If anyone in this world was my soul mate — it was that girl.
She only lived a few floors below me in a skyrise downtown, a blessing I had been grateful for after her husband passed away. At first, I worried she’d move even farther out of town or, worse, stay in the three-bedroom suburbia hellhole of a house she’d lived in with Carlo.
But thankfully, she’d loved my idea of living in the same building. It’ll be just like college, I’d told her, and that’s exactly how it had been.
Having her just a few floors down meant I could bombard her every morning before work, or on any given evening when I wanted someone to watch trashy TV with or to go out on the town with. I was always there for her, and she was always there for me — only a few dings of an elevator separated us.
Of course, now, when I barged into my best friend’s place, she wasn’t the only one there.
Zach looked up from his tablet with a smirk when I blew through the front door of Gemma’s condo, one that looked similar to mine, though hers was smaller, had less windows, and was peppered with little specks of proof that a man lived here with her, too. She’d let me decorate her new space when she moved in, which you would think would have been a given, since I was an interior designer, her best friend, and her boss. But Gemma was a list-making, highlighting, organizing, clean-until-the-knuckles-bleed kind of gal, and it was both a feat and a high honor getting her to give up control to me.
“Ah, good morning, Belle,” Zach said when the door shut behind me, looking back to his tablet. “Coffee’s hot.”
“Where’s Gemma?”
“Shower,” he said, lifting a brow when I didn’t immediately move for the coffee pot like usual. “Everything okay?”
“No,” I said on a huff, flopping down at the kitchen island in the bar stool next to his.
I liked Zach. I had since the moment I met him. He was sexy in the ex-football player, self-made entrepreneur, boy-next-door kind of way. But right now, I was irritated with every man in the world.
I grabbed his tablet and tossed it across the room and onto the couch.
“Hey,” he said, but it was on a chuckle and with his smile still in place.
“Jordan just dumped me.”
Zach’s brow rose again. “I didn’t realize you were dating.”
“We weren’t.”
“Oh.”
I blinked.
Zach smiled uncomfortably.
And then I sighed, dragging a hand over my face. “You don’t get it.”
“Afraid not,” he agreed on a laugh.
“What good are you, Zach?”
“Oh, he’s completely useless,” Gemma said, joining us from the bedroom. Her long, brunette hair was still wet from the shower, dripping water over her petite shoulders as she bent to press a kiss on Zach’s cheek. “But I keep him around because he’s kind of cute.”
“Kind of?” Zach said, pinching her side. Gemma giggled and pretended like she wanted to get away, but in the end, she wound up wrapped up in his arms and leaning her hip against his thigh. She was a tiny little thing in his arms, and they might as well have had heart-eye emojis for faces in that moment with the way they looked at each other all gooey-ooey like.
I wanted to gag as much as I wanted to swoon. Those two were so cute together it made me nauseous.
Gemma had been through enough shit to last her a lifetime, and I truly believed Zach was her reward for never calling her ex out on his transgressions. The motherfucker cheated on her and then told her he had terminal cancer. She never even got to call him out on it. Or rather, she chose not to, deciding instead to stand by his side as he lived out the last months of his life.
The other woman showed up to the funeral, and Gemma didn’t kill her.
File this under reasons Gemma is better than me.
It took a while for her to heal, but a couple years ago, I convinced her to get on a dating app. The premise was that she would take a new, different guy to each Chicago Bears home game. Gemma was a season pass holder, and to be honest, I hated sports so much that this was partly to get her out and dating again, and partly to make sure it wasn’t me who’d have to fill the seat next to her.