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“Yes. And he should have told me himself.”
“To sum up,” she said. “You’re pissed at him for being nice and helping you at a time when you needed help.”
“Not exactly. I wanted to achieve those things by myself.”
“He was nice to you. He provided help at a time you needed it, right? And you’ve decided that’s bad. It’s not like you to be unfair.”
I gave in. “I’m not being unfair.”
“Now you’re lying to yourself. I don’t see why you’re interested in Three Sisters then. We should shut it down.”
I couldn’t believe she said that. “We can’t.”
She ignored me. “But that’s what we do. We help people when they need it most, and you think that’s wrong. While we’re at it, there’s a soup kitchen ten blocks south of here. We should go tell them to close because they’re ruining people’s self-esteem. Remember, just like Evan, they’re helping because they want to.”
“It’s not like that.”
She pointed her breadstick at me. “Right. Because you’re a special case.” She waved the breadstick. “You’ve got to get your head out of your ass about his family name. You have a nice guy, doing nice things for you, the kind of things that any other woman in this town would die for. But you’re focused on how evil his father was, and you’re letting that sabotage this.” She sighed.
Our lunches arrived, stopping her accusations—accusations that were hitting their mark with almost every word. I was a worthless excuse for a human being. And what’s worse, she didn’t even know the full story.
I cleared my throat. “It turns out his father isn’t as bad as I thought.”
She forked a bite of her salad. “That’s the kind of introspection I’ve hoped for. You know until this, I thought you were really smart. But now, I don’t know. I’d give anything to have a guy like you had.”
The fact that she put Evan in the past tense lodged in my chest and burned. I couldn’t even stomach a bite of my lasagna. “How was Portugal?”
She finished chewing. “It was very nice.” With that, she took the hint, and we got off the subject of me while we ate.
With every bite, I had to mull over her perspective that I was being unreasonable. Equating my feelings about shutting down our charity to how Evan had helped me get into Columbia stung. I hated being called out as unreasonable.
The lasagna felt heavy in my stomach as it mixed with guilt.
After her description of Lisbon, I asked, “It sounds like a long trip. Are you happy to be back?”
“It was fun, but yes I am. Are you happy to have dumped Evan?”
I’d set myself up for that, and I looked down at my plate, afraid to answer.
She plucked another breadstick from the basket and waved it at me. “Honesty, now.”
I sighed. “I can’t sleep. I miss him. I feel like a piece of me has left the building. Am I a terrible person for sticking up for myself?”
“Not terrible, just misguided,” she said. “Gwen said some idiot business rival of his started this whole thing.”
“Yeah. I was mad because I had to find out from that creep Martin he works with.”
“And this Martin creep told you this to hurt Evan?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“That’s what I don’t understand. You told us Evan stared down these hardened criminals to protect you one night in your building, right?”
I nodded and smiled, remembering the night my personal Tarzan had saved me.
“Then this Martin guy tells you shit to break you up so he can hurt Evan, and you fall for it. The Alexa Borelli I know fights back. What have you done to protect your man after all he’s done to protect you? You should be out there attacking this Martin asshole however you can. You know he did this to hurt Evan by hurting you.”
Shame forced my eyes closed for a moment as I sucked in air through gritted teeth. Chelsea was right. Evan had confided that the Graffs were out to destroy him and Fergus, and I hadn’t lifted a finger to support my man. “You’re right. I’m a terrible person.”
