Chapter 3

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in a private room with no one at my bedside.

A nurse came in to change my IV, still muttering as she worked:

"Fever's down. Mild lung infection. If your friend overseas hadn't called an ambulance last night, you'd be dead by now."

"That wife of yours is a piece of work. Our people got here and couldn't get into the apartment, so they had to get her number from building management."

"Took forever to reach her. We asked her to come back, and what does she do? Insists we're actors you hired. Nothing for it but to force the door."

"Heard you two just had your wedding yesterday. Who leaves the groom alone in the wedding suite? It's a joke."

I said nothing and opened my messages.

Last night, right around the time my fever knocked me out, Andrew had posted a video to his feed.

Knowing my stomach's bad, and worried I'd get hungry again after throwing up, a certain someone personally cooked a whole table of nourishing food.

Now that's a real best friend, not some sick-faking stray mutt.

Denise hadn't commented. But she'd liked it.

The door opened and Denise walked in carrying a takeout box.

For once there was a trace of apology on her face.

"Harv, I only heard from the neighbors this morning when I got home. It's all that idiot childhood friend of yours, couldn't even tell real sickness from fake."

"You haven't eaten yet, right? I made you something. Have a little first to line your stomach."

A few sentences, and she'd wiped her own hands clean.

I glanced at the food in the box and laughed.

"So in your eyes, all I'm good for is eating Andrew Swanson's leftovers?"

It was all what she'd made Andrew for his late-night snack the night before, the leftovers.

Denise looked a little guilty and tried to explain: "I left in a hurry, I didn't have time to cook again, and no restaurant's open at this hour—"

"It's not that there wasn't time. You just don't care."

"Like the bouquet at the wedding. You knew I'm allergic to baby's breath, but Andrew liked it, so you made me take extra allergy pills and hand the bouquet to him."

"At the photo shoot, you said he looked like a woman, that he might never land himself a wife, so I should shoot a few sets with him first. You two shot from sunup to sundown while I stood off to the side with my lips gone blue from the cold, and still got laughed at by him for looking like a ghost."

I cut her off.

"And now even my wedding night, my marriage bed, has to go to him first, and only then to me."

"But when your company was just getting off the ground, I was the one pulling all-nighters with you. You're allergic to alcohol, so I drank in your place with clients, drank until my stomach bled. Where was your best friend to take that for me then?"

"Denise, maybe it doesn't sicken you. But I can't take it. Let's split up."

Denise froze for a moment, then furiously smashed the box to the floor.

"Harvey Harding, one little thing and you can't get over it, is that it?"

"Fine, so I misread the situation last night, and I didn't get around to making you fresh food. But that's your own stupidity, running out without even grabbing an umbrella. You got sick because you asked for it!"

"Because of you, the front door of the apartment got broken. Andy picked that out for me, imported, cost two hundred grand. You don't know how to earn money, only how to waste it. I didn't even blame you, and you've got the nerve to bring up breaking up?"

Before I could get a word out, Andrew came running in through the door.

Behind him were the same people who'd crashed the wedding night.

He reached out and scooped Denise in from the front, grinning. "Kitty-dragon claw grab! I could hear you howling all the way from the hallway. Who's got a death wish, making my girl upset?"

Denise let out a soft grunt and laughed, reaching over to pinch his side. "Stop it. He's here trying to break up with me. Getting married is such a headache."

Andrew twisted his mouth. "Harvey, I know you kept men love your little dramas, but you'd better take a piss and check your reflection first, see if you've got the goods to pull it off."

"Den's spent plenty on you these past few years, hasn't she? You eat off her, drink off her. Even this VIP room's not cheap for one night."

"The wedding's all done, all that's left is the license, and you pick now to make a scene about breaking up? You're doing it on purpose to embarrass her."

I ignored him and lifted my eyes to Denise. "The room isn't your money. The wedding costs we split fifty-fifty. Everything else, the money and the things, I'll pay you back."

Denise scoffed. "Pay me back? You think you're Andy? He's a freelance illustrator, he can support himself. What have you got?"

"You don't even have a job, just a freeloader living off me. You're going to come up with the cost of a VIP room? Harvey, I'm not an idiot."

My hand under the blanket clenched tight.

I never imagined that in her mind I was just a freeloader clinging to her.

But those transfers she'd sent me, I hadn't touched a cent.

All these years, everything I spent came from my own savings.