Page 30 of Their Little Sugar Cookie

I send him a glare before returning to my computer. “The door is there so people can knock.”

“You haven’t checked your messages.”

“No.” I squint at the floor plans of the place we’re demolishing, searching for problems our demo expert might have missed. He’s perfectly competent, but my old habits are hard to break. Besides, I didn’t become the boss by cutting corners and ignoring problems.

“Melody texted.”

I close my laptop and push back from my desk to stand. Now he has my attention. “And?”

“And she finally left that shitstain.”

I want to slump in relief, but at the same time I’m irrationally angry. She’s been with Peter for eight months, never returned our calls, and only texted once a week. It didn’t matter how much Karsten and I reached out, how worried we were that Peter was isolating her from us. We got one text a week, on Saturdays.

Today is Tuesday.

“So she left him. Good.” I stare into my friend’s blue eyes. “So what does that have to do with us?”

“Look, I get that you’re mad.”

I’m not mad. I’m well on my way to furious. She wants to waltz back into our lives after ignoring us for eight months? Does she expect our friendship to pick right back up?

Karsten waves his hand, distracting me from where I’d been staring hard at a shadow on the rug. “Joe. She needs us.”

Magic fucking words. At least, they used to be.

Karsten goes on about how Melody’s trying to get out of the lease she shared with Peter. The two of them moved in together way too fucking fast for Karsten’s and my comfort. But of course she wouldn’t listen when we tried to tell her this.

Her parting words? “You guys are acting like jealous assholes. Cut it out.”

Other than the weekly texts, we haven’t spoken to each other since.

“Dude. Grab your shit,” Karsten says. “We have to get our asses to her place right now, before fucking Peter comes back.”

The urgency in his voice evaporates my anger. I can deal with that later. If Melody needs our help, of course we’ll be there for her.

And I’ll do my goddamn best not to think about that night a year ago. Everything could have changed…but it didn’t.