Chapter 2

I didn't move. Not then, not when the laughter died down, not when their voices shifted to plotting their next moves without me. I just stood there, a ghost in the hallway, letting their words sink into the deepest parts of my wounded pride.

When I finally turned to leave, my movements were slow, deliberate. My phone buzzed in my pocket, a soft, insistent vibration.

It was the special ringtone, the one Karson reserved for Fannie. I' d heard it enough times to recognize it, a chirpy, irritating melody that used to make my stomach clench.

"Hey, baby," Karson's voice, now syrupy sweet, floated out from the office. A stark contrast to the callous tone he'd just used for me. "Did you make it home okay?"

He promised to be right there. He' d be there in a flash.

His urgency was jarring. He burst out of the office, almost colliding with me as I rounded the corner. His face, usually so composed, registered a flicker of surprise, then something akin to annoyance.

"Clare?" he said, his brows furrowing. "What are you doing here? Still here, I mean."

He thought I was still clinging. Still waiting for him. Still expecting him to come home with me, like I always did.

His eyes darted past me, towards the door, then back to my face with an impatient edge. He thought I was here to drag him away, to make him miss his rendezvous.

He used to say I was possessive, that I followed him around like a shadow. It was true, in a way. I' d clung to him, to the illusion he represented, with a desperation I now recognized as sickening.

I just nodded, unable to form words. What was there to say?

We walked in silence towards the elevator, the tension between us thick and suffocating. His foot tapped on the polished floor impatiently. He kept glancing at his watch, then back at me, as if willing me to disappear.

"Look, I have to go," he blurted out, his voice sharp. "Fannie's in trouble again. Her landlord' s giving her grief about the rent, and she just had a fight with her dad."

He had that worried look, the one that used to fool me into thinking he genuinely cared. Now it just looked performative.

"You can take a taxi, right?" he asked, not waiting for an answer. It wasn' t a question. It was a dismissal. "I' ll see you later."

The elevator doors opened, and he was gone in a flash, the sleek black car speeding away from the curb. I watched it go, a bitter laugh bubbling up in my throat.

He had never once offered me a ride in that car. Not in five years.

But he was rushing off to save his "distressed" art school junior, the same junior he' d often picked up from late-night classes, the same junior who was now conveniently homeless and, apparently, occupying the space in his heart that I once thought was mine.