Author's Note: Summary for those who had to skip the last chapter to miss the triggery stuff: Logan confessed that at Shelly Pomroy's party, he was turned on by watching Veronica kissing and dancing with people and he was wrecked by the thought that he was with Cindy the easy freshman in the downstairs bedroom, pretending she was Veronica when he could have been protecting Veronica. He also thought that Veronica was drugged by Madison on purpose and late in the night, because Madison was jealous of Veronica making out with Dick. When he found out Veronica had already been drugged when he did the salt lick with her, he pretty much lost his shit. Veronica, knowing he wouldn't accept her forgiveness, kicked him out to go to a hotel in hopes that then he would feel he'd been punished enough to let this go. She also called for help, and you're about to find out WHO she called.

Disclaimer for mention of indirect self harm.

Chapter 16: Absolution - Part III

Veronica

I blast into Dr. Eugenie Lev's office without knocking. She's writing something at her desk, across the room from the sitting area where we had therapy, years ago. At least for the few weeks before she kicked me out of therapy and told me to come back when I was there for a better reason than winning a bet with my husband.

"You haven't been taking my calls."

"You're not my client, so why would I?" She keeps writing. "I stopped taking clients who didn't want to change twenty years ago."

"Yes, but my husband is your client and he's losing his fucking mind right now. Which I am pretty darn sure makes this is your area of expertise." I've been calling her all night, and I coded the last three as an emergency with her answering service.

She looks up, considers me for a moment, then goes back to her notes. "If he wants to talk to me about whatever fight you two had, he knows my number."

I take a seat without an invitation, fighting to be civil. I need her help, and it's not her fault I want to kick, bite, or electrocute any living person who gets close to me right now.

"He won't call. He's freaking out and if you have been listening for a single sixty-dollar minute of your therapy sessions, you would know that every impulse he has when he's like this will only ruin his life faster."

I have had a long, long night. I went down to the police department and put on a whole dog and pony show—I can't even remember what line of bullshit I fed them to make sure they'd be on the lookout for Logan last night, for reasons they thought were in their best interests but were really in mine. I picked up the phone to call someone at least a dozen times, and put it back down again. This is too private and I can't…I just can't live with the idea of something that hurts Logan this much being known by any of our friends or family. I cleaned our house, from the vomit on the balcony down to the lightbulbs and the undersides of drawers. At three in the morning, I gave up on any boundaries I've ever had and tracked Logan's phone.

To the Camelot.

The hotel every cheating husband in Neptune goes to in order to bang a floozy. I would know. I have glossy 8x10s of all those floozies and their most private parts. It's the oldest page in Logan's playbook, to screw someone else when he feels like he's lost my love. He's very, very good in bed and I imagine to some people, that could feel like love again, for an instant. Also, when his first impulse is to hurt himself, the deepest way he can hurt himself is to hurt me.

I hate to picture him with the kind of women who use him for his pretty face and beautiful body and full wallet, at any time. But now? Tonight? When he's breaking apart and he won't even let me touch him? It makes any hope of sanity I've ever had a distant tissue of a memory.

Except I don't believe it. I don't believe, even at his most self-destructive, that he could make himself touch another woman right now.

Logan would never stay at the Camelot as a hotel—it's too cheap and disgusting for his snooty standards. But it's also where we had our first kiss, so staying there, rolling around in all the cheap and disgusting, torturing himself with those memories…that I can see. I really, really hope that's the correct scenario.

Either way, the love of my life is at the fucking Camelot, the only person on earth who is legally bound to keep our secrets is across this desk, and whether or not she hates me, she's done wonders for Logan. Even I'll admit that.

He trusts her, even though he hates nearly every human on this planet, and keeps his secrets even from the five people he actually likes. That's why I need her, and that's why I'm not leaving here until I have her.

She's been quiet, staring me down for a very long time. I haven't blinked. But then, neither has she.

Now, she folds her hands. I notice that her finger still holds the dent of a long-worn wedding ring. It already had that dent two years ago when she kicked me out of therapy and it hasn't faded a bit.

"Here's the thing," she says. "Your husband would do anything on earth for his marriage to you. He would commit murder. He would move mountains using only a teaspoon. He would drive a Honda. He hates your house, by the way. Did you know that? It's tiny and has no pool and he thinks it's basically kissing cousins to a shack. He just got it so he could continue slumming it with you and you wouldn't be uncomfortable with all the marble. And he's never complained for a single day about that, or any of the other shitty houses and towns he lived in while he was following you around during your half-assed attempt at becoming an FBI agent. That's just the kind of man he is, for you."

She pauses, the light gleaming on her steel-gray hair.

"But you, on the other hand. I've never seen any evidence that you would lift a single finger outside of your own desires for him, or your marriage. So no, Veronica. I won't help you."

My eyes flare. I have had a very long, very ugly, and sleepless night. "Are you fucking kidding me? You owe him. I know damn good and well you bought an entire beach house on what he's paid you for therapy. Seven thousand two hundred square feet, infinity pool, dual hot tubs on each end. Installed a gun safe behind the floor-to-ceiling shoe panel in the closet."

I lean forward in my chair, because I know things about her she thinks no one knows. No one ever thinks I'll know as much as I do.

"You're ex-Mossad. And yet when your daughter ran off to Mexico with her junkie boyfriend, it was me who tracked her down. It was Logan who waded into that orgy of a party house and came back out with a black eye and your daughter. It was me who bandaged his knuckles. Me who smuggled your daughter back over the border because she hadn't exactly brought her passport on the drug runner's boat that drove her there."

I can feel the fire lighting my eyes and igniting goosebumps down my arms. She better fucking feel my determination, too, or I'll make her feel it.

"You owe Logan. And you're going to help me to help him, or I will dig until I find every body you have ever buried, and I'm not talking about the two in Rahat." I smile, viciously. "Those are just the appetizer."

Dr. Lev looks a little shaken, for the first time since I met her. And she should. It took me six weeks of the deepest digging I've ever done to find out about those murders. Not to mention to uncover the sealed documents about her career in the Israeli intelligence agency.

"You think I'm bluffing, but I know everything, even though you were in such deep cover in the Mossad, your wife never even knew. I know about the baby your parents took from you when you were sixteen. I know when you changed your name and moved to Neptune, you intended to retire. Six months later, you opened your therapy practice again. You don't take any crap, you've seen some shit more important than trophy wives' anxiety disorders, and you don't do it for the money." I gesture to her. "That's why I hand-picked you for my husband. And that's why I dug until I had an iron-clad insurance policy on you."

The smile I give her this time is even colder than the last.

"You think I'm going to let someone fuck around in my husband's head without knowing everything about them? You think I'm going to let them know his secrets? Logan, who has been the target of every gold digger, paparazzo and starlet on the take since he wore out his first teething ring?" My voice drops. "You don't know me. Don't forget that. And you have no idea what I will do to you if you ever hurt him."

"Ah." She smiles slightly. "I think I see it now, at least a little bit."

I don't know what she's talking about. Whether she means she gets what he sees in me, or she gets that she didn't know me half as well as her patronizing little therapist looks tried to imply. I really don't care which.

"And one more thing. He doesn't hate our house. He loves our fucking house." I cross my legs and mentally congratulate myself for my maturity in not adding the word "bitch" to the end of that statement.

Dr. Lev actually breaks into a laugh. A real one. Who knew her vocal chords could even form a laugh? "Yes, well, it's good to see your insecurities don't cloud your judgement all the time. He does love that house."

I refuse to as much as blink in case it gives away my surprise that the house comment was a test.

"But answer me this, Veronica. Have you ever considered asking for what you need rather than bargaining or bluffing for it?"

"I did ask. You told me to fuck off."

"No, I told you that you didn't want it badly response was to try to manipulate me into wanting it more, not to prove to me it was something that was intrinsically important to you."

"Same thing."

"It's really not." She shrugs and flips her notebook closed with one finger. "But I tell you what. I like your husband. He's more interesting than most of the clients I've had, and he keeps me on my toes. So tell me what happened, and I'll see if there's anything I can do."

I press my teeth more tightly together and sit very still. Fuck. I am so much better at fighting than winning. Especially in this case.

"Would you like to move to the couch?"

"No, I'm fine here," I grit out.

She pulls open a desk drawer and adjusts something I can't see, giving me a moment. I hate that she knows that I need a moment.

This is for Logan. Who's at the Camelot, in much worse shape than I am.

I pry my mouth open, and I tell this woman who hates me about how I was drugged and raped, and Logan's part in it. It takes me about five sentences. When I'm finished, I try not to throw up. Or move. Or fidget. Or hate myself even more completely than I already do. Jesus Christ, I threw him out of our home. At possibly his lowest moment ever. What if I was wrong?

"A therapist with no information is like an architect without an idea of what sort of building she's supposed to construct." Her voice isn't necessarily gentle, but it's not as flippant as she usually is with me. Apparently five sentences wasn't enough.

I close my eyes. I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I can do this for any person on earth. Not myself, not my dad. Maybe not even for Logan.

I can still see myself in the sheriff's office. I'd like to report a crime.

Sometimes, I think when they close me into my casket, I'll still be hearing the sheriff's laughter. Like it's crept under my fingernails, and hanging like the dark lining in every bit of cynicism that has poisoned my life ever since. That has strengthened it.

"I was wearing a white dress," I whisper, my eyes still closed. "And everyone hated me."

It takes me a long time to tell it this time, though I focus mostly on Logan. What he did, what he thought, exactly what parts of it will dig its claws the deepest into him. Jesus, I thought I was over this. I feel so safe, with him. So strong and different than I was back then. I can't believe it was all still in me, the memories this vicious and humiliating and…frightening.

I can't believe it's all still right there like it just happened. When I finish, it's quiet for a moment and I hold my breath, caught between my past and my present.

"Veronica, what you went through…" Dr. Lev pauses. "You may not be ready, and you may not like therapy, but you should talk to someone, even if it's not me. You don't deserve to carry that burden alone for your whole life."

I shove the heel of my hand impatiently across my eyes. "Can we stay on track here, please? I'm not here for me."

"Ah, of course not. Very well." She sits back. "In that case, I won't sugarcoat it. You're still not willing to lift a finger for your marriage."

"What?" I will rip that gun safe out of her stupid beach house wall and shoot her with every stupid gun she keeps in it. I will plaster her secrets across the headline of every newspaper that still exists. My fingers dig into the arms of the chair until I feel my nails start to bend backwards.

"You came to me because you said he broke down when he found out about his role in the rape."

"Yes." It's all I can do to force the single syllable out.

"He didn't know."

"He didn't know I was drugged all night. He didn't know I was drugged when he set up the salt lick, or when he gave Duncan the liquid X."

"But you knew."

"Uh, yeah, that was the part I remembered."

"And yet in all these years, you never talked that out with him."

"I assumed he knew."

"Did you?"

Neither of us break the silence.

"Would you have talked it out with him, under any circumstances?"

I look away.

She exhales. "This isn't breaking client privilege because I'm not telling you anything he told me, and I'm not telling you anything you don't know. There is nothing Logan desires more than to earn your respect."

"These are the insights we're paying you more than a mortgage for? Are you serious?" I throw a disparaging glance at her wall of diplomas.

She is not affected by my outburst. "The key word in that statement wasn't respect, it was earn. He was given great wealth, great looks…"

"So happy you noticed, Mrs. Robinson."

"The desire of women, athletic ability…" she goes on, ignoring my jibe. "He hasn't had to work for any of these things, and so he doesn't value them very highly. You, he had to work for. His current life, his emotional stability, he had to work for. But he doesn't know that because he sees it all as an extension of what he had to do to be worthy of you."

"So I need to make him feel like he earned his forgiveness before he'll believe it?" I nod along. This is exactly why I made him leave last night instead of trying to comfort him again.

"That's part of it. The bigger part of it is, can you actually forgive him?" Dr. Lev leans forward, her eyes compassionate in a way I hadn't noticed until now. "What he did to you was…can you really ever trust a man who would do that to a vulnerable teenage girl? Should you?"

The lump in my throat gives a sharp ache. "It was one of the worst days of my life," I admit in a small voice. "It's…incredibly painful to remember my husband being any part of that. I don't know if I can live with that if I think about it very much, and we've almost split up over his past before."

I try not to, but I get a quick flash from the salt lick. All I can remember is a foreign tongue on my throat, feeling vaguely ill, and wanting to go home so I could close myself in and throw up in my own bathroom. I can't stop imagining Logan standing over me, letting another man lick me while I curled tighter into a ball.

I look up and lock eyes with Eugenie. "He can't know how hard it is for me, or he will never recover. Our marriage will never recover."

"He's smarter than you give him credit for," she says quietly. "He already knows."

"So we're doomed?" My voice cracks.

She was my last hope. She's a professional, she's the one he trusts. She's the one who I've got blackmail for miles on so she has to keep our secrets. She's killed people, for Christ's sake, seen war, moved continents, gotten like six advanced degrees. If she can't even imagine a way out of this, I…I don't know what else to do.

I've never felt this helpless, not once in my life since my dad got me out of that burning refrigerator.

"You're a shitty therapist, you know that?" I choke out.

I want to leave here, to get the fuck away from her, but the tears burst out of me and then I can't stand up. Can't breathe or even raise my hands to my face because I'm crying like my internal organs are wringing themselves to death. The way Logan cried in my arms, his whole weight falling on me until we hit the floor in that goddamn hotel lobby. His mother dead and lost and gone. Just like our marriage is now. The best thing in my life, the touchstone that even on the hardest days makes me believe that life is worth it.

Logan.

Gone.

I can't.

I can't, I can't, I can't just let him go. Not unless he were already dead, not unless we were both dead. I don't give a fuck about Shelly Pomroy's party, or Duncan, or Cassidy, or any of the guys who had their tongues and hands all over me. None of that can reach me. I need Logan. I need my husband.

"There is…nothing more important to me than he is," I choke out, my words a massacre of sobs and wrecked throat. "I don't care what they did to me. None of that hurt as bad as this. I'd let them do all of that to me again if it were the only way to get back here, to this life. To him."

Dr. Lev opens her desk drawer and pushes a button. Pops a DVD out the side of a remote camera setup and hands it across the desk to me. My eyes are so swollen I can barely see.

"Logan has a great respect for corroborating evidence. I suspect he gets it from you."

My jaw drops open and I stare down at the DVD of everything we just said in here. At the proof. The only proof in the world that Logan might actually believe.

Eugenie kneels next to my chair. "I'm going to absent myself for a moment. Take as long as you need." She touches my tear-soaked cheek, very gently. "Forgiveness isn't just a word, darling. Remember that."

That's all she says before she leaves to let me scrape myself back together.

#

I hate her. And I love her. And then I hate her again.

At least she wasn't kind to me. Sympathetic, or pitying. I could have taken anything but that. I rush to clean myself up, but the tears take me again when I think of how Logan might be feeling by now, with no word from me. I end up on my knees on the carpet, halfway between her desk and the trash can where I was headed to throw away my tissues. Sobbing into my fist so no one will hear me.

It takes longer than I'd like to get my shit together. I rinse my face with the water from her water cooler, blow my nose, tug at my clothes like they might have flown off my body in the midst of all that. The video. I check to make sure I have it at least ten times while I'm composing myself. That I haven't mislaid it, or damaged it. I wrap it in tissues and tuck it in the secret pocket of my purse. Think better and take it out again. I almost label it "Veronica: therapy" and decide that's too easy. Instead, I put today's date on the front in Sharpie, and put it back in the secret pocket. The one no one but Logan knows about.

If he gets a respect for corroborating evidence from me, he'll likely also have gotten a deep distrust for any clue that falls into his lap too easily.

Finally, I sniff, straighten my back, and open the door to let his therapist back into her office. I almost want to tell her thank you, for the difference she's made for him.

I've watched him steady, over the years. Grow warmer, easier with himself, slower to lash out when he was upset. But not until he started seeing her. The other two therapists didn't make a dent. I can't say it to her, though, not today.

So I just nod, keeping my eyes down, and she passes me and sits down at her desk. Ignoring me, thank God, so I can leave with some dignity. Just before I clear the threshold, she says, "Oh, and Veronica?"

I turn back, closing the door again in case it's another tip for how to get through to Logan. I don't want anyone to overhear any of his secrets.

"Did you ever ask yourself why the cover up on those two murders in Rahat was so good?"

I blink. They were buried especially deep, actually.

"It's because the head of the Mossad did it personally. And he didn't do it so he could allow me to be hauled up on charges for it twenty years after the fact." She picks up her pen, taps the end of it against the desk. "I'd say find yourself a new insurance policy, but I'm old, Veronica. Everyone I love is dead. The last thing I could be blackmailed with came out five years ago, and it cost me my marriage."

And the dent in her finger hasn't faded. Does that mean she was married so long it never will, or that she puts on the ring every night when she gets home, when no one can see her?

"You still have a daughter."

Dr. Lev's brows lift slightly. "Oh, so you haven't done any digging lately, I take it? She went back to her junkie boyfriend. They overdosed on a smuggler's boat off the coast of Mexico six months ago. She didn't make it." The pen in her hand goes still and she lays it, very softly, on the desk. "You see, as a therapist you can pick and choose which clients really want to change so your interventions have the greatest chance of success. As a parent, you're not afforded that luxury."

"I—" I don't know what to say. What I am is punched in the gut. I can imagine what it would be like to lose my father. I can't even go there with how bad it might be to lose a child.

"I don't fear anyone anymore," she says without inflection. "I can't be bought, and I can't be threatened. I helped you today because I wanted to. And I'll keep your husband's secrets until my dying day, because he's earned that." She picks up her pen. "I'd do the same for you, if you were my client, but from what I've seen today, you're still not ready."

She flicks her fingers my direction.

"Run along. I have work to do."

"I…I'm sorry about your daughter." I remember her from that one, crazy trip to Mexico and the long ride home. Nathalie, with a bright, high-pitched laugh and eyes so blue they were almost purple. Circles under them that definitely were. An explosion of curly hair and a way of looking out at the horizon like it would never be big enough.

"Not as sorry as I am," Eugenie says. "Close the door on your way out."

#

Logan

When my phone rings, I've got my head in the sink but I yank it out and dart across the room, dripping water, only to realize the name displayed on the screen isn't my wife's. Then again, I didn't really think Veronica would call. If she wanted to see me right now—which she doesn't, or I wouldn't be in a fucking hotel room—she'd come herself.

But it's the only other person I would answer for right now, so I pick up. This is going to hurt, and I'm not even going to pretend a part of me isn't desperately satisfied with that.

"I hear you're in the doghouse," Dr. Lev says.

"Camelot Hotel, actually. Most dogs have it much better." I fall backwards on the bed, instantly regretting it when I realize how hard the mattress is. "You know they have carpet in the bathrooms here? And it smells exactly like you'd expect bathroom carpet to smell."

"Why does your voice sound like that?"

"Stuffy nose."

"Because you've been crying? Or bleeding?"

"Why, Doc, I didn't know you cared. I'll alert Hallmark."

"Yes, you did know. Now stop being a prick."

A breath huffs out through my nose that's almost a laugh. "Fuck, don't make me smile. It hurts."

"I wonder if I might make a suggestion."

"So this is how low I have to get before you're polite to me. I've always wondered."

"In the past, when you and Veronica have broken up—"

That knocks the breath out of me. Is that what we did? Did she leave me? I clench my left fist, like feeling the ring biting into my finger somehow means it's still mine.

"Did she tell you we broke up?"

Doc Lev was talking, and I cut straight across her words. Because I didn't call her, so if she knows anything happened in my marriage, it's because Veronica told her. And she just said I was getting a divorce.

"No. She indicated you were having trouble, not that she was leaving you. I was speaking of the past."

I squeeze my eyes closed, even though they're raw and it hurts. Okay. All right. My fist unclenches, but my thumb flicks at the ring, spinning it around and around. She can ask for it back anytime she wants, and I have to give it to her. If ever there was a reason to divorce a man, I handed it to her on a silver platter. I should have just drawn up the fucking papers and served those over, too.

"Logan!" The psychologist's voice cracks across the line loudly enough that I twitch. "Are you listening to me?"

"No. But I am now." Veronica's not leaving me, and she wanted me to go to a therapist so she'd never have to leave me, and so I am listening to every word.

"I was saying in the past, you've gone to other women, because sex is what you do well—"

"It's nice to know my reputation proceeds me."

She ignores that. "And because it gives you a fleeting, momentary sense of connection and approval. But it also takes one more brick out of the foundation of your wife's trust that she's really who you want. So maybe don't this time."

"It's deeply depressing when your therapist feels she has to call you to tell you not to cheat on your wife." I get off the bed and cross the tiny, shabby room where dozens of husbands have probably ruined their marriages. "While she was there, did she also tell you I've never been with another woman while we were together? Because if she hasn't left me, we're not broken up."

"Which means you can't access your normal first round coping skill of fleeting sexual encounters, and your follow-up coping skills are fist fights, followed by knife fights, followed by arson." She pauses. "You begin to see why I felt an unscheduled call might be in order."

"I assume you're billing me for this, so why don't you stop listing all the best possibilities for having a hell of a Saturday night, and tell me what the fuck else I can do to keep from losing my mind?" I struggle with myself for a long, awful minute, and then say, "Because unless she happened to tell you when she was going to be ready to talk to me again, I might need a padded fucking room sooner rather than later."

"You don't have to hint, Logan. She didn't tell me when she intends to contact you. That's not the question here."

"It's the only fucking question." I turn away from the window and stalk across the room, fighting back the impulse to put my foot through every piece of furniture that I pass. "Sorry. Fuck. Listen, Doc, if you've got contact info for that padded room place, you better text it on over. I assume you've got the hookup, and like you said, I've got a tendency toward arson. So if you're community minded, it might be in everyone's best interests."

"You're not truly a danger to yourself or others, and that's what locked psychiatric facilities are for."

"Ahh, and here I thought you knew me." My voice drips with a viciousness I haven't heard come out of my mouth in years.

"Logan." It's that slap-across-the-face voice again. "Let me be clear. I think you are a danger to yourself and probably others. In fact, I suspect you've already done something deeply stupid that I would need to report to the police if you told me about it. Which you have not. And what I am telling you is that you're choosing to be a danger to yourself, and to others. If you want your wife to trust you, and believe you are no longer the boy who did those terrible things to her, then you need to choose differently."

I close my eyes, and two tears punch their way free anyway, burning against already-raw flesh.

I can't speak. I'm so unspeakably fucking ashamed that the two women I respect most in the world know exactly how disgusting I've been. I've proven them both right in their worst expectations of me. I don't deserve to know either of them at all.

"I'm calling you and I'm saying this because you still have a chance." The phone line between us vibrates with her intensity, and my eyes yank open like she ordered them to. "I wouldn't bother calling if you didn't. I'd just send the bill, and I'd wash my hands of you. I've done it before, and God knows I'll have to do it again before my career is over. You're not my problem, Logan. You're not my son, and you're not my lover, and I don't have to give two fucks about your welfare or your choices."

The words sink into my head, taking hold. For most people, probably, she'd be a disastrous therapist, but I don't mind mean. It's bullshit I can't stand. Doc Lev doesn't have any patience for that, or wasting her time on lost causes, no matter how much they're paying for her time. If she's calling, even after talking to Veronica, it means there's still a possibility my marriage can be fixed.

I take a breath. "Tell me what I can do, Doc."

"You've got a lot of good years behind you now," she says instead. "They still count, if you do the right thing now. If you don't, everyone who matters will forget them like they were a lie all along."

I nod, as if she can see me. And fuck, knowing Doc Lev, maybe she can. Because she waits for the pause of my nod and then goes on.

"Don't try sex, is what I'm saying. Find other, real sources of affection. Veronica can't be the only one who cares about you."

"Yeah, I mean, I have a best friend who's always got my back, but his philosophy is to get over one woman, you get under another, and he's not Veronica's biggest fan. He's definitely helped me fuck up more than one breakup interlude with her."

"Anyone else?"

Heather. I can't face Heather right now. Fuck, I guess there are three women I respect in this world. I don't know if I should be proud that they're in my life at all, or sick because I'm not worthy of them. Heather can never know what I did.

I have the sudden wild urge to hang up on Doc Lev and call Veronica to beg her never to tell Heather anything about Shelly Pomroy's party. But Veronica would never. Not ever, no matter how angry she was with me.

What if Heather ever ends up at a party like Shelly's, with guys like me?

My stomach bolts up into my throat and I take a long step toward the bathroom, but I've already thrown up everything I've ever eaten.

"Talk," I choke out to Eugenie. "Talk, fuck. Now."

"Don't even try to tell me the only person you have in your life that you can count on is Dick Casablancas."

I forgot she knows all my friend's names. Which means she probably knows my options better than I do and she's asking because she wants me to realize it, too.

"Keith Mars." I'm already shaking my head. "I may be a conscienceless jackass, but even I can't look my father-in-law in the eyes right now knowing what I did to his teenaged daughter."

"Okay, well, can you sweep up the balloons when you're finished with this little pity party?" she asks, sounding bored.

I scoff out a breath that's probably not a laugh.

"Shit, I don't know, Mac maybe? But she was Veronica's friend first, and I don't think we're on the my-life-is-wrecked level of friends. More like, let's grab a beer and hey, help me build a morally bankrupt and incredibly profitable website."

"Jesus, did you bring confetti, too?"

This time I do laugh, and I can't fucking believe I even still can laugh. Today.

"Stop kicking yourself when you're down," Eugenie says. "And call your friends. Let them do it for you."

She hangs up without waiting for an answer.