So much for being able to pack up my life quickly.
But I haven’t relocated like this in a while. I’m not moving across town or to a place a couple of hours away. My possessions need to cross an ocean.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table.
I swipe it up, and an excited sweat breaks out over my body when I read the name on the screen.
Luna.
“Hey!” My greeting comes out more enthusiastically than necessary. But I’m bottled up after the days I’ve gone without speaking to her. Without seeing her.
Last time was at that café in the French Quarter. When she proposed.
“Charlie. Hi. It’s Luna.” Her voice sounds stiff, and I wonder if it’s our connection. More likely, she’s calling to back out of this whole thing.
My hopes waver on a cliff edge.
“Yeah. I have your number saved. How’s it going?”
“Good as it can be. I’m calling because I talked to the lawyer again. The executor of my grandmother’s will. I made sure I had all the requirements she’d set forth for me to receive my inheritance. Thought it would be good for me to lay everything on the table before you make any kind of decision.”
“Yeah. Of course.” I carefully place a handful of books in a moving box. “Definitely want all the facts before I decide.”
“Here it goes. Also, I warn you, my grandmother was a smart, tricky woman. She left me no loopholes to jump through as far as I can tell.”
“Okay. Lay it on me.”
“First off, the marriage, obviously. But the wording is that I need to be married by the time I turn thirty, and the inheritance will be paid out to me in monthly installments for a year as long as I remain married during that time.”
Married to Luna for a year. Not looking like a bad deal yet.
“And like I said, we can come up with a percentage of each payment you think is fair for you to receive. Or a lump sum at the end.”
I wonder if I blacked out for part of the original discussion because I do not remember any talk of me getting paid. The idea has me itchy. I don’t want to take Luna’s money.
“Don’t you need all of it for your brother?”
“If we stay together for the full year, there should be fifty thousand that won’t go to my uncle.”
“I don’t want your money, Luna.”
A longer pause.
“Sorry to have bothered you then. I’ll find another way.”
Panic ups my voice a few notches. “Wait! That’s not what I’m saying.”
The line is silent for a beat.
“Then what are you saying?”
“That you don’t need to pay me to help you out. I’ll do it with no money required.”
I wish Luna and I were talking face-to-face so I could get a better read on what these stretches of silence mean.
“You don’t know all the stipulations. You have to want something.”
Yeah, more time with you. The vibrant, badass woman I haven’t been able to stop thinking of since that damn yacht party.
