Beautiful Stranger

business and Chloe was determined to get the entire interior of their massive apartment painted while he was unable to micromanage the operation. She looked exhausted.
    “Why didn’t you just hire someone to do all of this?” I asked, looking around. “Lord knows you can afford it.”
    “Because I’m a control freak,” she said. “And stop trying to change the subject. Look, I know how that relationship slowly dragged you down, but I feel weird that I don’t know more about the real him . Bennett knew Andy through city events, but I never knew him that well, and—”
    “Because,” I said, interrupting her, “you would have seen right through him. Just like Bennett did.” The familiar pang ricocheted through my stomach at the mere thought of Andy.
    Chloe started to say something but I held up my hand.
    “Come on. I know Bennett was wary of Andy from day one, even if he didn’t think it was his place to interfere. And I think by the time I met you, even I suspected Andy was cheating. I didn’t want him to be around you, where you’d be able to see what I’d sunk to so blatantly.”
    Her eyes turned down at the corners, and I realized before she even said it what she was going to say. “Sweetie, I didn’t need to know him personally to know he was a cheating dirtbag. No one did. The only thing that helped him look decent was you.”
    I swallowed a few times, willing the tears back. “Do you think it says something about me, like I’m stupid or blind to have spent so many years with him?”
    I thought back to our first anniversary dinner at Everest, and how he arrived a half hour late and smelled strongly of perfume. Such a cliché. When I’d asked himif he’d been with someone else he’d said, “Baby, when I’m not with you, I’m always with someone else. It’s just how my life is. But I’m here now.”
    I’d assumed he meant he was always working when he was away from me. But in truth, it was probably the only time he’d been honest with me about other women.
    “No,” Chloe said, shaking her head. “You were young; he must have seemed unreal to you when you met. He’s charming as hell, Sara, that was for sure. But it’s not healthy to change everything so fast and not talk about it. Are you really okay?”
    I nodded. “I actually am.”
    “Does Andy call?”
    I stared at the paintbrush in my hand and then dropped it back in the can. “No.”
    “Does that bother you?”
    “Maybe a little. I wish I’d left and he’d realized how he messed up. It would be nice to hear him grovel. But the truth is, I probably wouldn’t answer, anyway. I would never go back to him.”
    “What did he do when you told him you were leaving?”
    “Yelled. Threatened.” I looked out the window and remembered Andy’s face contorted in rage. His anger used to make me calmer, but that last time it made something in me snap. “He threw my clothes onto the street. Pushed me out the door.”
    Chloe surprised me by dropping her paintbrush onthe plastic tarp without even bothering to look where it landed. She walked over and wrapped me in a tight hug. “You could ruin him.”
    “I suspect he’ll do that himself eventually. I just wanted out.” I smiled against her shoulder. “And I had the family attorney evict him. I think the papers liked that one. It was my damn house, remember?”

    It had been good to get it all out. Chloe wasn’t a stranger to heartbreak, and the entire time we talked about Andy, I remembered how a little over a year ago, when she’d abruptly left Ryan Media, she’d sequestered herself in her apartment and hadn’t been in contact for a week. When she finally called, she told me everything that happened between her and Bennett—how they’d started off their secret fling, and how she’d decided that she needed to leave him.
    It had been a revelatory moment for me, but in the completely wrong way. Her decision to leave her job and potentially sacrifice her relationship only strengthened my resolve to see things through with Andy. I’d wanted to work hard enough on it for both of us. The thing is, Bennett was the right guy for Chloe to work things out with. Andy would never have been that for me, not really.
    Thinking about my ex always left me with a hangover,but talking about him coiled a lead ball in my gut that wouldn’t seem to disappear no matter how many rooms I helped Chloe paint or how many miles I ran along the river later that day.
    For a brief moment I