monster who deleted me from his life in under ninety seconds. All me!”

Now I’m screaming, and Emma’s soothing voice comes out of my phone. “Hey, Heaven...try to calm down. Do you want me to come over?”

Ignoring her, I continue scrubbing, although the soda is long gone, and the rough part of the sponge is scratching the otherwise perfect white surface. “No, actually, the worst part is that I’d like to make a joke about him using the neuralyzer fromMen in Blackto forget me that quickly, but he’s the only one who would understand!”

I still, watching the gray spot on the table, stripped of its paint. Though I catch my breath, my heart still pounds, and without meaning to, I burst out crying, resting my back on one of my chocolate-scented walls. The smell never left.

After all, it looks like Olivia was right. Iaman unstable mess.

“Oh, Heaven...” Olivia says in a broken voice, and on my screen, both my friends are crying with me, which just makes me sob harder, and—well, that makes them weep.

It takes us a full ten minutes to stop, and when we do, I feel grateful for the second time today. I can count on the very best friends in the whole world. People who love me so much that my pain is theirs too.

Sure, what Emma did was messed up, no matter the good intentions it was done with. But she knows, and as much as I try, I can’t be angry about something that brought me Shane. Nevaeh also stripped me of him, but those six weeks Shane and I spent working together, those two weeks in which we dated—those were the best moments of my life so far. I can’t regret them.

And that’s not all. Because with the absurd raise they gave me, I’ll be able to keep my apartment, and I love my new position too. I’m healthy and have parents who support me. I have everything I need. And I’m the most unhappy I’ve ever been.

Emma dries up the smudges of makeup underneath her eyes with the tip of her fingers. “Heaven? You’ll do something, right? You can’t give up.”

Blowing her nose, Olivia shakes her head. “Of course not. She never gives up.”

I stare at them, then look down. “No, I never do. But...this isn’t something I have control over. I can make him listen to me, or talk to me. I’ve done both already. But I can’t make him change his mind. I can’t change his feelings for me.”

“But you love him so much,” Emma whines.