Page 34 of The F*ck-It List

“Harsh,” I say, but find myself smiling.

“Yeah,” she sighs, sounding regretful. “I definitely didn’t want to marry him, but running may have been a touch dramatic.”

“Was he that bad?” I ask, arching an eyebrow as I look down at her. Hoping she tells me he was a complete douche but also hoping she doesn’t because if he treated her bad, I feel I might get angry and that’s not something I want to unpack right now.

She’s shaking her head. “He’s a nice guy, kind, smart, driven.”

“But?”

“But…he’s not for me. I guess he was just there and it was easy, you know? But I didn’t get that spark you’re supposed to feel.”

I make a small grunt. “You think that’s a real thing? The spark?”

She snorts a laugh that nearly has me tripping over my own feet because it’s so unexpected and so fucking adorable, my brain glitched out. “If I can feel a spark reading about fictional characters, I definitely expect nothing less from the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

I swallow and nod, just hoping she didn’t notice my near fall. “So, you ran away from London because you didn’t want to marry the sparkless guy?”

“Oh, no.” She shakes her head again. “I ran from the restaurant. When I got home, Cas and I had several cocktails and wrote the list.”

“List?”

“Yeah, the Fuck-It list.”

“That’s a thing?” I ask, scrunching my face.

“According to Cas.” She sighs.

“Right, and what exactly is on your Fuck-It list?” My arm hangs between us and for a second, our fingers touch, knuckles brushing against one another, and we both jerk away. “Uh, sorry,” I croak before clearing my throat.

She giggles nervously. “That’s okay. Um, well that’s how I got here. Number five; move to the countryside and open a café.”

“That sounds like two things in one,” I say, trying to ignore the electricity crackling up my arm from that one brief touch.

“It is, but they’ve always gone hand in hand for me. It’s just something I always wanted to do, and Cas wanted me to live a little and finally do the things I’ve been putting off for so long.”

“So, you uprooted your whole life because your friend wanted you to?” It sounds more judgmental than I intend.

She frowns, and I’m immediately grieving the loss of her easy smile. “No, no, that’s not it.” It sounds like she’s coming to the conclusion in this moment. “It’s just I needed a little push to do something for myself.” She stops walking and I stop with her, the groove between her brows deepening and her teeth sinking into her bottom lip. “So, I kind of…have money,” she says, stilted like it pains her, looking up at me with narrowed eyes. “And everything my grandmother ever told me is screaming at me for saying something so crass, but it’s true.”

My brows are somewhere near my crown, my mouth open waiting for words that aren’t forming. What are you meant to say to that?

“Have you heard of Turner Jewels?”

“Uh, yeah?” I say, more of a question than anything. The question being what has that got to do with anything? Also, whohasn’theard of the jewellers with a shop on nearly every high street in the country?

“Well, I’m Bea Turner, my grandfather founded Turner Jewels.”

I think I choke on my tongue or my own saliva, either way, I’m spluttering a cough in her direction before apologising.

“That’s okay.” She huffs a laugh. “He sold it before I was born, and it was nowhere near the household name it is now, but he did pretty well out of the sale, bought a very nice apartment in central London and made some good investments. My grandmother soldmost of the shares and assets and used that to live off after he died. She had an…opulent lifestyle. When she died, she had a little money left, I mean, a substantial amount to some, and she had the apartment. She left my mother the money and she left me the apartment…in Mayfair.”

I puff out a long breath, my lips vibrating out a sound like the motor of an old diesel engine. “I see,” I say, even though I really don’t.

“Well, you see, my mother was quite put out that she got a lot less than the value of the apartment and tried to claim my grandmother was not in her right mind when she made her will. But it was iron clad, the apartment was mine and I was not to give my mother any of the proceeds should I choose to sell.”

We’re stopped in the middle of the road, but it being a warm Sunday afternoon, there are no cars. The sun is golden against Bea’s skin, of which there is plenty on display. Her eyes are slightly squinted against the light where she looks up at me but even beneath her lowered lids, I can see the bright blue of her irises. At this angle, in this light, I can see the dusting of freckles painting the bridge of her nose. I know I have to distract myself from taking in every feature of her face, so I drag my mind back to the conversation. “So, your mum didn’t get on with your grandmother?”

Her gaze slips over my shoulder, and she chews on the inside of her cheek. “Neither of my grandparents grew up with money and when they found themselves in certain social circles, they worked hard to keep up with the Joneses, which included giving their only daughter everything she wanted or needed. I feel like they never made her work for anything and then got angry when she couldn’t do anything for herself and relied on others.”