Chapter 1

I was still catching my breath when I decided tonight was the night I'd ask Cole to marry me.

Cole and I had been together seven years, and we still couldn't keep our hands off each other. All our friends had slid into the old-married-couple thing by now: separate blankets, asleep by ten.

But Cole and I could still lock eyes across a crowded room and both know exactly how the night was going to end.

So why not make it official?

I rolled toward him. "Cole, what if we just—"

He reached past me to the nightstand, shook a cigarette out of the pack and lit it.

"Let's break up."

I thought I'd heard him wrong.

He blew smoke at the ceiling. "Honestly? I'm bored. Same bed, same woman, same everything. I'm sick of it."

"I want to try something different. Something pure. Platonic. No sex."

I lay there and stared at him.

While my brain was still stuck on the word breakup, Cole stubbed out the cigarette, got out of bed and started getting dressed like he had somewhere to be.

"Cole." I grabbed the hem of his shirt. My voice was shaking. "Seven years. You're really ending it, just like that?"

Over something this stupid?

I didn't get it. We'd fought before, plenty of times, over plenty of dumb little things. And every time, we came out closer than before.

Ten minutes ago, we'd been all over each other. How was he standing there now, saying breakup in that flat, cold voice?

He looked down at me. His eyes caught on the marks he'd left on my skin and stayed there a second, then slid away.

"I think I've explained myself pretty clearly," he said, already impatient.

"Seven years doesn't mean anything. I know every move you're going to make before you make it. Every sound, too. It's a rerun, Margot. Maybe you're not bored, but I am."

He peeled my fingers off his shirt and sighed. "Come on. I figured you of all people would get it."

"We go way back. I don't want this to get ugly. If we split clean, we can still be friends. Don't push it."

I just looked up at him. I was freezing. Something cold and heavy was lodged in my throat, and I couldn't get a single word past it.

He walked to the bedroom door. Then he stopped and turned around.

My heart jumped.

Then something small came flying at me.

It was the ring. A plain silver band I'd made him myself at a jewelry workshop for our first anniversary. He'd worn it every day for seven years. He never once took it off.

Now he tossed it at me like he was throwing out trash.

I didn't catch it. It hit the floor hard, rolled twice and disappeared under the bed. Something in my chest locked up.

"Okay. I'm heading out. Call me if you need anything." He was checking his watch. He never even saw my face.

The front door shut behind him.

The next morning, a moving crew showed up with a list.

They took everything. The whiskey room he'd spent a fortune building out a few years back, every bottle and every leather chair. His toothbrush. His slippers. They hauled it all across the courtyard to the other tower in our complex, where he owned another unit. He hadn't even bothered to move far.

By noon, there wasn't a single trace of him left in my place.

He'd been planning this long before that night.

He thought clearing out his stuff meant clearing himself out. But we'd lived in this place together for seven years. Every corner of it had us in it.

I wanted to ask him: you took your things, so what am I supposed to do with the memories? If you're leaving anyway, take those with you too.

I buried my face in the pillow and let it get soaked. I didn't move for hours.

Two days later, the news was everywhere.

Cole posted it himself, a clean, polite little announcement on Instagram about how we'd decided to part ways amicably. Our friends lost their minds.

That night, he was at his usual spot, the private room in the back of a cocktail bar downtown, with six of his boys around him.

"Dude, are you insane?" one of them said. "Margot's gorgeous. She's smart, she runs her own company, she's got a body that won't quit, and you just dump her?"

"Be honest. You're cheating, right? Some other girl?"

"No way. Not with Margot at home. Nobody out there is even in her league."

Cole lit a cigarette and let the smoke hang in front of his face. He didn't say yes. He didn't say no.

"I got bored," he said. "Every night in bed with her. Gets old."

The whole room cracked up. Everybody knew exactly what he meant.

Then one of them leaned forward. "So if you two are really done... does that mean the rest of us get a shot?"

Cole glanced at him, half smiling. "You want to go after her?"

"Go for it. Let's see if any of you can actually land her."

I know every word that was said in that room, because twenty minutes later, I had the video.

Six videos, actually. Six different angles. Every one of his friends sent me one.

And right in the middle of them was a text from Cole.

Ignore whatever the guys send you. Bunch of losers. None of them are good enough to tie your shoes.

I read it over and over. I didn't know what to say. In the end, I didn't say anything. I turned off my phone, lay down and pulled the comforter over my head.

The first week after, I forced myself out of bed.

I went to the gym. I went to Pilates. I went to the office. I went to get facials I didn't need. I packed every hour full so I'd never have one empty minute to think about Cole.

It didn't work. After seven years, almost all our friends were the same friends. People kept texting me, Wait, what happened?? I left every one of them on read.

Soon, they didn't need my answer anyway.

Cole's little line from that night, every night in bed with her, gets old, made it around our whole crowd in a matter of days.

And the girls who'd always hated me finally had their moment.

LMAO she really thought it was love. She was never his girlfriend. She was his favorite Fleshlight. He used it till he got bored and tossed it in the trash.

All those couple pics she kept posting, and look at her now. Karma's a bitch, honey.

It didn't last long.

Within a day, every one of those posts was gone. And one by one, the girls who'd written them came to find me, pale and stiff, mumbling apologies they clearly hated making.

Somebody had made them do it.

It had to be Cole.

I sat in my office for a long time, my heart racing.

Maybe this was his way of leaving the door open.