One
Madison clutched the worn tabletop in desperation, hoping she didn’t get a splinter from the ancient wood. “No. Please. Don’t do this, Frank. You can’t leave me now. Not right before the wedding.”
“Madison, sweetie, we both know it’s over.” He shook his head apologetically. None of the hair plastered to his scalp moved. Not even in the flow of air from the fan. His butt squeaked as he shifted on the torn plastic seat of the diner booth. “We’ve grown apart. Have been for a long time. We, as a couple, don’t make sense anymore.”
“Frank, please,” she begged, barely seeing the meal set in front of her by the suddenly solemn waiter. When he was gone, she leaned forward so the other occupants in the half-filled—and long since ready to be demolished—diner wouldn’t hear her pleas for pity. “Not now, Frank.”
“Nothing will change, Madison. Let’s be honest here.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t love you anymore.”
She waved the sentiment away. How could he talk about love at a time like this? “That’s been a problem forever. But you have to hang on for a few more weeks, Frank, please. Just three more weeks, and then I’ll dump myself. Seriously. No hard feelings. I’ll walk right out of your life, no hassle.”
Frank’s expression crumpled into one of confusion. Granted, he’d probably expected she would be a puddle of tears at the moment, but he was right. They’d been growing apart. They both knew it. She’d dealt with it because of the wedding. She’d held on, ignored the loneliness, and even his extracurricular activities, all so she could breeze through the wedding and put that milestone behind her. After that, she had always intended to put a stop to the insanity.
That he would end it three weeks before the single most important event she could remember was unacceptable. Why not cut things off a few months ago, leaving her with enough time to find someone else? Or just wait a little longer? He knew the situation with the wedding. Doing this right now was a slap in the face. It wasn’t something a friend would do. Or even a normal person with an ounce of moral fiber. A person didn’t leave a desperate girl high and dry to suit their own needs. Everyone knew that.
He put his hand on the table between them, what he thought was a subtle means of quieting her. She’d always hated when he did that. It made her ragey. “I’m sorry, dumpling,” he said. Another thing that made her ragey—being called a lumpy, misshapen type of food. “Maybe you can get your brother to go with you to the wedding. But really, I don’t think it would be right, do you?”
“My brother in your place? No. That wouldn’t be right, no.” Madison leaned back in her chair, thinking. “Okay, check this out. How about we break up, like you want, but not announce it until after the wedding? That’s a happy medium, right? You do your thing, as you would, but with the exception of following through like you promised eight months ago when this came up.” She wiped her forehead and focused on simmering down for a moment. Getting hysterical was a sure way to scare any man off, and this one more than most. He’d seen her lose her temper in the past. It wasn’t pretty when she really got going. “Sorry about that. Anyway, we wait just three tiny weeks to announce our breakup, we hang out for that one evening, and then we’re done.”
“I really don’t think—”
“I mean, it’s free food. I’ll buy all your drinks. It’s even close to town. It’ll be fun.” She was back to pleading. “It’s just one day of your life, Frank. Just one day. Then you can move on. We can both move on. Or not, depending on whether we—I—want to bother. Which, as it stands, I really don’t. Men are so much effort.”
His brow rumpled and his mouth dropped open.
No, this was definitely not going how he’d thought it would.
Which made her wonder: had he timed it this way to get a bigger impact out of the whole thing? Something told her he had. He was purposely leaving her high and dry to make sure she felt the full weight of the situation.
Well. She felt it, all right. In the scorned woman sense. Nothing good ever came out of creating a scorned woman. Nothing at all. Unless disaster and chaos were the goals. In which case,