When Stars Collide (Second Chance Romance #2) - Sara Furlong-Burr Page 0,116
what I would have given to her had our roles been reversed. It was good, sound advice. The safe advice any friend would impart. Except there was one problem. My heart was torn directly down the middle; one half belonging to Peter and the other half to Phineas. There was no following it. It was rooted, anchored by indecision and strife. Instead, my heart was waging an internal war, threatening to rip itself in half and leave me torn apart in the process.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Since when do you like coffee? Better yet, since when do you wear turtlenecks?”
Jo looked up from her phone, startled. Since receiving her text summoning me to the cozy little coffee shop a block from our apartment, I’d wondered what was up. This wasn’t like Jo at all, awkwardly asking me to accompany her to such a subdued locale. Curious, I searched her face to see what I could glean, whether her expression gave anything away. It didn’t. I took a seat at the high-top table Jo had selected.
“I don’t know. I’m expanding my horizons, I guess. Can’t a girl try new things?” When she spoke, I caught something different in her voice—a nervousness.
“So, you’re trying men, then?”
“What? God, no,” she scoffed, genuinely disgusted.
An animated person by nature, she made exaggerated hand gestures when answering my question, revealing a small heart tattoo on her wrist. I smiled. The sight of that tattoo confirmed what I had suspected the content of this meeting would be about.
“Are you going to tell me why you brought me here, or make me play twenty questions?”
“Can’t a roommate just ask her other roomie out for coffee?”
I stared at her, my eyebrow raised.
“Okay, okay, you’re right. Put your brow down. Madison and I have been seeing each other exclusively for a couple months.”
“No!” I held my hand over my heart, feigning shock. “I’m all verklempt. What a total shock.”
Jo sighed, annoyed. “You can be such a dick sometimes, you know that?”
“I must say, I’ve been called many things before, but a dick is a first.”
“And it won’t be the last.” Jo took a cautious sip from her coffee as though testing it to make sure it had sufficiently cooled down to a more tolerable temperature before taking a sizable gulp. “I know I haven’t exactly been discreet since Madison and I started seeing each other.”
“Discretion really has never been your thing,” I agreed.
“I appreciate transparency.”
“And I appreciate it when people wear pants when they walk around my apartment.”
“That was like a half-dozen times. Tops.”
“A half-dozen times too many.”
“Okay, so back to why we’re here,” Jo continued. “I’m— Christ, I’m not good at this. Look, I really care about Madison.”
“Wow, that’s saying something for you.”
“I know, right? It’s a weird feeling. But Maddie and I have been talking, and we feel like maybe we should take our relationship to the next level and move in with each other.”
“Oh.” This time, I was genuinely surprised. “As in she moves into our apartment?”
Jo chuckled. “No. More like I move into her apartment. She lives closer to my office. It would cut my commute in half.”
I nodded, trying to absorb everything I’d just heard. “I’m happy for you. Jo, that’s great.”
I was happy for her, truly. What I wasn’t looking forward to was finding, interviewing, living with, and getting to know a whole new roommate. It had taken Jo and I weeks to get comfortable with each other enough to finally get to know and then eventually become friends with each other.
“Really? You’re not upset that I’m moving out?”
“Why would I be upset? It’s not like I expected we would live together for the rest of our lives.”
“I know, but now you’re going to have to find a new roommate.”
“Which can be done in an hour online. It’s New York. People are always looking for places to stay.”
Jo relaxed her shoulders, visibly relieved. “I plan on staying the next two months like we agreed when I moved in, and after that, I’ll pack up. Just don’t rent my room out before then.”
“No promises.”
“Ha-ha. Who knows, maybe we’ll both be moving out in two months.”
“What do you mean?”
“Things are going well with you and Phineas, aren’t they? Play your cards right and you’ll be moving into his ultra-fancy digs in no time.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I answered her, my eyes wandering to the window and the pedestrians outside.