How to Look Happy Read Online Free PDF Page B

again, and looks away from me, toward the dining room. “I am sorry I dumped that on you when you’d already had a bad day. I should have picked my moment better.”
    I give him an exasperated look and swipe at my cheeks with the back of my hand. “There’s not a good moment for that, Jerm,” I spit out. “Seven years we’ve been together. Seven years I’ve wasted on somebody who’s scared to death of commitment and who lies to me and says he’s ‘working late’ when really he’s out with someone else.” I make quotation marks in the air with my fingers and then, running out of steam, plop down on the big square ottoman in front of my fireplace. My head feels like an elephant is sitting on it, and I bury my face in my hands. Through my fingers, I mutter, “I am such a cliché.”
    He laughs—a real, non-sarcastic chuckle—surprising me. I lift my throbbing head to stare at him.
    “You’re not a cliché, Jen. Hardly,” he says. “Seven years and I still haven’t figured out the first damn thing about you.”
    I turn that over in my brain as he continues. “You and I both know this was never going to work,” he says. “We were complacent, but we weren’t happy.”
    His words hang in the air like a wilting balloon.
    “That’s no excuse for cheating on me,” I say after a long pause, fighting back a new round of tears and wondering if he’d cheated on me before or if this was the first time.
    “And all of this”—he gestures between himself and me, I guess indicating our argument—“is no excuse for you sabotaging me on Facebook. Brianna is my employee. I could get fired for being with her, and now everybody’s going to know about it.”
    I glare at him, incredulous. “It’s all about you, is it? In case you didn’t notice, I sabotaged myself on Facebook. And I do not remember doing it. So don’t think this was some big revenge plot. Besides, I’m not even Facebook friends with people at your office. I don’t see how they’d know about it.” I pause again, and neither of us says anything for at least a minute.
    Abruptly he stands, and I glance up at him, surprised. His eyes are focused on my lap, and my eyes follow his back down to my hands, which are clasped tightly together above my knees. He’s looking for the ring. My stomach lurches with panic when I realize I’m not wearing it, and then I have a sudden flash of memory—at some point after getting home last night, I threw it across my bedroom. I frown, and when I look back up his expression mirrors mine.
    “I think it’s best if I leave,” he says in a stony voice. “I have to get to work anyway, and I am not looking forward to it.”
    “Trust me, I know the feeling,” I say, looking him square in the eyes and rising too. Feeling numb, I walk over to the door and yank it open. He stands and stares at me for several seconds, looking like he wants to say something, but then he walks past me and through the doorway without another word.
    I slam it with a little extra force behind his retreating form, and then I stomp back over to the desk and wake up the laptop screen, cringing as I check to see who else is witness to the virtual wreckage of my life.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Passive Aggression
     
    Friday morning, I enter the front door of Greenlee Designs with my chin jutted forward and my head held high. I can feel the eyes of every person in the studio boring into me as I deposit my bag into the lower left drawer of my desk and flip open my laptop.
    Once I’ve logged in to my computer, I lift my head to see Ellie Kate watching me with pursed lips, her eyes filled with sympathy. Beyond her, Quinn’s expression is one of barely suppressed glee. Rachael doesn’t appear to be here yet. Carson is on the phone and thumbing through a catalog. Brice, Candace’s assistant and our design librarian, is busy shelving fabrics samples and isn’t paying any attention to me. A normal morning at the office. I sigh in relief, thinking maybe my