1
Warner
TWO YEARS AGO
Everything it took to get to this point… well, it feels like it should’ve happened to someone else.
Peyton and Charlie sit opposite me in the booth, munching on kid-sized cheeseburgers. I have no idea how I’m going to handle this, only that I will.
Being a single father isn’t something I pictured for my life, but then again, neither is any of what I’ve gone through the past few years.
We’re on our own now.
2
Tenley
If I could change one detail about the whole story, it would be that he should’ve chosen better.
An extra?
It’s so… so… common.
Plump lips, slim hips, fake tits.
He could have damn near anyone, and he chose the human equivalent of vanilla ice cream.
Celebrity Dirt broke the news. I don’t read that trash, but others do. Like my best friend Morgan’s aunt. Living alone in a double-wide trailer in Utah, Aunt Patty enjoys crocheting, her air fryer, and following celebrities.
On that Monday morning, she settled in her worn blue armchair, opened her phone, and navigated to her favorite celeb gossip site. The story was less than a minute old. Aunt Patty was the first to comment, a fact she mentioned proudly when she called Morgan.
It was Morgan who called me.
“Rule of thumb is never to believe this garbage, I know. But...” She stopped, as if she were gathering enough strength to continue.
It was her pause that made me jump from the treadmill. “Go on,” I instructed through labored breathing, sweat matting my baby hairs to my neck.
“There are photos.” Morgan’s tone was an apology, as if she was the person who should be apologizing.
That was four days ago. Four days ago.
Ninety-six hours to disassemble a life we spent two years building.
The headline read Tate Mack Caught Canoodling With Extra. If it hadn’t been for the pictures, I’d have written it off.
Just like I’d always done.
He came for his blender.
I sat at the dining room table and watched him. His tail should’ve been between his legs, but his ego is too large to allow such a thing.
He stands in front of me now, the high-powered blender cradled in his arms. The machine can make ice cream, soup, and macerate fruit. I feel as though my heart has taken a turn through its blades.
He stares at me. His shirt hugs his muscled arms, his sweats fit just right. Damn him for looking so good. I’ve been crying, and it shows.
“Tenley,” he starts, stepping closer.
My hand leaps into the air between us, stopping him. “We both know you could have bought another blender. You could have bought one hundred blenders.”
His features arrange into genuine sadness. “I wanted to see you.”
His scratchy voice makes me feel the tiniest shred better, but I bat it down. I need the anger to stay in place while he is here. He cannot sweet talk his way out of this one, or apologize, or even grovel. But deep down, buried beneath the anger, my broken heart is there.
To the world, he is Tate Mack, box office god and sexiest man alive. To me, he was just Tate. My boyfriend.
Ex-boyfriend.
I blink and look away. “I hope she was worth it, Tate. I hope she was worth losing our relationship.”
He rushes forward. The blender tumbles to the ground, plastic cracking, and Tate drops to his knees. He grabs my hands, pulling them to his chest.
“Please,” he moans. “It was a mistake. A moment of weakness.”
His words are like lemon juice in my fresh wound. They are acid, and they burn. There is no apology on this earth that could make me consider forgiving him. Extracting my hands from his grasp, I push my chair back and rise to my feet. “You made your bed, Tate. Now you get to lie in it.” It would be so much easier to accept his apology, to move on. Nothing would have to change. His blender could stay on my counter. He could stay in my life.
But no. I can’t have that. I can’t live with myself, knowing I condoned that behavior. And what about next time? With a person like Tate, there will always be a next time.
“But we’re so good together, Ten. Come on.” He stays on his knees, his face upturned, his eyes big and pleading. Maybe for other women this routine would work, but not me, because I recognize that exact look. I acted opposite that same expression, in the movie we made right after we met. In the film, my character dropped to her knees and kissed him. But this is real life, and I’ll stay on my feet.
Calmly, I walk to the front door. By the time I’ve reached it, Tate is off the ground and walking toward me. He passes through the door I’ve just opened. He doesn’t stop. He won’t grovel twice. The fact that he groveled even once could be labeled another moment of weakness.
I watch, stony-faced, as he guns the engine of his canary yellow Ferrari. The car creeps forward. His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. He looks contrite. For the first time since he showed up, I let down my guard. The tears fall. His brake lights illuminate.
No.
I step back, swallowed up into my foyer, and slam the door. The last thing I see is his Ferrari rolling forward through my gate.
An hour later, Morgan shows up with champagne and tacos. She strides into the kitchen and dumps her bags and purse on the counter. Her dark hair is wound into a wild bun on the top of her head, a pen shoved through the coil to keep it secured. She plucks at the end of the pen, and her hair tumbles down around her upper arms. Pen in hand, she grabs an envelope off the top of a stack of mail. “Let’s make a list of everything you didn’t like about him.”
“Tacos first,” I grumble.
Morgan waves a hand at the brown paper bag, where grease stains soak through the bottom. “Well, duh.”
I reach in, coming away with a parchment-wrapped taco. “Heaven,” I announce, biting into the warm picadillo. Sauce dribbles down my chin and she throws me a napkin.
Morgan looks down at the envelope she turned over. I peek. She’s already written three things, and titled the list Cons.
“Where is the pros column?”
She shakes her head. “Cons only.”
I read them aloud. “Ranch on pizza. Looks at himself in reflective surfaces every time he passes one. Sits down to pee.” I shake my head, my finger poised above the third con. “He only sat down right after sex. He said the first pee was unwieldy.”
She shrugs. “Still. It weirded you out the first time he did it.”
“True.”
She writes another and I read it out loud. “Tendency to tell dumb lies.”
Morgan’s not wrong about that. Tate had a problem telling inconsequential lies. Stupid stuff, like saying he went shopping for something when he hadn’t. But once he told the lie, he would make good on it. He’d do what he claimed to have already done. More of an aspirational liar.
“You know why he did that,” I point out, starting on my next taco.
“Right,” she agrees, grabbing some food of her own, knowing I might very well eat it all. “Everyone has childhood shit. We all act out as adults. People can still choose to dislike us for it.”