Too Good for him

LIV

I should have gone straight home.

I should have walked into my quiet apartment, thrown the brass deadbolt, and crawled under my weighted blanket until my brain stopped functioning.

Instead, I am standing on a liquor-soaked sidewalk downtown, wrapped in my wool coat and looking like a depressed librarian who just survived a mugging.

For the entire fifteen-minute taxi ride across the city, I was numb.

My chest felt hollowed out. Scraped clean.

And now that the shock is wearing off, the panic and the doubt is crashing in hard.

Did I really see what I think I saw?

I didn’t even get to see the guy’s face clearly?

Was it really Ben?

I look up at the signpost of the bar. The Static.

I’ve been to The Static exactly once in my life.

It was for Gia’s twenty-sixth birthday three years ago, and I left after an hour because a drunk guy spilled a vodka cranberry all over my leather booth.

I didn't even need to call Gia to know she’d be here tonight. It's Friday night, and this place is practically her second home.

It’s a loud downtown club. There are no armed bouncers in tailored suits like Velvet Tears. Just a long line of rowdy twenty-somethings and a bored doorman checking IDs under a flickering sign.

I don't go to clubs. I especially don't go to clubs when my two-year relationship is hanging by a thread. But if I go home to that empty apartment right now, I will lose my mind.

I push past the line, slap a twenty-dollar bill into the door guy's hand, and slip inside.

The bass hits me from all sides. It is loud, obnoxious pop music that vibrates straight into my teeth.

The air smells like cheap lime tequila and sweat.

It is the exact opposite of the sandalwood and expensive amber liquor at Velvet Tears, and I am pathetically grateful for it.

I weave through the crowd, getting shoved and elbowed by sweaty bodies until I spot her near the back bar.

Gia is pushed up against a concrete pillar. A tall guy in a tight black shirt has his hands tangled in her ink-black and silver hair, and they are aggressively making out.

I walk straight up to them and tap her on the shoulder. "Gia."

She ignores me.

I tap her harder. "Gia."

She pulls back, annoyed, wiping a smudge of lipstick off her chin. "What—?"

She freezes.

Her eyes go wide as she takes in my winter coat, my wind-blown hair, and my ghost-pale face.

"Liv?" she gasps, her hands dropping instantly from the guy's neck. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

The guy in the black shirt groans, leaning his forehead against the pillar. "Come on, babe, ignore her."

Gia doesn't even look at him. She shoves her palm flat against his chest and pushes him away.

"We're done here," she snaps.

"Are you serious?" the guy scoffs, throwing his hands up.

"Beat it, Brad, before I break your nose," she growls.

She grabs my wrist and yanks me through the crowd.

People turn to stare as we push past them.

Two girls in sequin dresses give my winter coat a dirty, judgmental look from head to toe, but Gia glares at them with such violent intensity they immediately shrink away.

She drags me straight into the women’s restroom.

It is painfully bright, fluorescent, and smells of cheap perfume and bleach.

Gia pulls me into the large handicap stall at the back and kicks the metal door shut, slamming the lock into place.

"Liv, what the fuck?" Gia demands, keeping her voice low and frantic. "It's Friday night. Where is Ben? Did he not stay over?"

The second she says his name, my chest caves in.

The tears I swallowed down in front of Klaus finally spill over.

I cover my face with my trembling hands, a humiliating, gut-wrenching sob ripping out of my throat.

"Oh my God, Liv," Gia breathes.

She steps forward and pulls me into her arms.

She doesn't care that I'm crying all over her sheer mesh top.

She just wraps her arms around me, holding me tight while I shake against the cold tile wall.

"I went to Velvet Tears," I choke out against her shoulder.

Gia’s hands freeze on my back.

She pulls back to look at my face. "You what? Are you insane?! You went there? Tonight?”

I nod.

"By yourself?! Liv, why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"I called you," I cry, wiping my wet cheeks with my wool sleeves, "but you were… busy."

"You should have told me! I would have dropped that idiot in a heartbeat!" She grips my arms. "What happened?"

Between uneven breaths, the whole nightmare spills out of me in a messy rush.

Ben ditching me for a 'work emergency,' the black town car, finding out the psycho from the coffee shop is named Klaus and owns the whole club, and the two-way mirror upstairs.

"I looked down into a private booth, Gia," I whisper, fresh tears blurring my vision. "And I thought I saw Ben. There was a blonde woman in pink lingerie straddling his lap."

A dead silence falls over the bathroom stall.

Gia’s mouth parts slightly. I watch the shock drain out of her eyes, her jaw locking so tight a muscle ticks visibly in her cheek.

She reaches past me and snatches her purse off the hook on the back of the door.

"Do you still have the VIP card?" she asks, her voice dropping to a deadly calm.

I blink through my tears. "What?"

"The card. Give it to me." She yanks the zipper of her purse open. "I am going back there, and I am going to break a glass bottle over his perfect, cheating fucking head."

"No!" I lunge forward and grab her wrist, squeezing it hard.

"Don’t try to stop me, Liv."

"Gia, stop! Listen to me!" I hold onto her arm with both hands, my heart hammering as the terror of losing everything makes my brain spin. "What if it wasn't even him?!"

Gia stops unzipping her bag and stares at me.

"Liv. You just told me you watched him through a window."

"From a whole floor above, through tinted glass, in a dimly lit room!" I rush out, my voice pitching higher as I grasp at anything that keeps my life intact. "I didn't even see his full face, Gia! I only saw his side profile for two seconds when he tilted his head back!"

"And his watch, Liv. You said he was wearing the watch you bought him."

"Do you know how many finance guys in this city own a silver chronograph?!" I let out a shaky, desperate breath, wiping under my eyes. "Wait, think about it. Klaus knew I was already paranoid about Ben because of the napkin. What if Davis at Apex really did hire Klaus to stage that whole booth with a lookalike? He kept his hand on the back of my neck so I couldn't get closer to the glass! He didn't want me to get a clear look!"

Gia doesn't say a word. The homicidal rage in her eyes slowly melts into something much worse.

Pity.

"God, I'm so stupid," I whisper, leaning the back of my head against the stall wall as regret twists in my gut. "I panicked. I slapped Klaus across the face and ran out of the club. I shouldn't have left like that. I should have demanded to go downstairs and confront the guy in the booth. Or I should have waited and talked to Ben."

"Liv..." Gia says softly.

"He’s Ben, Gia," I say, my chin trembling as a fresh tear slips down my cheek. "He’s waited two years for me without complaining once."

I squeeze my eyes shut.

My younger sister is twenty-seven now, and she still carries the scars of what happened when she was nineteen.

Watching that man blow up her youth is the exact reason I locked my heart in a vault throughout my twenties.

It’s why I swore off walking red flags like Klaus.

It’s why I waited for someone safe.

If Ben is a monster too, then safe men don't exist.

"I can't just throw away two years over a side profile in the dark," I whisper. "I'm going to talk to him tomorrow. There has to be an explanation. For tonight... please. I just want tonight to be over."

Gia stares at me for a long, quiet moment.

She looks at my tear-stained face.

Slowly, she lowers her purse.

She unlocks the stall door, steps out to the sink, and wets a brown paper towel. Stepping back into my space, she gently wipes the mascara streaks off my pale cheeks and tucks a damp, frizzy strand of dark hair behind my ear.

"Ben is a lying piece of shit, Liv," Gia says quietly, tossing the paper towel into the trash. "And deep down, you know who was in that booth. He took your trust and played on your boundaries to make himself look like a saint. Don't you dare let him talk you out of what you saw with your own eyes."

I swallow hard, staring down at the tile floor. "I just feel so stupid."

"You aren't stupid. You're just too good for him."

She grabs my hand.

Before I can protest or ask what she's doing, Gia pulls the bathroom door open and drags me right back out into the roaring bass of the club.

The strobe lights flash in blinding bursts of red, green, and blue.

She doesn't take me toward the exit. She pulls me right up to the edge of the packed, sweaty dance floor.

"Gia, what are we doing?" I yell over the music, shrinking back from the crush of bodies.

Gia turns to me, her eyes flashing dangerously in the strobes.

"If you go home right now, you’re going to sit in the dark inventing excuses for him until morning!" Gia yells back.

She reaches out and tugs my wool coat off my shoulders.

"Lose the coat, Liv!"

"No!" I gasp, immediately yanking the coat back up over my shoulders and wrapping the wool tight around my chest again.

Gia rolls her eyes, waving a hand out at the sea of sweating, grinding bodies in front of us.

"Look around, Liv!"

I blink, scanning the dark room.

"Who catches your eye?" Gia demands. "Because if Ben gets to spend tonight with some random woman… we are getting you laid."