Free Trapped by Rose Francis Page B

her.”
    “Don’t, Liz—I’m really not in the mood.”
    Janet felt Liz look at her for a moment.
    “Okay, tell me what happened.”
    Janet let out a heavy breath. “He showed up in my apartment tonight.”
    “Wait, in your apartment? What the hell?”
    “That’s what I said!”
    “I imagine you kindly—or not-so-kindly—told him to sashay out of there.”
    “Of course! God, I...I don’t even know what else to say to him.”
    “He has some balls after all he did to try to get you back.”
    “I don’t blame him honestly, but yeah. I loved him, but after that whole thing, I’m just done. I guess he doesn’t realize that about me, yet—most guys never believe it, and most women unfortunately prove them right.”
    “Girl, don’t I know it,” Liz said softly.
    Janet decided not to bring up Liz’s own love life despite the easy opening. No doubt Liz would appreciate not being reprimanded yet again about staying with her own loser of a boyfriend.
    Janet didn’t understand why someone like Liz couldn’t tear herself from a guy so far beneath her.
    Janet had only one boyfriend she stayed with after he cheated on her. She had learned her lesson—it just wasn’t worth it. The moment her guy showed his ass, one way or another, no matter how long they’d been together or how much she had loved them, it was as if some cord got cut somewhere, disconnecting her from them forever.
    Once they wander, it is time to go, she had promised herself long ago, and finally had the fortitude to stick to.
    David would learn.
    “God, these things are so fucking boring. I only go for the food anyway,” Liz said suddenly and Janet giggled, then remembered she needed to touch up her makeup.
    She pulled down the passenger side mirror as Liz finally pulled off.
    * * *
    “Girl, I have to use the bathroom,” Liz said as they entered the familiar building of their nine to five days, when a restroom came into view.
    Before Janet could say she’d go with her, Liz said: “Don’t worry about me—I’ll meet you up there.”
    Janet suddenly knew what Liz was really up to—no doubt she was going to call and check in with her boyfriend, and was too embarrassed to do it in front of her, knowing she’d be judged.
    Janet understood the appeal of signs of possessiveness in a man, but for Liz to have to check in with him like some teenager with a paranoid, overprotective parent was beyond her comprehension.
    He made Liz call or text him when she got to work and when she was leaving work. Liz even had to contact him if she had to leave the office building for lunch or any other reason. And whenever the two of them went to lunch together, it was now routine for Janet to have to say “hi” into Liz’s phone to prove to him that Liz was actually with her. Janet fully expected Liz’s boyfriend to soon start requiring photographic proof of Liz’s whereabouts throughout the day.
    As Janet reached the elevator and the doors were about to close, she heard a male voice call out: “Wait!”
    She held the elevator.
    For a moment, she wished she had let it close when the man entered, for she was struck by something she hadn’t felt since she was eighteen when she fell madly and completely in love for the first and only time with a guy who broke her heart irreparably a few years later.
    The vision before her was a man like she thought only existed in movies, and only then with the right lighting and camera angles: tall, broad shoulders, smoldering blue eyes, and thick, glossy dark hair.
    When he smiled at her, she thought for a moment that she had literally turned into a puddle. Then she felt silly when she realized her eye level hadn’t actually changed and she was still human, so she managed to smile back.
    Her embarrassment didn’t help—she knew her cheeks had flushed at being stuck in such a small space with such a specimen, and that it would show even through her brown skin.
    She couldn’t think and felt like her brain had shorted and