You've Been Replaced, First Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Net Zero

Kendrick offers two thousand dollars and a silence clause for an eight-thousand-four-hundred invoice, and Annora arrives with pastries to say she is already engaged.

I spent the night on the cot in the back of my corner of the sign shop, with the banker's box under my head.

Theda was on shift at the ER until seven, and I would not call her from a hallway at midnight to cry.

So I didn't cry at all.

At six a.m. someone knocked on the glass of the studio door, politely.

I knew the knock.

Kendrick stood outside in his camel coat, holding two coffees and a manila folder.

He looked rested.

I let him in because I wanted to see his face when I said no.

"You scared me last night," he said, and set a coffee on my workbench.

"I scared you."

"You wrote an invoice at my birthday party, Ellory." He said it gently, as if he were helping me. "In front of my investors."

"You thanked me for the rehearsal in front of your investors."

He sighed.

"I did it publicly because it was kind. Annora needed to see I wasn't hiding anything, and you needed to hear it in a room where you couldn't make a scene."

"I made no scene."

"No," he said. "You were very good about it."

He opened the folder and slid out a check and two pages.

"Two thousand now. That covers your materials, and it's generous."

"The invoice says eight thousand four hundred."

"And the second page says you'll stop discussing the Annora Room, me, or the party. Mutual, of course."

He held out a pen.

"Sign, and we all move on."

The door to the next unit rattled open, and a man ducked through it with a mug in his hand.

He was big and bearded, with sandy hair buzzed short and sawdust to his elbows.

I knew him from the bar last night, and from the hallway for two years, where he mostly nodded at me over a table saw.

His name was Maddox Rask.

He leaned on my door frame and drank his coffee.

"Morning, Marlow," he said.

Kendrick's smile tightened a notch.

"Maddox. We'll settle your bar after the opening."

"You said that three weeks ago."

"I said it with feeling," Kendrick said, and Maddox laughed once, short and honest, because it was a good line and he didn't like that it was.

I picked up the check.

I turned it over and wrote on the back in my best hand.

"Received on account, two thousand dollars. Balance due, six thousand four hundred. E. Kowalski."

Then I took a photo of it with my phone, front and back.

"What are you doing?"

"Banking it." I held it out. "You'll want the original to deposit. I'll keep the picture."

"You're not signing the second page."

"No."

"Ellory." He lowered his voice. "Be sensible. Who else do you think hires you at that rate?"

"People who paid me last year."

"Your name was on my window for three weeks, and nobody knew it. That was a favor, not a cost."

Maddox set his mug down on the bench.

He didn't say a word.

He just stood there taking up the doorway, and I was glad of him in a way I couldn't have explained.

The street door chimed.

"Don't tell me I missed it," said a warm low voice. "I brought almond croissants."

Annora Bremer came in out of the cold in a long camel coat, a match to his, with a white paper bag held out like a gift.

Her hair was pinned up now, and she looked like she'd slept the night in silk.

"Ellory," she said, and her eyes went soft with feeling. "I'm so sorry we're meeting like this."

"It's fine."

"It isn't, but it's kind of you to say." She put the bag on my bench, beside the check. "I wanted to say it to your face. Kendrick told me so much about you."

"He did."

"All the good things." She pressed her fingers to her chest. "I think we could be friends. Truly. You taught him so much."

Kendrick put an arm around her waist, and she leaned into it, and they were both smiling at me.

"We have news," Annora said, and held up her left hand.

The ring was a pear-shaped diamond, bigger than anything I'd ever lettered a price on.

"He asked me last night, after everyone left."

My coffee had gone cold in my hand.

"He said the most beautiful thing," she went on. "About a table big enough for everyone we'd become."

I knew that speech.

He had said it to me in our kitchen last March, in his socks, when I asked him where this was going.

I had cried into his shirt.

"I said yes," Annora said happily. "It worked on me so well."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend