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  “You’ll call me?” I repeated incredulously. He’d said he was falling in love with me, and now he was saying he’d call me?

  “Yes, Aven. I will call you. That is a normal form of communication when one is parting.”

  “How are you going to call me when my phone can only call Emma or Violet?” I shot back.

  “Your phone, of course, can make and receive calls from me.”

  He turned to go, but I grabbed his hand.

  “Landon.”

  He turned around, his eyes locking on mine, and for a moment, I saw it there, the way he’d looked at me last night, the hungry emotion in his eyes he got when his guard was down.

  I felt like it was a watershed moment for us, that whatever I said would determine whether or not I ever saw him again.

  So I said what I felt.

  “I love you.”

  The side of his mouth quirked up into a smile, one so brief I wasn’t sure if I’d actually seen it, and just like that, it was gone, his face impassive.

  “Good bye, Ms. Courtland.”

  And then he was gone.

  When I got into my apartment, Emma was standing in the kitchen, an apron tied around her waist. On the counter in front of her was a tangle of baking equipment – mixing bowls, spoons, bags of flour, containers of sprinkles and frosting.

  “Tell me you aren’t baking,” I said when I saw her.

  “I’m not baking,” she said. “What I’m doing is making a mess.” She blew her bangs out of her face, then wiped her hands on her apron and came running to me, enveloping me in a hug. “You’re home, you’re home, you’re home!”

  “I’m home,” I said warily.

  “Uh-oh,” she said, pulling back and studying my face. “That bad?”

  I filled her in on everything to do with Landon --all of it except the domination. How last night had been so perfect, how he’d told me he was falling in love with me, how I’d told him I loved him back.

  “Wow,” she said when I was done.

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?” I picked up a spoon and dragged it through the bowl of batter she was making. I didn’t care about salmonella. I didn’t care about anything.

  “For telling him you loved him?”

  “For all of it.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I think he’s older than you, and he should have known better.” She took the spoon out of my hand and licked it, then made a face. “That tastes way too sweet. Does that taste too sweet to you?”

  “No, I like it.” I took the spoon back. “You mean he should have known better than to get involved with me?” I asked.

  “Should have known better than to lead you on.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Aven.”

  “No, it’s fine. As much as I would have loved it if you’d told me that there was a chance, I need to hear the truth.”

  “Men like that are used to getting anything they want, and they’re unscrupulous about it. They’ll say and do whatever takes.” She shrugged. “That’s how it is in business, and it morphs over into their personal lives. It’s not your fault.” The timer on the oven dinged, and she reached in and pulled out a cookie sheet filled with what looked like a bunch of tiny burnt hamburgers. “Dammit,” she said.

  “What are those?” I asked, looking over her shoulder.

  “Snicker doodles. Or, they’re supposed to be.” She sighed and began trying to pry the burnt cookies off the tray with a spatula. “I have a job interview tomorrow, and the woman who’s interviewing me mentioned in an online interview that she loved snicker doodles. So I thought I could show up with some that were homemade.”

  “Forget it,” I said, taking the spatula out of her hand and dropping it into the sink. “We’re going out.”

  “What?”

  “We’re going out.”

  “Okay!” Emma clapped her hands. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. A club. A bar. Somewhere where I can get drunk and forget my troubles.”

  “You don’t get drunk.”

  “Okay, somewhere where I can get buzzed.”

  “Will you wear my red dress? The one you say makes you look like a street walker?”

  “Sure.”

  Over the next three days, I became a cliché.

  I spent my days lying in bed, eating ice cream, surfing the internet, filling out job applications, and waiting for Landon to call.

  But he didn’t.

  Not even once.

  My phone, the one he gave me, was working fine. Not only that, he must have reactivated it, since it could make calls to anyone and everyone I wanted, allowed me onto the internet, to play music, whatever. Landon must have turned it back on. But even that felt like some kind of betrayal, like he didn’t care enough anymore to even worry about my phone.

  At night, Emma and I went out and flirted with boys, got them to buy us drinks. Well, Emma did most of the flirting, and usually got stuck with whatever guy was leftover, the less-cute friend.

  Not that it mattered

  Now that I’d been with Landon, any other guy seemed boring, drab, and I wondered if what Landon said was true, that I wanted to be with him because he punished me, that it had something to do with me wanting to blame myself for what happened to my parents.

  It had been three days since I’d heard from him, and three nights of Emma and I going out to the bars, when it happened.

  It was midnight, and we were climbing the stairs to our apartment, Emma totally drunk. She’d lost her shoes somewhere along the way, and her arm was slung around me as I brought her inside.

  “This is so fun,” she said. “Isn’t this fun? We don’t need jobsss. All we need is to have fun. We’re too pretty to work.”

  “We need to have jobs,” I told her warily. “If for nothing else than the medical insurance that you’re going to need to treat whatever it is you picked up out there on the sidewalk.”

  She thought this was hilarious. “Trichamanosis!” she crowed. “Trick a whatever!” She flopped down onto the couch, giggling.

  I was getting her a glass of water when my phone rang. My heart stopped.

  Landon.

  He was the only one who would be calling this late.

  I rummaged through my bag for my phone.

  But it wasn’t Landon.

  It was Violet.

  Besides a text I’d sent her when I got back to New York, giving her my new number and telling her I’d left Vermont, I hadn’t tried to contact her. She’d written me back saying she loved me, but I’d been giving her space.

  “Violet?”

  But there was only static on the other end of the line, muddled with the sounds of the city.

  “Violet?” I said louder. “Is that you? Can you hear me?”

  A second later, the intercom buzzed, and I could hear it through the phone as well as in person.

  Violet.

  She must have been here, downstairs.

  I buzzed her up immediately.

  “That’sss very dangerous,” Emma singsonged from the couch. “Letting someone in without knowing who it is. Last time you had a visitor here it didn’t go so well.” She took a sip of her water and made a face. “Do we have any vodka?”

  But I wasn’t paying attention to her.

  I was at the door of my apartment, opening it.

  And there was Violet.

  Already standing on the landing, in front of my apartment door.

  When I saw her, I tried not to recoil in horror.

  Her lip was split, her eye purple and almost swollen shut.

  “Oh my God!” I rushed to her, helping her into the front hallway. Her body felt tiny and light as I began guiding her toward the living room. “Violet, what happened?”’

  But before she could answer, Violet collapsed, her knees going out under her as her body sprawled on the floor and her eyes rolled back into her head…

  The End of Part Six

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