My Best Friend Changed Boyfriends Weekly... Until She Chose My Ten-Year Fiancé novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: You Always Come Back

Edgar is already in the apartment with his mother and a story about a dare. Ginny packs two bags in front of the neighbors, hands back her key, and finds Willem at the curb with her ring and something to say about day six.

Edgar beat me to the apartment.

He had a car waiting at the Arden, and I had a cab that stopped at every red light in Chicago.

When I opened the door, he was sitting on the arm of the couch with a glass of water, looking patient.

His mother was in the kitchen doorway, still in her pearls.

"Gin," he said. "Sit. Let me explain."

"No."

I walked straight past him to the bedroom and pulled my suitcase out from under the bed.

It was the same suitcase I had packed for Denver two hours earlier.

I hadn't unpacked it.

Edgar followed me and leaned on the door frame.

"It was a dare, Gin. The guys bet Mal she couldn't get a rise out of you. That's all it was."

"You put your hand on her hip."

"For the photo."

"You sent me 'love you' while you did it."

"Because I do love you."

He said it so smoothly that I nearly checked my own face to see if I believed him.

Diane came in behind him and put one cool hand on his shoulder.

"Virginia, dear," she said. "Men are men. That girl has been in and out of this family's life for ten years, and she has never once had good judgment."

"She's the one who sat at your table at Christmas."

"Which is exactly why I'm not surprised she would take the chair next to my son."

I pulled open the closet.

I took my scrubs, my winter coat, my father's watch on its little stand.

Edgar's voice stayed gentle, which was worse than if he had shouted.

"The lease is in my name. Your things are all over this place. Where are you even going to go tonight?"

"Anywhere."

"Your mother will be so upset."

"I'll call her myself."

"Gin, we've been together since we were nineteen." He spread his hands. "You're not going to throw it away because Mallory pulled a stunt."

My phone buzzed on the bed.

It was Edgar, texting me from six feet away: "Please don't do this. Come back to me."

Mallory had said not to answer anything he sent.

I turned the phone face down.

Edgar saw me do it, and his jaw went tight for the first time all night.

I zipped the suitcase and took the second bag from the hall closet.

In the living room, the neighbor from 4C had opened her door to see what the noise was.

She held a very small dog.

The doorman had come up in the elevator with a package and stood there holding it.

Edgar stepped in front of the front door.

"Leave the key," he said.

"It's your apartment."

"Then leave the key."

I took it off my ring and put it in his palm.

His fingers closed on it, and for a second his face looked like a stranger's.

"You always come back," he said, low, so only I could hear. "You'll be back by Friday. You always are."

I thought about the four fights we'd had in ten years.

Each one had ended with me on his doorstep with something baked.

"Move," I said.

He stepped aside.

Diane said to my back, "That ring was in our family before it was in your drawer."

"It's not in my drawer," I said. "I left it on the cake."

The doorman carried my second bag to the elevator without being asked.

On the sidewalk the night air smelled like rain, and I stood there with two bags and no place to go.

A gray pickup was parked at the curb with its hazards on.

Willem Hartigan leaned against the door in his work jacket, turning something small over in his fingers.

It was my ring.

"You left this on the cake," he said.

"I did that on purpose."

"I know. But Edgar's mother was watching that cake like a hawk, and the ring was going to disappear." He looked at it. "It's a good stone. You ought to be the one who decides what happens to it."

I took it from his hand.

It was a size too small and warm from his pocket.

"Why are you here?"

"Because I was her boyfriend last week," he said.

He said it plainly.

"Seven days. And I never got a straight word out of her about what she was doing."

A cab went by with its light on, and I almost raised my hand.

"I need to tell you what she did on day six," Willem said.

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