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I laughed. “No. He’s not exactly the journaling or meditation type.”
“Exactly. It’s easier for him to go on as though nothing is wrong and he probably figures that eventually, nothing will be.”
“Men.”
Rachel raised her glass to mine. “Amen, sister.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Just wait out his little third-life crisis?”
Rachel swirled the contents of her glass as she considered my question. “I suppose that depends.”
“On?”
“On what you want. Jack is going to take care of himself. What’s more important is what you want. Do you want to make it work?”
It was a simple question with a very complicated answer. “I do…”
“But?”
Damn it. Knew that was coming. “But I can’t keep going on this way. I don’t want to be his roommate or occasional friend with benefits. Regardless of how nice those benefits might be…” I blushed, remembering a few nights before. “I want to be his partner. His wife. I want to raise a family and have this great big adventure with him. Back when we met—hell, even a few months ago—I thought that’s where we were headed. I thought we were on the same page and wanted all the same things. Now I don’t know what he wants and he either can’t—or won’t—tell me. Then there’s this whole jealous, macho bullshit routine over who I work for.”
“PS,” Rachel interjected, her chopsticks raised. “I Googled your new boss and holy shit. He is hot.”
I frowned at her. “Not helping, Rach.”
She stuffed a sushi roll into her mouth and shrugged.
I sighed and leaned back against the couch. “Noah Scoville is everything I thought I once wanted. Wealthy, self-sufficient, confident and, yes, gorgeous to boot. He is a part of this almost secret world where price tags don’t matter and the options are endless.”
“Sign me up!”
“But I don’t know…I see now that I need so much more than that. I need someone who can make me laugh. Someone who makes me feel safe. Someone like—”
“Jack?”
I nodded, feeling sick all over again. Memories flooded over me in rapid succession: Jack and me in our apartment in Germany on our last night. All the furniture was gone so it was just the dogs and us lying on the floor eating really terrible pizza out of a cardboard box, the night he punched some loud-mouthed guy out at a bar when he wouldn’t take no for an answer after asking me to dance with him, driving up the California coast in his vintage Camaro our first weekend back home from overseas.
Millions of moments were forever cemented in my mind and they all starred Jack.
The problem was that recently, there were more dark memories than the golden, glittering ones that played out like scenes on a reality show highlights reel.
11
Jack
Sell out. No wonder Holly doesn’t want you. You’re lost, Boomer.
The echoes of my argument with Aaron woke me on Saturday. As my eyes adjusted to the bright light streaming in the windows, I realized I was in the living room, lying on the floor beside the couch. From the throbbing at the back of my head, I couldn’t be sure if I’d fallen off the couch in the middle of the night or if I’d been so drunk I had my first hangover since high school. Judging by the amount of beer bottles on the coffee table, it was the latter.
“Fuck,” I groaned, sitting upright. The pounding in my head intensified and sent me crashing back down again. I grabbed the throw pillow from the couch and wedged it under my neck. “You’re an idiot,” I mumbled to myself.
A wet nose touched the bare skin on my back where my t-shirt had ridden up and I jumped out of my skin—which made my head feel like it had been assaulted by a jackhammer.
“Princess!”
She whined and then cast a desperate look at the back door.
Great, now I can’t even be a responsible pet owner. I hauled myself up gingerly from the floor and hobbled to let Princess outside. She bolted down the back steps and headed for the patch of grass at the bottom. I stumbled into the kitchen and dug through the cabinets for a bottle of painkillers. I swallowed three down with a cup of lukewarm coffee. The pot was set to automatically switch on at seven and it was creeping up on noon. I didn’t care. I chugged the coffee anyway. I needed the caffeine jolt to kick my headache.
My stomach was unsettled, reminding me of time spent living on a ship. Not nauseated—but not normal either. Princess appeared at the back door and I went to bring her inside after popping a piece of wheat bread into the toaster. Dry toast should help get me back on the right track. It’d been years since the last time I was drunk but I knew how to fix a hangover.
