Chapter 25

TWENTY-FIVE

ELLA

Sophie’s voice echoed behind Ella, faint and distant, like she was in a tunnel. A horrible, what the fuck tunnel that was in serious jeopardy of collapsing and sucking her into the darkest abyss known to humankind.

“Ella!” Sophie grabbed Ella’s arm, her breath expelling in spurts. “We have to talk about this.”

How could Ella talk about this when she barely processed what just happened? The last five minutes kept playing over and over in her mind. The moment when Jasmine got that look, that stupid effing satisfied grin like she just one-upped Ella, and said to Sophie, “I had a good time with you last year. I don’t think I ever got your name.” Sophie’s eyebrows had cinched. Then her face dropped, her cheeks flushed, and she turned nearly green… and Ella knew. It took all of five seconds to piece everything together. The realization of what had happened slapped her in the face. Neither of them had to say anything else.

Her insides raged, and her belly burned with a foreign sickness, the type that she’d seen in movies, but never felt herself. “Jasmine, though? Jasmine? Of all the women in Seattle, she’s the one you fucked?”

“I didn’t know she had a girlfriend! I would have never done that had I known.” Sophie’s eyes searched Ella’s, caged like an animal, frantic and rushed. “Ella, please. I’m so sorry. I had no idea. You know that, right? How could I have possibly known? I didn’t even know her name.”

Oh, Ella knew Sophie barely knew Jasmine. She knew everything about that night because of course she asked, like an absolute idiot, about the hot, sordid details to feed her voyeur kink. She’d consumed every word Sophie was willing to share and dove in for second and third scoops. How many times Jasmine made Sophie orgasm, the dirty shit they whispered in each other’s ears, how Sophie tugged off Jasmine’s underwear with her teeth—everything. She was told the excruciating details on how Jasmine bit then blew on Sophie’s most sensitive places, that the kitchen counter provided perfect leverage for round one, and that the upstairs apartment banged on the floor to get them to shut up.

She knew it all.

Images of the two of them rolling in the bed flashed in front of her. She squeezed her eyes shut hard, but that only made the picture more vibrant. That night, Ella knew something was off with Jasmine. Jasmine was supposed to come over as she did almost every night. But soon short, sporadic texts replaced their usual long-winded, funny banter. When Jasmine stopped texting and finally went totally silent, it triggered Ella’s Spidey-sense.

Ella remembered pacing in her room, bouncing between being livid at being ignored with being sure Jasmine was in an accident and lying somewhere in a ditch. The feeling, the panic, the hopelessness, the worry, was because of Sophie.

When she went to Jasmine’s place that next morning, she smelled it in the air—an unfamiliar perfume and the sweat of someone else on the sheets. Then she found the bunched-up fishnet stockings in the corner. Fishnets! How did she only think of this now? Sophie’s signature outfit was right in front of her eyes this entire time, and she never made the connection.

She confronted Jasmine that morning, who transitioned from “You’re acting crazy” to “Oh, honey, I would never… I love you” to “So obviously you must think I’m the worst person in the world.” After every gaslighting trick in the effed-up relationship book, Ella picked up the stockings and threw them at Jasmine’s face. Finally, Jasmine had crossed her arms, deviant and unapologetic, and blamed her tryst on Ella being too controlling, too obsessed, too boring .

This can’t be happening. Ella couldn’t breathe. She needed more air. Her collar was tight and gross and constricting her airways. She clawed at it, pulling it away from her sticky neck. Everything happening right now was too much, and she needed to get the hell out of here, far away, and process. She bulldozed her way up the sidewalk, refusing to listen to Sophie’s pleas.

Her belly knotted into a ferocious twist and she wanted to cry and hit something and throw up. The crushing devastation was not about ownership over Sophie, not about jealousy. Sophie, the woman she’d fallen for, the woman who she saw a real future with, the woman she’d felt the most intense connection of her life with, now represented the pain Ella had felt for so long. The self-doubt had been so heavy and thick for a year, where she constantly wondered why she wasn’t good enough, why someone she loved chose someone else, someone more fun, someone better .

She bolted around the corner, her low heels clacking into the pavement. Pedestrians stepped out of her way as she marched straight ahead, searching for oxygen. She needed to not look at Sophie right now. She needed to get as far away from her as possible. If she looked at Sophie, she wouldn’t be able to think, and right now she needed to think.

“Ella. Stop.”

The sound of Sophie getting closer approached from behind her, and soon she felt fingertips grip her forearm.

“We need to talk about this. We need to figure this out.” Sophie’s fingers dug into Ella so tight her skin started turning white. When Sophie looked down, she dropped Ella from her grip in a snap.

Ella rammed her thumbs into her temples, the prickles of sweat beginning to brew beneath the surface. She looked at Sophie’s watery, regret-filled, wide green eyes. Reflected was Ella’s past and future colliding in the most gross, gruesome way, and she pivoted on her heels. She couldn’t look at her face. Sophie had captured her heart. She owned her heart. But now she also owned her heartbreak.

“I can’t… I can’t even look at you.” Ella’s mouth quivered and she drilled her teeth into her lip to stop. She was not going to cry here like a rookie, fifty feet from her office.

“That’s unfair.” Sophie withdrew her hand and took a step back. Her voice no longer carried the pleading it did a moment ago. “I didn’t do it to hurt anyone.”

Of course Sophie didn’t. She was a good person who didn’t know the collateral damage from her actions that night. But that didn’t mean the logic in Ella’s brain could outrun the crushing betrayal in her heart. Jasmine’s cheating had shredded Ella—she’d balled up in a corner, stopped painting, refused to shower, she’d been destroyed. And Sophie, unknowingly or not, was a participant.

Ella needed to leave. But she couldn’t. Dammit. She had to go back into the office, pretend that nothing had happened, pretend that she couldn’t feel her insides breaking. The sweat bubbled up now, mimicking her tears filling her eyes, and she cried into her hands. “Fuck!” She stomped her foot, angry at herself for being emotional, angry at Sophie, angry at herself for being angry at Sophie, and her shoulders collapsed.

A hand touched her arm and she whipped it off. “Please, just… please don’t touch me right now.”

What was she going to do? She needed to run. She needed to get away from here, and think, and paint, and exhale, and come to grips that the person she’d been falling for, really, whole-heartedly falling for, was half of someone who destroyed her. How did she reconcile that? Could she? Goddammit, she knew these last few weeks were too good to be true. Life was cruel and punishing and unfair. And she was stupid enough to think that maybe this one time, things would work out.

Screw work. She had to get away, flee, go hide in a bunker, something. Anything to avoid facing Sophie, reality, this weight burrowing into her chest.

Sophie’s phone rang. Her lips pulled into a flat line. She exhaled through her nose, and brought the phone to her ear. “What’s up?”

Her face morphed from narrowed eyes to wide eyes, to an “oh shit” face. She nodded, hummed an affirmative, and then clicked off her phone. “We have to go back.” She reached out to touch Ella again, but then dropped her arm to her side. She released a heavy, shaky sigh. “Devil’s Doughnuts got back to us. They rejected the entire campaign.”