Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 26246 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 131(@200wpm)___ 105(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26246 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 131(@200wpm)___ 105(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
It was her boss’s face.
The way Mr. Havington had looked at her in the elevator after she said it. After she lied. After she opened her mouth and the worst lie she had ever told in her entire life just came tumbling out, all because she couldn’t bear admitting that her relationship with Cyrus was, in fact, exactly as boring as her boss had said it was.
We don’t have a boring relationship at all because we kiss all the time.
Kyara made a small sound against the tile, and the sound was somewhere between a whimper and a laugh, and she didn’t know which was worse.
Because the worst part wasn’t even the lie.
The worst part was that her chest had been hurting since last night, and the hurt had nothing to do with Cyrus and everything to do with the look on her boss’s face in the second before he turned away from her and told Elbert to drive her home. It was a look she had never seen on Mr. Havington before, not in three years, not in thirty-seven months, not ever, and her brain had been replaying it on a loop ever since.
Please drive Ms. Dunn home, Elbert. That will be all.
She had been Ms. Dunn again. Not Kyara. Not kyria.
And her heart hurt so, so bad every time she remembered it.
Just stop it, Kyara! Just stop.
She turned the knob down with shaking fingers and reached for the shampoo, because if she didn’t start moving, she was going to be late for work, and if she was late for work, she would have to face her boss with red eyes on top of everything else, and that—
No, oh no, no.
She wasn’t going to think about that either.
She was going to take a shower, and she was going to put on her clothes, and she was going to take the train two stations out, and she was going to walk into the diner she had been walking into every weekday morning for three years, and she was going to do what she should have done a long, long time ago.
That was the plan.
That had to be the plan, because if it wasn’t the plan, then she had no idea what she was going to do with the way her body kept aching whenever she pictured the look on her boss’s face going cold and far away because of her.
How strange.
The thought drifted up from somewhere underneath the water as she rinsed shampoo out of her hair.
I’m about to meet Cyrus for the first time since learning he’s been cheating on me for the past two months, and all I can think about is my boss.
It’s crazy.
And confusing.
And terrifying.
But at the same time...
That was also how she knew.
This had to happen.
The diner door stuck the way it always did, and Kyara had to push it twice with her shoulder before the bell over her head gave its familiar tired jingle.
It was the same as it always was. The working-class crowd too busy with their own mornings to notice her. The smell of bacon grease and burnt coffee. The booth in the back where Cyrus always sat, because it had the best view of the door, which was also one of those things she had never really thought about until just now, and now that she was thinking about it she couldn’t un-think it, because of course Cyrus would want to see who was coming in before they saw him, of course he would.
Don’t.
Don’t start now.
Just walk.
So she walked, with her bag clutched too tight against her side and her coat sleeve catching against the tacky edge of every booth she passed, and she didn’t even register that her hands were shaking until she was already standing in front of him.
“Good morning.”
Cyrus looked up from his phone.
“Baby—what the hell happened to you?”
Cyrus couldn’t help wincing at how awful Kyara looked today. Sure, she was always dressed like a prude, but she had at least been a presentable prude, but this...
What was up with her red-rimmed eyes? Didn’t she realize she looked like a zombie right now? And her clothes? She had buttoned her cardigan wrong, for one thing, and her hair was scraped back into something that wasn’t really a bun and wasn’t really a ponytail and was definitely not the kind of thing his girlfriend should be showing up in.
Cyrus glanced around the diner to make sure no one was watching, and was relieved when Kyara chose to sit across from him instead of next to him. No way did he want anyone thinking she was his girlfriend, not with her looking like that.
She slid into the opposite booth, and the vinyl made the same sticky sound it always made under her thighs, and Kyara found that comforting somehow, the sameness of it, even though nothing else was the same.