Page 122 of The Exit Strategy

I drop the phone into my lap, and my thumb lands on the diamond without me asking it to.

Katie arrives atfour with zero warning. My head is pressed against the table because I’m not myself and Cole stormed off…somewhere, hours ago, so I slipped across the drive to lick my wounds without Nana Mae snooping for information on thestate of relations.

Katie, my self-appointed BFF, doesn’t knock, she just clomps up my stairs and into my home in her wedges like she paid for them with a share of my apartment. Her bottle of rosé tells me she has suspicions.

“Dollie told Stanley who told Marley who told me about Grace,” she announces.

“Of course.”

“Stanley hinted to Marley who told me that she thought you and Cole were…bumping gennies.” She winks. “And I may have run wild with my own theories there. Sorry in advance. But tell me, does he have the moves we all think he does? There’s a pool going that says he’s packing and knows how to use it.”

I groan to hide my horrid blush. “Who the hell calls sex bumping gennies?”

“So…you did.”

I glare harder.

“What? I even brought the good rosé for this. The one with the French label I can’t pronounce. It’s a double whammy of a celebration.”

“Katie.” I drag out her name to six syllables.

“Hold that thought. I’ll pour, then we’ll talk.”

“Katie.” This time I get my shit together.

She stops and looks at me, and for a woman who introduced herself to me six weeks ago by telling me that Cole rates a jalapeño at best on her emotional availability scale, Katie is, I’m learning, absolutely fluent in reading rooms.

She sets the bottle on my counter, caps it, and puts it in my fridge as though that’s where it will live now.

“Okay,” she says cautiously. “Not today. Got it.”

“I’m sorry, I just—” I just what? Since when do I care about hurting the feelings of a friendship I didn’t get a say in?

“Don’t apologize, honey. I showed up at your house with wine and an agenda. I’m a whole lotta personality. You’re allowed to have feelings about that.”

I truly am the world’s most miserable excuse for a friend ever. “Katie, it’s not?—”

“The wine’s in your fridge. When you’re ready, it’ll be there. If it takes you a week,” she pauses and taps her chin. “Well, if it takes you a week to drink it, I’ll bring back some fresh stuff because gross. But the wine will be there for you, and so will I.” She pats my arm with a hand that has way too many rings on it. “Now, I’m going to go bother someone who has the bandwidth for me today. Maybe Stanley. Stanley loves me.”

“Everyone loves you, Katie.”

She pauses, and looks over her shoulder at me, almost like she’s hiding a part of herself now.

“No, sweetheart. Not everyone. But the ones who count do.”

She clomps back down my stairs in her wedges, and that lump in my throat punches me for being a dick.

What the fuck is happening to me here at The Haven?

I stand and watch her teeter down Cole’s driveway.

That’s when it hits me. Katie Rodriguez—who I met six weeks ago and mostly tolerate—read me better in ninety seconds than Grace ever did in our years-long supposed friendship.

I can’t file this away in any of my usual places.

I don’t actually know where to put it at all.

Unable to sit still,I walk through The Haven only to land in front of Bea’s house.