“Damn, you’re ripe. When was the last time took a shower, my dude?” Julia said as she breezed into the penthouse with Rocco on her heels two days after Alba had walked out. I was supposed to move out the next day, and I had already packed my stuff and planned to go to a hotel until I could find a permanent place.

“How you holding up, man?” Rocco said as he came in to slap me on the back. I shrugged and sank back into the couch.

Julia stood in the living room, turning her head from side to side like she was taking her measure of the place...and me.

“So you’re just going to let her go back to New York after I’d managed to get some distance from her family and have her close enough to reinstate our weekly brunch sessions?”

Despite all of my father’s money, I had grown up in Queens and I knew not to make any sudden movements when a girl from Corona was rolling her neck at me like that.

“Babe,” Rocco said with a mix of amusement and admonishment.

“Do you think this is what I want?” I croaked, my voice hoarse from not using it in days. “She doesn’t want to talk to me, and I’m not going to force her to.”

“Did you apologize?” Julia asked this in a tone that told me it was more of a rhetorical question.

“I tried to, but—”

“Did you try to or did you just mansplain her feelings back to her?” she continued. Rocco moved behind me, and I was starting to wonder if Julia was going to take a swing at me.

“She didn’t let me,” I explained, my head between my hands as I tried to shut out the way she’d looked when she heard about the show. The way I’d hurt her.

“You do understand that Alba’s father left them in so much debt that her mother almost lost everything. Secrets are poison for Alba.”