Page 10 of Dirty Like Me
The one who’d just walked out.
I wanted to disappear then, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t escape that horrible moment that just stretched on and on.
I was still reliving it, almost two years later.
“And that’s exactly why you need to do this,” my best friend said.
“Why, exactly?”
“You know why. Look, Katie, I’ve been there with you. Through all of it. I’ve watched you mope around for the last two years of your life—”
“One year and ten months. Let’s not exaggerate.”
Someone knocked on the bathroom door. “Katie?”
It was Maggie, here to take me to shoot my scene. I pictured Jesse Mayes out there, waiting… Shit, would he be half-naked too?
“Just a minute!” I called as sweetly as I could, even as the bile rose up again. I tried to choke it down, but it was winning.
“Okay,” Devi pressed. “I’ve watched my best friend in the entire world feel bad about herself for a year and ten months, all over some asshole who didn’t deserve her anyway—”
“Devi—”
“Wait. He never deserved you in the first place, and we both know it. I know you know it, deep down, that he was a total dick and the way he hurt you was despicable.”
I threw up. Quietly.
Just a bit, in Jesse Mayes’ tattooed manager’s beautiful marble sink.
“But the fact that you’re still letting it run your life,” Devi said, oblivious to my vomiting, “…Katie, that’s on you.”
This.
This was exactly why Devi was, and would always be, my best friend.
She loved me when I needed love. And shetoughloved me when I needed a kick in the ass. Unfailingly.
“You’re right,” I croaked. I swished some water around my mouth and spat in the sink, rinsing the vomit down the drain.
“You need to grab this moment by the balls. Take your fucking life back, babe.”
Devi was always trying to get me to grab something by the balls. Usually life. Sometimes a man.
I’d never been more grateful for it.
“Okay,” I said.
Shewasright, and I knew it.
I couldn’t let what happened to me almost two years ago on that shitty day, the day that was supposed to be the best day of my life but turned out to be the worst,ruinmy life.
And if I didn’t take drastic action, that was exactly what was going to happen.
“I’m doing this.”
I dabbed at my mouth with a tissue, making sure there was no trace of vomit on my made-up face as I studied myself in the mirror.
“Fucking right.”
