Page 137 of Sing For Me

He stares at me for a long moment before he finally shakes his head. “You’ll be hearing from mine as well,” he snaps, then grabs his shit from the table and stomps out of the room and down the stairs.

Marissa and I wait in silence until the front door slams. She runs over to the stairway and peeks down, confirming that he’s really gone, then turns back to me, a huge grin on her face.

“Why in the hell are you smiling?” I ask. “That was brutal.”

“No, that was badass.” She darts back to the kitchen and throws her arms around me. “I am so fucking proud of you.”

The minute her arms go around me, all the emotion of the last eight hours crashes into me, and I start to cry.

“Oh, sweetie.” She rubs my back and I almost laugh at the immediate switch from fierce Marissa dropping f-bombs to the gentle friend now soothing me and murmuring comforting words in my ear. “It’s going to be okay.”

“It’s really ridiculous, you know,” I gulp out. “I just set fire to the longest professional relationship of my life and the only thing I’m really upset about is getting dumped by a guy I dated for a few weeks.”

“We both know it was a hell of a lot more than the time you were technically dating,” she murmurs. “It’s okay to be upset about this, Eva. It’s okay to want to mope and cry and wallow with your friends.” Her arms tighten. “But you’re going to be okay. You’re the strongest person I know.”

I do laugh at that. “Oh, yeah, that’s me. Look at how strong I am.”

“Hey.” She pulls back to glare at me but I barrel ahead.

“Everything Dennis said is true. Ihavebeen holed up here for more than a year licking my wounds. Ihavebeen childish.”

“No.” Her voice is every bit as sharp as it had been with Dennis. She’s pissed, I realize, but this time the anger is directed at me. “You’re brave, damn it. You went through something hard, Eva! Something really hard! And yeah, it took you some time to deal with it. And maybe you had times where you wanted to hide. But you never cut off your friends. You never isolated yourself or gave up on your recovery.” She shakes her head. “You even started dating, Eva. That’s huge! How can you not see how much you’ve grown in the last few months?”

My face crumples again. “But it wasn’t enough. He still left.”

Her expression is sympathetic and fierce all at once. “But that’s not your fault, sweetie. You can’t hold yourself responsible for anyone else’s actions. You tried. You were willing to fight.” She squeezes my upper arms. “And that is absolutely something to be proud of.”