One Good Friend Deserves Another by Lisa Verge Higgins Read Free Book Online Page B

could see the effort he was making to focus on her face.
    “Dhara’s been tight as a clam.” She curled her legs up under her. “I had no idea your situation was so serious. At her engagement party last week, I confronted her, but she didn’t say a word about you.” Well, Kelly thought, except for that unbelievable tidbit that Cole had asked her to marry him and she’d said no. “She certainly didn’t say anything about an eviction.”
    Cole went unnaturally still. His pupils constricted, making his striking eyes all the more green. He looked like he’d just received a fierce right hook and was struggling to regain some sort of equilibrium.
    “Hey.” She pushed the hopeless frizz of her hair out of her eyes and leaned into him. “Are you okay?”
    His lips moved, but no sound came out. He had the distressed, tight-faced look of a landlubber on his first deep-ocean voyage. She glanced at the Star Trek throw blanket, an old present from the girls, already so thin from age that she feared the threadbare split by Spock’s face would rip entirely if she washed it any more. She cast a swift glance toward the sink, wondering if she had enough time to fetch a bucket from under the counter before he hurled.
    He tried to say something, but it came out garbled. Then he visibly took hold of himself.
    “En…engagement?”
    Kelly sucked in a long, slow breath. She covered her mouth with her hand. She’d just assumed he knew…assumed it was the news of the engagement that sent him on this bender. But now, thinking about it, Kelly wondered whom he would have heard the news from. After the breakup, he’d isolated himself. If he wasn’t talking to her , then he wasn’t talking to any of the girls.
    She was such an idiot.
    “I’m so sorry, Cole.” She spoke through her fingers. “I just…I just assumed the news of the engagement is what brought you to my apartment after so much time.”
    Cole planted his elbows on his knees and then sank his head in his hands. She reached over and rubbed his back. She could feel the nubs of his vertebrae against her palm.
    “When?” His voice had gone raw and husky. “When did this happen?”
    “The engagement party was last Friday. It’s…it’s an arranged marriage.”
    “Arranged.”
    “We tried an intervention,” she said in a rush. “I mean, this was the one thing she swore she would never do. I still don’t understand it. None of us do. We keep calling her, trying to get her to talk. But she just keeps stubbornly insisting that this is what she wants. It’s exasperating.”
    “Man,” he said, lifting his head, his elbows splayed on either side as he stretched back against the couch. “This is just fucking perfect. You sure you don’t have any scotch?”
    “No.”
    “Wine?”
    “Cole—”
    “Arsenic?”
    Kelly squeezed his knee. “All I’ve got is tea,” she said, as the sound of a screaming kettle came from the kitchen. “Tea and a whole lot of time.”
    When she returned five minutes later carrying two mugs of steaming chamomile, Cole looked, if possible, more haggard than before. The news had sobered him up. He barely acknowledged her return when she slid the mug across the coffee table toward him. He stared into the steam as if he could read his future in the milky fluid.
    “Why don’t we start,” she said, sinking onto the couch beside him, “with the eviction.”
    “It’s what usually happens when you don’t pay rent.”
    “Okay.” She sipped the tea tentatively, a bit too weak. “Why would you ever forget to pay your rent on that fabulous two-bedroom with the fantastic view over the East River?”
    “Because, when you lose your job, you don’t have any money.”
    She tightened her grip on the warm cup. He’d been a trader on Wall Street since he’d earned his MBA, moving up the ranks by flipping from one bank to another, amassing an impressive portfolio of private and institutional clients, as well as a nice little fund of his