see one of them at this point. I’m too low for girl talk.
I’m too low for anything but sitting on the cold tile, leaking tears and shoveling sugar into my mouth until my tongue goes numb.
I smack my lips.
Nope.
Not numb yet.
I’m scraping my spoon along the side of the now mostly empty jar when a male voice rumbles from the other side of the door, “Hello? Are you all right in there?”
I huddle closer to the ground, hunching my shoulders around my ears, hoping whoever it is will go away if I’m quiet. I pull in a breath and hold it until my lungs begin to ache.
“I know you’re there, Colette,” the voice says, surprising me. “I heard you crying on my way up the stairs.”
The voice knows my name, which means…
I knit my forehead, making my tear-swollen eyes ache. “Zack?” I croak.
“Yeah. How are you?”
“Fine,” I lie, my voice cracking in the middle of the word.
“You don’t sound fine.”
I sniff, struggling to pull myself together. “Summer allergies. They’re bad this year.”
He grunts, and silence falls for a moment before he says, “I ran into Fernando at Chippy’s.”
Fresh tears sting the back of my nose. “Did he…?” I swallow, but I can’t keep the words from my lips, “Did he ask you to check on me?”
“Um…no. But I heard about the breakup. I’m sorry.”
My lips turn down hard. I should have known better. Fernando doesn’t care if I’m sad anymore. He made that abundantly clear when he shouted at me for an hour and then stormed out, taking everything in his overnight drawer with him.
I scrape another bite of fluff from the jar and stick it in my mouth, talking around the spoon. “Yeah. We broke up. He hates me more than cheeseburgers.”
Zack grunts again. “I didn’t know he was a vegetarian.”
“He’s not. He thinks they’re symbolic of everything that’s wrong with our out-of-control consumer culture.” I go back for more sugar, adding in a thin voice, “He also hates donuts.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a piece of shit. No offense.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m the piece of shit.”
“You’re not a piece of shit.” He sighs. “Can I come in?”
“No, I am a piece of shit, Zack. I am. I ruined everything. I returned the diamond bracelet he bought me for my birthday to the jewelry store and used the money to buy sperm.” I swallow hard. “Because I’m a sperm junkie who will do anything to get my fix.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too. Or something like that, anyway.”
I jerk my head up, the words penetrating my misery haze.
Creaking to my feet, I pad across the kitchen and down the short hallway to my apartment’s front door, pulling it open to reveal a drop-dead gorgeous rock star in a sky-blue tee shirt and faded black jeans that cling to his muscular legs. Zack’s wavy auburn hair is tousled and standing on end, but even rumpled and sporting at least a day’s worth of stubble, he’s take-your-breath-away handsome.
He’s going to make some woman very happy someday.
The sight of him—so lovely, with concern in his kind brown eyes—only reminds me of what I’ve lost. My own beautiful man dumped me so hard I’m still reeling from the blow twenty-six hours later.
Oh, and apparently, he hates me so much that he’s regaling the town with news of my spooge betrayal.
“He told you that I went to the sperm bank behind his back?” I rasp in a grief-weary voice.
Zack shrugs. “Not exactly.”
I squint up at him, confused. I need to stop crying. It’s affecting my ability to process information.
“I overheard him talking to someone else,” Zack says. Glancing over my shoulder, he adds, “Would it be okay if I came in? I’m pretty sure your neighbor is listening at her door. She had it cracked a second ago.”
I sniff, shrugging in the general direction of the nosy but very sweet Mrs. Simpson’s door. “I don’t care. I don’t have any pride left. I cried it all out.” I lean around Zack, adding in a louder voice, “Did you hear that, Mrs. Simpson? Fernando broke up with me, and I can’t stop crying.”
“Sorry to hear that, sweetie.” The older woman’s door opens a smidge, and her wrinkled face and dark brown eyes appear. “But he was never good enough for you anyway. You’ll find someone better, no doubt in my mind.”
My face crumples. “Thanks. But I don’t think so.”
“Sure you will,” Mrs. Simpson says, cutting a sharp look Zack’s way. “But not that one. He looks