Free Breathe Again by Rachel Brookes

the office, but thankfully no one was looking.
    “Well, blushy, I’ve gotta get back to work. Seriously, your blushing is the cutest fucking thing ever.” He kissed me hastily one last time before taking off through the office, his laughter heard until he disappeared into the elevator.
     
    T HE WORLD was a miraculous place, sometimes beautiful and sometimes utterly fucked up. The fact that I was about to run a shoot with Chelsea made my anxiety soar to a whole new level. It made me question why the world had decided to fuck me over. All I wanted was for her to disappear into the deep black pit of a hole she came from and never return, but here I was, on this cold and rainy Tuesday night, sitting on my living room floor with my peanut butter and banana sandwich and looking through promo photos of her. If I was able to drink, I’d be pissed off my tits right about now.
    My mood was as dark as the thunder rumbling outside my windows and my anger intensified with every photo that I held in my hands. I wondered how long it would be until I tore her photos in half and set them alight with the candles burning around the room.
    Tate was at work and I knew he wouldn’t be home until well after midnight, so I had hours of solitude on my own, hours of time for my mind to play games with me. My eyes moved down my body and landed on my stomach just as Jellybean decided to kick and remind me of he or she’s existence.
    As I flipped through photo after photo of Chelsea in lingerie I knew I couldn’t be on my own. I tossed the photos I was holding out of my hand and found my phone hidden under one photo in particular of Chelsea in some skimpy black lingerie, boobs and arse hanging out everywhere. I could swear I tasted vomit just looking at it.
    “Tanzi, can you come to my place and bring Chinese food and chocolate?” I begged on the phone.
    “You okay?”
    “I need my best friend and greasy food.”
    “Be there in ten.”
    I smiled down at the cell in my hand and thanked my lucky stars that Tanzi Connors had decided to email a stranger on the other side of the world all those months ago. What had started as a random email from a girl who I thought had the coolest name ever now had turned into a friendship that I’d always wanted and never thought I’d get. I was never one of those girls who had a lot of female friends but Tanzi was refreshing, crazy, and hilarious. Our first email was the generic ‘congratulations, I look forward to meeting you, blah blah blah’ but the second email was when it all started. The moment she mentioned tequila and the beach, I knew I had found my first friend in Los Angeles, and as they say the rest is history. The fact that my child is going to have her as an aunt and that the love of my life is her brother just made it so much more special.
    The door of my apartment swung open with a thud. “Savannah, where are you?”
    “Down here,” I replied.
    Tanzi came into my vision and waved the chocolate I had demanded in the air with a smile. She stood before me and looked at the photos splashed over my floor, her eyes wide as she worked out what she was looking at, her smile instantly dropped.
    “Why the fuck are you looking at photos of slut face? Seriously, Savannah, you need to stop torturing yourself. This is not going to help. You are a masochistic bitch.” Tanzi’s face went stiff, her eyes narrowing at the particular photo of Chelsea that I was holding.
    “It’s for work.”
    “Look, Mr. Davenport may be the man I fantasize about meeting in the mailroom at work and fucking his brains out while stamps stick to my ass.” She winked at me as my face screwed up. “But he has no fucking clue if he is making you do this. Seriously, what the hell is going through his head?”
    I swallowed the bile that rose from the pits of my stomach and shook my head, desperate for the images Tanzi had just painted so vividly to leave my brain. “Firstly, please do not ever talk about fucking Mr.