Page 59 of Desserts for Stressed People

I follow him as he strides toward the door, my all-of-a-sudden clingy boyfriend only a few steps behind. When Shane reaches for the door, he turns to Alex. “Nice to meet you,” he says, then he throws me the coldest smile I’ve ever seen. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

I hold the door in my hand as he walks across the hall. Before he turns the corner, his eyes land on me, and I beg him to forgive me. To understand. To wait before he decides he hates me.

But he lightly shakes his head and disappears down the stairs.

* * *

“Why were you being so weird?”

I don’t have a chance to recover from the shock of what happened before Alex begins questioning me. Funny. It looks like he doesn’t share the same nonchalance about me around other men as he does about himself around other women.

Turning to him, I cross my arms. “Because you were making a show. Touching me, kissing me. You called me your girlfriend.”

He scoffs. “Well, you are. What’s wrong with touching you and kissing you?”

“You did it to show him I was with you.”

His brows furrow. “Well, it looked like I needed to show him you were with me. He seemed pretty surprised.”

I strut into the kitchen and yank the top of the coffee machine open, placing a filter inside and filling it with the brown powder. I don’t want a coffee, but I need to keep my hands busy and I never ended up drinking the one I bought with Shane.

“Why didn’t you tell him you have a boyfriend?”

I try hard not to lose it. I don’t want to bring up RadaR now, because it’ll look like I’m justifying my crush on Shane with his cheating. “Because he’s my director, not my friend—he’s not friendly either. I didn’t tell him I have a boyfriend like I didn’t tell him anything else.” I hate my words as I say them, but they’re partially true. I’m pretty sure they will be truer from now on.

“And why were you getting coffee with him on a Saturday morning?”

I snap the machine closed. “I was in the square. He saw me, came to say hi, then invited me for a coffee. I don’t know, maybe he was trying to be nice since I’m new.”

“More like he was trying to be nice since you’re hot and he wants to do you.”

I gape at his scowling face and immediately stare at the cabinet. “Well, even if that were the case, your little show made it clear I’m taken.” Grabbing a cup, I open my mouth to ask if he wants coffee when he wraps his arms around me, and his chest is pressed against my back.

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

“It’s been a while.” His lips brush against my neck, in the way he knows I like. Taking a deep breath, I can feel my heart shrinking at every new peck against my skin, and all the anger I’ve felt toward him shifts into pain. Now that he’s being his old self, I remember all that he threw away. The last five years of our lives together, how he tainted them.

When his arms tighten around my belly, my mind goes to all the times he’s done this before. I don’t think I’ve gone one day washing the dishes without him interrupting me like this for the first six months we lived together.

I drop my head to one side, and his kisses move to my ear.

He spins me around and kisses my lips, his hands traveling up my sides. It’s awkward, his tongue much too intrusive in my mouth and his hands too rough under my shirt. Lightly pushing him away, I lean back to stop the kiss. “Alex, I’m not in the mood.”

He stares back, eyes narrowed, as I wait for him to take his leave. He probably has a lot of cheating to get to and not enough time to do it anyway. “Would you have been doing this with your boss if I hadn’t come back when I did?”

My lips part, but no sound comes out. Is it that obvious I like Shane?

“Of course not,” I say. And I mean it. There is no way I’d taint what’s between me and Shane by involving him in an affair. Not when I’ve already complicated everything with Nevaeh.

“Okay.” He bites his upper lip. “I guess I’m a little jealous. He was looking at you—I don’t know. I don’t like that guy.”

“He’ll be my boss for a few more weeks. That’s all.”

He scratches his head and walks out of the kitchen, throwing a doubtful look my way.

Once he’s gone, I look down at the empty cup I’m holding and sigh deeply, releasing tension off my shoulders. I feel just as hollow as this cup. There’s a little brown spot on the bottom—it looks like a coffee ground. I grab the sponge and scrub, stronger and stronger, until my hands are covered in foam and the cup’s filled with it.

After I wash the soap off, it’s spotless, but I scrub some more. And then again, and again. Like this sponge could scrub the pain I feel, the awareness that I’m weak. That I’m letting Alex win.