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“Oh my God, Garen. Put some duct tape over it already.” Lesley picks up a throw pillow and launches it at his head. He ducks, then flips her the bird with that obnoxious grin of his. Obnoxiously endearing.
“Jules is beat, so we’re gonna crash,” she says, grabbing my arm and ushering me toward a long, dark hallway. “See you bozos tomorrow, ‘kay?”
“Yep,” Zan says, his attention lowering to his guitar again.
As she leads me down the hall, my suitcase rolling on the rustic hardwood floor behind me, the shadows seem to reach for us from every direction. A shiver rushes through my veins. I despise the dark, especially when I’m exhausted.
Halting at the end, she pushes open a door and flips on a light. “This is it,” she says. “The bathroom is right across from us.” She points to a closed door on the other side of the hall, then gestures toward where we just came from. “Zan is in the next room over. My brother and Garen share the attic upstairs.”
“Where do you guys practice?”
“In the garage. It’s a kickass setup. We were lucky to find this place.”
“It’s great, Les.” And I mean it. Despite the nervous flutters in my gut—a side effect of uprooting my life so suddenly—I’m excited to call this house home…for now, anyway.
Until I can find a job. Then I’ll have a leg to stand on when I go apartment hunting. Money isn’t a problem for a few weeks, thanks to the inheritance my granny left me last year when she passed. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to finance a nervous breakdown that transplanted me halfway across the country.
Lesley closes the door, shutting us off from the strains of music interspersed with the kind of trash-talk guys do.
“They seem cool,” I say, setting my suitcase against the wall.
“They’re pretty awesome.” She shoots me a smirk. “But watch out for Garen. The dude can sing a woman right out of her panties.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
She laughs. “Yeah, right. You think Leo would let me date a musician? Be glad you don’t have an older brother.” She spreads a sheet over a twin air mattress. “This is the best I can do. Hope you don’t mind sharing a room.”
“Of course I don’t mind.” And I don’t, despite an overwhelming flood of homesickness hitting me all at once. “It’ll be fun. We’ll talk shit like old times.”
She must have heard the sad note in my voice. “C’mere,” she says, opening her arms. I go willingly, needing comfort from my best friend more than I realized. This is why I flew out here. Les is the sister I wish I had, because Brit and I have never been close—not like we should be.
“We’ll talk shit as much as you want.” She tightens her arms around me for a few more seconds before I pull away. I blink rapidly, willing my eyes to stay dry.
“I just…I had to get out of there, you know? I felt like I was suffocating.”
“Everything’s gonna be okay. Have a little faith, because I’m telling you, Jules. You’re gonna love Seattle.”
The corners of my mouth tilt up in a weak smile. “I need to find a job first.”
“I’m like this”—she crosses her fingers—“with the manager at Java Juice. The tips aren’t bad either.”
I laugh, because she is the manager.
“Thanks for the offer, but you’ve already done enough. I need to learn how to stand on my own two feet for a change.”
I never want to feel so devastated again, and ensuring that doesn’t happen means focusing on me—on ‘Jules’ instead of ‘Jules and Chris’. I’ve been part of a duo for so long that I’ve forgotten how to be my own person. I need to find myself, because I never really did when I was with Chris.
Hopefully, I can find the version of myself that doesn’t blindly walk into trouble; the kind of girl that can follow three simple rules:
Never flirt with temptation.
Never lust after what I can’t have.
And never, under any circumstances, screw a married man again.
This should be easy enough, right?
