“When I told you that I hated you because you were too perfect?” She’d always assumed they’d become best friends because they lived next door to each other in the dorms and because Sasha was nice enough to forgive her for being a terminal bitch.
“Yeah.” Sasha sniffed. “I knew we’d be good friends then because you were real. I knew you’d never lie to me just to be nice. And it was so different. I need that in my life.”
“But men don’t like real.”
“They obviously don’t like fake, either!” She threw her arms out. “I’m alone, too.”
“But that’s because you keep dating idiots.”
“I’m beginning to think you were right all along.” And then the tears came back, and Hannah rounded the peninsula to hug her friend. She hated when people made Sasha cry, even when it was her. “That dudes are all terrible. What could be better proof of that than the fact that you—my caring, beautiful friend—are alone?”
“No, I’m wrong. You’re the brave one, to keep trying even though no one can see what a treasure you are.” Then they both broke down in sobs.
“You’re the best.”
“No, you’re the best.”
Then Sasha had to ruin it by saying, “Jack thinks you’re the best.”
Hannah sniffed the bubble of snot that had formed at the end of her nose and pulled back. “You’ve got to let this go. He used me for a story, and now we’re over.”
“Even if you can’t see it now, I think he’s going to make you see it.”
“You really think he’s going to get over the fact that I used him to get ahead in my job?”
“I think he’s already over it.” Sasha poured them both another glass of champagne. “He was over it before he wiped those drinks off his face.”
Sasha had a point. She and Noah had never had a fight like that, even when they were breaking up. He’d pulled away, and she’d tried to pull him back—over and over—until finally, she’d just loosened her grip and let him go. She’d stopped trying to be what he wanted, and he’d stopped trying to nudge her into being what he wanted. The end of a war of attrition.
Last night, with Jack, she’d felt like they were both clawing to keep the great things between them. The chemistry, yes, but she knew that she’d never meet a man with the same integrity Jack had. Or she’d thought he’d had. And she might be trying to minimize her hopes that somehow this would work out, but she’d seen something like sadness mixed with determination in his gaze.
If he’d merely been using her, it wasn’t like he would have been hurt that she was using him. It would have been the convenient way for them to say goodbye. No harm. No foul.
But there was harm—to her and to him—and her primary objective when she’d accepted that first date with him had certainly been fouled.
She wasn’t about to get a promotion. The engagement party she and Sasha had planned was a disaster the engagement itself hadn’t survived. And they would be lucky if either of them had jobs when the dust settled.
Sasha would land on her feet. Her parents wouldn’t allow for any other outcome. Hannah—maybe it was time to go to law school, despite how much she didn’t relish the idea. She’d figure it out. She always did.
Still, humiliation returned anew to Hannah’s gut. In her attempt to prove to her boss that she could handle weddings, she’d royally bungled her first assignment. If she even had a job left, she would have a long row to hoe to get back to where she’d been.
On the bright side, the cops hadn’t shown up because of anything she’d done this time. The engagement party wasn’t in the papers because of anything she or Sasha had done.
She gestured toward the rapidly emptying champagne bottle. “Are you sure we shouldn’t be trying to figure out how to make Annalise not fire us both?” Still, she tipped the glass up to her mouth.
“I’d say that feckless bitch Giselle should figure it out if she wants to be a VP so badly.”
Hannah choked on her mimosa, but that didn’t stop them from finishing the bottle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
YOU LOOK LIKE HELL, bro.” Bridget punched him in the arm. He never should have taught her how to throw a punch.
Jack grunted in response. He didn’t need his sister to tell him how he looked. Not only had he woken up in his liquor-soiled, rented tux that he definitely wouldn’t be getting his deposit back on; he hadn’t slept more than an hour or so. And there might even have been some eye leakage involved when he’d finally come down from the adrenaline of last night.
He’d considered begging off of Sunday brunch with his mom and sister, but he couldn’t do that to Bridget. Michael had refused from the jump to indulge their mother’s illusion that she was still parenting as long as she saw them all once a week, but he and Bridget both dutifully attended the command performance every weekend.
At this point, it was tradition. Plus, this time he had a national byline, which he should be really proud about. He’d woken up to several calls asking him if he was happy at the magazine, so it didn’t matter whether Irv fired him.
But he couldn’t seem to get himself to care. He was never going to see Hannah again. Even though he’d set out to have her leave him, he hadn’t truly wanted her to. But it had really happened, and there was nothing he could do to fix it.
“No pithy comeback?”
Jack wasn’t in the mood for a back-and-forth with his sister. If this had been the old days, when they were all living in the same house, he would have given her a noogie until she screamed and cried. But he was too tired to even return her arm punch.
For Christ’s sake, his whole body ached. He felt like he had the flu. Couldn’t his baby sister see that and take it easy on him?
The universe hated him, because as soon as they got to the table where their mother was already seated, she said, “What the hell happened to him?”
“He was probably up late, making luuuurve to his new girlfriend.”
Before he could make them stop by telling them the truth, his mother clapped her hands and said, “I really like that girl.”
Jack pulled out his chair with a little too much force, and that finally made his female relatives stop clucking over the girl who had ripped his heart out and stomped on it in front of half the city of Chicago.
They both just stared at him, as though meeting him for the first time. He guessed that was true for his mother; she’d never met the surly son of a bitch he felt like at that moment. In front of his mother, he was always on his best behavior. But it didn’t matter anymore. Being the perfect son hadn’t made his mother stay. And being the perfect boyfriend hadn’t made any of his girlfriends stick around. Flubbing everything up intentionally had made things blow wider and faster than Irv could have ever hoped for before he chucked him. Nothing mattered.