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Chapter 5
Anna
We regret to inform you…
That was all I needed to read to know the email contained bad news. It had come directly from the owners of the reserve in Austin. Even though I knew in my heart I no longer had a job there, the e-mail sealed the deal for me. I had prepared myself for that moment, but I still sighed deeply and collapsed backward on my bed, tears in my eyes.
Before I could collect myself, there was a knock at the door. Quickly, I sat upright, closed my e-mail, and wiped away the tears.
“Come in,” I called out.
Emily opened the door and walked into the room with a big, bright smile. “Sooo… I noticed you didn’t come home last night.”
Emily had been staying at our childhood home while she prepared to move in with her husband. Emily was slightly more conservative than I was. She had always talked about waiting until marriage for sex and all of that too, an oath I believe she’d kept since she had never once blabbed to me about sleeping with any boys and we had always been very close. We told each other everything growing up, and part of me felt bad about keeping the whole job and fake relationship thing from her.
Thankfully, the look on her face wasn’t one of judgment for having stayed over at Levi’s; she was grinning like a fool, in fact. She flopped down beside me on the bed.
“Tell me all about him,” she said before I could confirm or deny her suspicions that I had slept over.
“What do you need me to tell you?” I laughed. “You know him. You even invited him to your wedding.”
“I know of him, of course, but I don’t know him as intimately as you do.” She playfully nudged me and winked dramatically. “If you know what I mean.”
I rolled my eyes and laughed. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me again how you two reconnected. I want all the details.”
My mind raced back to the night before. What did we tell her again? I’d been drinking way too much and couldn’t recall every detail of the conversation.
“I don’t see the need to bore you with that story again.”
“Oh, I’m not bored. You know I’m a hopeless romantic, I’ll never grow tired of hearing how people meet and fall in love.” She grinned at me, clasping her hands in her lap impatiently.
“Fine, alright, but it’s not very romantic.”
“I think it is.”
I sighed and closed my eyes, going over everything I could remember. “I was Christmas shopping in Salt Lake City when I ran into him.”
“At Marshall’s, right?”
“Yes, at Marshall’s. So romantic, right?”
“Oh, yes, totally,” Emily said with a chuckle. “Go on. What did he say to you when you realized you knew each other?”
I didn’t think we went into that level of detail the night before, so I was in the clear. I just had to wing it. “He said… ‘hi, Anna.’”
After a moment of silence, Emily said, “Go on.”
“That’s what he said. He didn’t say anything else.”
“So he just said, ‘hi Anna’ and that was the end of the conversation? How did you exchange contact info?”
“Oh, yeah, after we said hello, he said it would be nice if we kept in touch, so I gave him my number and we parted ways.”
“I thought you said you two went out to eat after that. You shared a dessert.”
None of that rang a bell, but Emily looked at me expectantly. I was pretty tipsy, I couldn’t recall everything we said, so maybe she was right.
