Free Unbind by Sarah Michelle Lynch Page A

only support.
    She pursed her lips and stroked her long, black hair over one shoulder. She sighed a protracted, indignant, “Hmm. Supportive, much?”
    “I’m not hot on him for a reason, Kay. As much as I love you, I can’t pretend. He makes you sad and… every time he leaves you feeling empty during one of his ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ spells… it kills me to see your sadness.”
    What I wasn’t going to tell her was that said douche had made several passes at me over the years, none of which I’d told her about. Though if you think about it, one pass at the BFF was bad. Several, criminal. And if he was doing that with me, who wasn’t he trying it on with? The only reason I wasn’t deterring her was because she needed to find all that out for herself. If the past had taught me anything, it was to never sever bridges like ours.
    She knew I had her back and reluctantly reached for my hand across the table. “I know,” she said, one side of her lip raised.
    “Ever since I got here… you’ve had me drinking every night. I know something is going on!” I argued, demanding she give me the real dirt.
    “There is more…” She rolled her eyes and wrestled with her tongue, trying to find a way to say it so that it didn’t sound so bad. In the end, she just admitted,“…I’m in trouble at work. So… I could lie to Rob and move in, maybe not be able to contribute to rent soon. Or I could fess up… and, you know. Risk pissing him off.”
    I raised my eyebrows and sat back in my chair, assessing the remnants of my friend sat opposite. I thought for a moment how much happier she might look with a man who actually cared enough to ask the basics, such as, How’s work? How’s you?  
    “It seems serious?” I began with the facts.
    “Just,” her head sagged in her shoulders and she leaned on the table, “I turned up late a bunch of times. Got cocky with long lunches. Made a bad copy error. They think I’m not taking it seriously… they said I don’t seem to be there, even when I am.”
    There was probably more she wasn’t telling me, after all, journalism is rather lenient on its own. I wondered whether she’d been playing truant.
    “So what’s their policy? A warning? What?” I refilled both our glasses—it was the only comfort I had for her right then.
    “I’m on a performance report thingy, you know. So at least I have a chance to fix it.”
    I wondered as her friend, what was my job here? To give it to her straight? Ease her into figuring it all out for herself? Or what? For a 30-year-old professional woman to be in this kind of trouble was a bit ridiculous.
    “I think you’d be much happier without him. You’d probably erase all that bad stuff by just getting rid of him .” Partially the wine was talking, but mostly me. I’d been a distant observer of her and Rob the Despot, but now I was seeing first-hand evidence of his shitty influence on my friend.
    She slammed her glass on the table and glowered. “I can’t give him up. Won’t. We’ve been through this.”
    Yeah, during several costly late-night phone calls… we’d been over, and over, and over it.
    “I’m just saying. I’ve been in London with you since Saturday and not once has he—” done or said something nice. The list went on. Kayla moped about until he clicked his fingers for her to come running. “He can turn up late for shoots and doss about, it’s expected of him… but not you, Kay. Imagine this… he’s still doing that in his fifties, modelling old men’s pleated trousers, and you’re still dossing in a bedsit while he lives it up…”
    My words shocked her but she fronted, her eyes brimming with tears. “Well, you wouldn’t know anything about love, seeing as though you’ve never given it a chance.”
    I knew this was going to get nasty if I didn’t nip her anguish in the bud.
    “We’ll talk more when we’re not drunk. Right now, all you feel is hurt,” I urged in a gentle voice.
    All I knew