My Boyfriend Cheated With My Best Friend, So the Pack Law Handed Me to His Brother novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Stand Down

"I brought your things," Bianca said.

She held the box out over the gate with both hands.

Nineteen years of friendship fit into one cardboard carton.

I could see my green sweater on top, and the picture frame from my sixteenth birthday, and the cheap bracelet we bought together on the boardwalk when we were nine.

The shed hands had come to the roll door.

There were four of them, men who shuck beside me every day, and nobody went back inside.

"I didn't ask for them," I said.

"You'd have wanted them." She smiled.

"I thought I'd say it to your face, since you left so fast. I want you to hear it from me."

"Hear what?"

"I'm not sorry." She said it lightly, and she was watching the men behind me.

"You didn't want him, Zia. You wanted to be wanted by a Cabral. I'm the one who actually knows what he likes."

"Is that why you were on his sofa on his birthday?"

"I was on his sofa because he asked." The lipstick curved.

"And because they gave me an office with a window, and you stayed on the pier with your scale, and you never once wanted anything bigger."

I looked at her.

She was wearing the camel coat she had been saving for since March.

"They gave you the office," I said slowly.

"Four months ago, over three women who have been at the plant for ten years. I know what I'm worth."

"Who's they?"

Her eyes slid away for a heartbeat.

"Management," Bianca said.

I put that away, because it was strange, and because I had no room for it.

Behind me, one of the shed hands said, "Come on, Zia," under his breath.

I took the box.

It weighed almost nothing.

I set it on the stump where we keep the ice scoop, took the green sweater out, and held it up to the light.

"You borrowed this in tenth grade," I said, "and gave it back with a stain on the sleeve."

"Zia."

"You never did get the stain out."

I dropped it back in the carton.

"I weigh scallops for a living, Bianca. Forty-one pounds a tote, dry weight."

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