hungry,” I tell him, waving the cookies away. The truth is I’ve lost my appetite, so while I’d normally be tucking into one, this time I don’t feel like it. At least this way I don’t have to deal with the pre-cookie shame and calorie-reduction calculations.
“Where’s Sandra?” I ask, changing the subject off of cookies and onto my other sister.
“She’s out with her friends,” my mother says, and I swear there’s some kind of jab in there about me.
While I was a bookish loner growing up and have just a handful of good friends, Sandra is the life of the party and is very social. More than that, she’s spiteful. Whenever she’s back in town for the holidays or some family gathering, she always goes to her old watering holes so she can show off. Now she’s known to the world as Cassandra Stephens, an accomplished actress with her own STARmeter on IMDB, and she loves rubbing her success in the faces of those who didn’t believe in her. I don’t blame her one bit. I often dream of the day I might do the same, shove any crumb of success in the face of all those people who called me a freak while growing up.
“Can I just say one thing?” Angie asks, appearing beside us, holding a glass of wine.
“Angie,” my father warns because we all know it’s never just one thing when it comes to her, and whatever it is will probably hurt. She takes after our mother. I’m already wincing.
“No, really, it needs to be said,” Angie says.
I sigh. “What?”
May as well get this over with because I figured this would be coming.
“I knew that boy was no good,” she says. “I knew it from the moment you met him. I mean, come on. His name is Cole Masters. He sounds like a villainous douchebag from a show on the CW.”
“Douchebag!” Tabby yells, even though I know she has no idea what it means.
“Angie, your language,” my mother says, more for the fact that she hates vulgarity rather than any swearing in front of her grandchild. “You’re more civilized than that.”
As for my sister calling my ex-fiancé a douchebag, well, I can’t argue with her. A month ago I would have defended him, but now there’s no going back to that.
“I know,” I say, my heart heavier than ever. I hate that everything Angie had been saying from the beginning was right.
I met my fiancé … okay, ex, just a year ago.
We were at a mutual friend’s birthday party in Bedstuy.
Cole is handsome as all get out. Movie star handsome. Even Sandra said he should be in films. But Cole was all about New York money and had huge success with an app and now heads his own company, all at the age of twenty-seven.
He was also very enigmatic and persuasive and I fell for him hook, line, and sinker. The fact that he wanted me, just a lowly writer with more curves than straight lines instead of the size-zero Instagram models with pillows for lips that were throwing themselves at him, took me for surprise. I suppose I managed to charm him as much as he charmed me.
Our romance was a whirlwind that turned into a tornado that ended up in us getting engaged after only six months.
And exactly one week ago, Cole pulled me aside in our shared apartment in Brooklyn and told me he wanted to call off the engagement. He wasn’t sure about the marriage thing anymore but he wanted us to stay together regardless.
I told him I’d think about it. Went for a long walk to the river and back.
Managed to grow a spine for the first time in a year.
Told him if he didn’t want to marry me now, he probably wouldn’t later. And yeah, I will fully admit we got engaged too fast, but I wasn’t about to still stick around in a relationship with him when he didn’t want anything more.
Which meant, in the end, it was my fault that I had to move out of the apartment and sleep on my friend Brielle’s couch for the last few days, and also my fault that I lost the man that I loved.
Then again, if I really loved Cole, wouldn’t I have chosen to stay with him even if he didn’t want the commitment?
I just don’t know anymore.
But Angie seems to know. She has that look on her face, and it’s not just that her cheeks are raging pink like