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“And the guy?” I ask, feeling the boundaries like a tangible force between us as I push them apart. It is none of my business, but by the way she showed up at my house this afternoon, she can probably use someone to talk to. And also, wow. How has it only been a few hours since I left my condo?
“He just got a scholarship to play college football. His parents didn’t think it was right for me to ruin his chance at playing professional football with an illegitimate child, so…”
“So? What do you mean so?”
She stares at the glow-in-the-dark star. “So, I mean that I agreed to stay out of his life and let him get famous. He promised he’d send me money when and if he gets drafted into the NFL.” She fidgets with the comforter. “But…I don’t really care. I mean, if I’m not good enough for him now, I don’t want to be with him if he decides I’m good enough later on.”
“I think you’re making a good choice,” I say.
Miranda sits up on her elbow for a moment before falling back to the bed. “Let’s stay here in Salt Gap. Let’s find our soul mates and live happily ever after.”
I roll my eyes in the dark. “I think you have a little brain damage to go along with that broken nose. There is no such thing as soul mates.”
“That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard,” she says.
I can’t bring myself to disagree, to spout off a ton of facts that will prove her wrong and me right. Crushing her delusional dreams of love and romance wouldn’t solve anything, plus I am confident that life will take care of that on its own. We lay, face up in bed, side by side for what feels like hours, both of us trapped in our own mind, thinking things that only make us feel worse.
I don’t know how I’ll ever fall asleep, but eventually, I do.
Chapter 4
My condo is cleaner than it was the day I moved in. Everything has a place now, where before it didn’t. Unopened mail and opened mail in neat filing trays, nail files that rested between the couch cushions now have a jar. That stupid exercise ab rolling machine has been retired as a clothes hanger and now sits folded up under the bed where it’ll hopefully stay for eternity. I’ve never cleaned so much in my life, and I’ve never been so ridiculously depressed. It’s almost midnight and I’m not tired at all.
After my panic-induced dose of insanity a week ago, everyone insisted I stay at home and not come to work until I got my shit together mentally. Maggie oh so very kindly offered to take over on Jason’s offer and the seller accepted. They close next week. I get zero commission, because taking half of Maggie’s six percent would be admitting I did something right.
Everyone else is business as usual, and here I am, Robin Carter, self-induced ex-Realtor. My condo has never felt so small. Is this all I am? All I’m worth? Selling real estate wasn’t ever my passion in life, but it was in the family and I was good at it. After my shitty engagement fell though, I poured my heart and soul into selling real estate. I was Houston’s top Realtor. Grandpa taught me everything I know, and I had thought he was proud of me.
I did not tell Maggie why I had my panic attack that day. I sure as hell didn’t tell Mom either when she called demanding to take me to the hospital just minutes after the ambulance decided I was healthy and would live through the night. Who knows what they would have said if I told them Grandpa made me promise to quit my career while he was on his deathbed. Mom would think I was lying probably, and Maggie would try to turn it around and bitch that Grandpa always loved me more and of course he would tell me some life-altering secret while they were sleeping in the hotel next to Hospice care.
I stare at my nails, their cuticles perfectly manicured since I had nothing better to do this morning. A lump rises in my throat and I try to swallow it down, but it doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked all week. This is the sort of thing that a girl needs her best friend for. I have no best friend. I’m sure she’s happily curled up with a post-blow job smile on her face while lying in my ex-fiancé’s bed. You’re supposed to be able to count on friends. And family. I can’t count on anyone but myself.
In my Victoria’s Secret sweatpants, oversized Texas A&M sweatshirt, I look like a pink oompa loompa rolled up on the couch.
Oompa, loompa, doompidy dailure.
Robin Carter is a total failure.
Grandpa’s watch is set thirty minutes ahead of the actual time. I’ve gotten used to referencing it and automatically subtracting to find the real tim
e. Sometimes I wish it really could see into the future. What will I be doing thirty minutes from now?
Will I suddenly have an answer to my problems? Will I fall asleep and see Grandpa in a dream where he can tell me exactly why he made me promise what I did?
My honesty has never been challenged this much. I grab my netbook off the end table and open my browser to Google. As asinine as it sounds, I type the words, What is the statute of limitations on keeping promises after death?
The search results load in a fraction of a second, but I don’t feel like reading them. The internet can’t help me, not unless there’s a Google search engine wired directly to Heaven. I was so close to selling the McMullen Loft and raking in the commission, but I couldn’t do it. It was as if promising Grandpa on his deathbed put a curse on me ala Jim Carey in Liar Liar.
Fuck my life. I throw my arms in the air and fall sideways on the couch. The television clicks on, its volume up entirely too high. I jump, bolting out of the couch as fast as if I’d been electrocuted. My house is haunted. My heart races as I look around the room expecting to see a ghost. But then I realize the remote control was under my head when I plopped over.
A wave of relief gushes over me so quickly it hurts. Now I’m imagining things. I thought I was expecting Grandpa to die. I thought I was totally prepared for him to leave the earth—it was his time and he knew it as well as we did. So why has it turned my entire life upside down?
And what the hell did he mean by telling me to find my happiness?
Chapter 8
My car will be in the body shop for three to five days. Because it’s a foreign car all the parts had to be ordered from a warehouse in Anaheim, California. My insurance company could probably send me a rental car, but what’s the point? It’s not like I have anywhere to go.
“Let me guess, the place is called Salt Gap Body Shop?” Miranda says, climbing up on a stool next to me at the bar of the Salt Gap Diner the next morning. After scavenging through the bottom of my purse for quarters, she just dropped a handful of them in the jukebox. I already regret it as a Kesha song starts to play.
