A Royal Internship | Complete

Chapter Five

The next morning, I went straight from Janet's to work, with only a quick text to let Josh know what was going on.

Okay, have a good day, was all his message said in reply. He'd never been particularly verbose, but that was unusually short even for him. Worried about his lack of response, I spent the whole day eager for our date night. Tuesdays were always date nights.

When I got home from work, the house was empty except for a vase of flowers on the kitchen table, and a note that was addressed to me in Josh's writing. I left the flowers on the table and took the note with me to get ready for our date. With the semester ending and Josh going off to some fancy internship, we wouldn't see each other for several months. So this was my last chance to remind him what he'd be missing.

I slid into a floral dress and a teal and black cardigan and chose new earrings for the evening before sitting down on the edge of my bed to put on my shoes and read his note.

When I did read it, I could feel my jaw falling to the floor. "You've got to be kidding me!" I stood up, hoping he'd walk in at any moment. "What kind of sick joke is this?"

I kicked off the one shoe I had managed to secure and raced back to my purse to pull out my phone. Scrolling through the contacts, I finally found Josh and skipped straight to calling him. Contrary to what he seemed to believe, this wasn't something you did in writing.

When the call went straight to voicemail, I had my answer. The note wasn't a joke.

I'd been asking him to get me flowers for three years and the first time he decided to listen is so he can break off the engagement and ask me to please leave the ring on the table. There has to be some irony in there somewhere, but I can't find it right now.

I ripped the note in half and threw it onto the table before picking up the vase and walking across the kitchen to smash the flowers into the sink as hard as I could.

I had to try three times before the vase broke, and by that point, tears were streaming down my face and my breath was coming in sobs. I opened my phone again to see a message from him, which I ignored in favour of calling my best friend, Janet.

"This is Janet," her voicemail greeted me. "I'm unavailable right now. Please leave a message, your name, and number and I will get back to you."

I didn't even wait for the beep before I hung up and dialed her work phone.

"Janet DuBois speaking," she answered in her cheeriest work voice. "How may I assist you today?"

I sobbed into the phone, unable to form whole words as I tried to explain what had happened.

"Genevieve, is that you?" she said between my sobs.

"Yes." When I spoke it came out sounding a bit like a duck, but it was audible, so Janet changed gears.

"Are you at home?"

"Yes." I drew in a shaky breath, unable to tell her what had happened.

"Do you need me to come over?"

I took another shaky breath and managed to speak. "I'm pretty sure Josh just dumped me." I focused on deep breaths and tried to count the tiles on the backsplash.

Janet sounded confused. "How can you not be sure? Did you guys have a fight?"

My laugh came out bitter and uncontrollable. "You mean besides the one we've been having for years? No. Nothing like that." I couldn't tell anymore whether I was laughing or crying. I mean, who gets their fiancée flowers just to break up with her?