Free The Key by Jennifer Sturman Page B

working,” I said, shoving my arms into my coat sleeves.
    “It’s not just about finding a place for my stuff, Rachel, or about giving me a set of keys.”
    “Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means that it’s about finding a place for me. ” He took a deep breath. “Do you even want me here? And I don’t just mean in this apartment or in this city.”
    “Are you saying you don’t want to be here?”
    “No—”
    “You want things to go back to the way they were?”
    “No—”
    I tore his ring off my finger and threw it down on the hall table. “Because that can be arranged, Peter.”
    “Rachel—”
    “And now I’m really behind schedule. We’ll have to talk about this later.”
    He caught my arm. “Rachel,” he said again.
    I pulled my arm away. “I don’t have time for this. We’ll talk about it later,” I repeated.
    And then I slammed the door.

chapter twelve
    I was off autopilot and completely appalled with myself by the time I hit the street.
    My friends had been right. I was scared. The fear was so tangible I could practically taste it. And it was safer to feel angry than to feel vulnerable.
    So I’d just picked a fight—a really big, potentially irreparable, and wholly unjustified fight—with my fiancé. I’d been horrible to him, all because our relationship and everything that came with it terrified me. Something inside me seemed determined to torpedo the entire thing, to preserve my single but stable independence rather than take the risk that things with Peter might not work out.
    And unless I figured out a way to stop being scared, any attempt to patch things up with Peter would be nothing more than a temporary fix.
    But I didn’t know how to stop being scared. And I definitely didn’t have time for extended psychotherapy, however much I might need it.
    So I did what I usually did when I didn’t want to deal with uncomfortable emotions: I turned my thoughts to work and the day ahead. This would probably be hard for most people to do in a similar situation, but I’d had a lot of practice being dysfunctional.
     
    There was no good way to get to the office when I left this late. The subway would be a crowded nightmare, it was still too cold and slushy to go by foot, and the odds of finding a taxi in my neighborhood at this time of the morning were pretty much nil. I spent the two-block walk to the subway entrance at 77th Street and Lexington scanning the streets for an unoccupied cab. But when one didn’t appear, I descended reluctantly down to the turnstiles for the 6 train.
    I just missed a train leaving the station, which could only be expected given how my day was going so far. I joined the other commuters on the platform to wait for the next train to arrive. While people were generally relatively civilized on the subway, there seemed to be something in the air today, an unusual tension as people jockeyed for position. Rush hour always made me nervous—you had to be careful that an inadvertent shove didn’t send you flying into the path of an oncoming train. I just hoped nobody shoved me, because I didn’t trust myself not to shove back on this particular morning.
    I should have called in sick, I thought to myself. I never did, even when I actually was sick. I’d earned more than an extra hour’s sleep—I’d earned a good sick day, what with never calling in sick and working late and on weekends and then having to watch people die hideous pencil-induced deaths. I briefly fantasized about going home, changing into pajamas, and catching up on my TiVo backlog. Of course, all of this assumed that the wreckage of a relationship wouldn’t be waiting for me in the apartment. I stayed where I was.
    Ten minutes elapsed before the next train pulled in, and while it looked packed to capacity, the crowd at my back propelled me through the doors. I found myself in the middle of the car, unable to reach a pole or overhead grip, but it didn’t matter, as the people