Page 2 of Broken & Bossy
By the grace of whatever god is looking down at me, I manage to get my eyeliner, mascara, blush, and bronzer on before someone tries to open the locked door and knocks.
It’ll have to do.
I pack up my bag and slip out the door, make a mental note to put on deodorant in my office because I’m ninety percent sure I forgot, and give a cursory, awkward half-smile to the man standing outside the bathroom waiting to go in after me.
Zoe’s nose scrunches the moment I appear from the hallway, her glasses wiggling up toward her eyebrows. How she manages to tame her auburn curls without a full bathroom routine is beyond me, but she looks put together for her shift in her usual white button-up blouse, jeans, and light brown apron.
“You look like hell,” she says, plucking a medium-sized cup from the top of the espresso machine.
I roll my eyes and lean against the counter dividing us. “Good morning to you, too.”
“Usual?” she asks, eyeing the machine. I nod. “Sam’s, too? Or just yours?”
“He hasn’t texted me,” I say, slipping my phone from my pocket to double-check my boss hasn’t begged me for a coffee in the last thirty seconds, “so I’ll assume it’s just mine.”
“Cool.”
I watch as she pulls my shot, pours oat milk into a pitcher, and lifts it to the steam wand. It’s like second nature to her, but it would be after two years of managing this place and four years of just working here.
The milk hisses, then quietens, steadily heating in her grasp.
“Have you heard from your landlord?” I ask.
Her lips purse. “No,” she sighs. “Sent him another text last night. Last I heard, the builders were scheduling a day with him to come back to finish the walls, but if he’s as bad at responding to them as he is to me, who knows how long it’ll take.”
She pours the milk into the cup, tops it with a dusting of chocolate, and pops a lid on top for me before sliding it across the counter.
“I know it’s shit getting ready here. I can try to get a little vanity from that thrift shop down the road and set it up in the living room, if it would help.”
“No, don’t go out of your way?—”
“Or you could get ready at the gym,” she offers, plucking a ticket off the printer. “Maybe switch to showering in the morning since you’re already there for that, and then just get ready there?”
As tempting as that is, I’m not a morning gym rat, and walking in at seven in the morning when the gym is packed full of peoplejustto use the shower and get ready feels like a walk of shame. “It’s okay. Shouldn’t be for much longer, anyway. It’s not like it’syourfault.”
“Aaron’s fault?”
“Aaron’s fault.”
Zoe nods.
She knows how easily I’ve slipped into theI hate youstage of grieving my relationship over the last week or so, and has been all too happy to enable my blaming of anything and everything on Aaron.
Zoe straightens as a customer walks through the door, the little bell chiming as the metal hits it. “Go to work,” she says. “Kick ass. Try not to think about him and remind yourself that you’re a brilliant designer with an actual career, and he’s just a man who wears salmon-colored shorts unironically.”
I snort, then cover my mouth, trying to hide the cackle that’s trying to work its way up. “Christ, he does love those shorts. They’re awful.”
“Iknow.” She grins as she turns to the customer, forcing some pep into her voice as she chirps out a,“Hi! What can I get ’ya?”
I sling my work bag over my shoulder and grab my cappuccino, flash her a wave, then slip out the door like I didn’t just get my coffee for free and hog the bathroom for thirty minutes.
This day can't get any worse.
Chapter 2
Grayson
By the timePenelope’s teacher says the words “broke up family,” my jaw already hurts from clenching.
