Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65643 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 328(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 219(@300wpm)
But when I opened my mouth, the truth wouldn’t come out. I physically couldn’t get my vocal cords to produce the sounds or my lips to form the words. So, I coughed, took a long sip of my soda, and redirected. “I love you, too. Are you coming to the Halloween party?”
I didn’t have to specify which one. There was only one Halloween party in this town that really mattered. Julian had made sure of it.
Noemi let the question linger in the air while she decided whether or not she was going to let me change the subject. Finally, mercifully, she did.
Though we were several feet from the nearest table, she lowered her voice and leaned in across the table. “No, because I’m finalizing the details for the party I’m having the following weekend. You can still make it, right?”
I knew by party, she meant wedding. And I wouldn’t miss it. It was literally the only thing I asked when I accepted the role—can I have November 5 off? The wedding was in Turks and Caicos, but I’d have flown out the night of the 4th and flown home the morning of the 6th if I had to. Luckily, I wasn’t on the schedule at all that weekend. I couldn’t wait to see Noemi get married.
“Of course I can still make it.” I reached over and squeezed her hand, trying not to smile too widely. I didn’t want anyone to wonder what we were talking about. “Who else is going to be there?”
I held my breath while she went through the names. The guest list was small. Only her closest family and friends were coming. I only exhaled when she got to the end of it and she hadn’t said—
“Oh, and Garrett, of course,” she said, as though it were an absolute given that one invited one’s ex-husband to one’s wedding.
Luckily, the neutral expression I’d schooled my face into didn’t falter, even as my heart leapt, and my stomach crashed all at the same time.
“Is he giving you away?” I asked when I had recovered.
Noemi rolled her eyes. “Garrett made the same joke. No, as poetic as it would be, my ex-husband is not giving me to my new husband.”
It was too bad. For some reason, the symbolism appealed to me. Even though they’d been divorced for as long as I’d known Noemi, I still thought of Garrett as belonging to her. Off limits. Forbidden. I wondered if seeing her marry another man would finally break that spell. If it did, I wondered what would happen next.
As though he sensed his name was being spoken, Garrett called me that night. To my surprise, there wasn’t a hint of dark flirtation in his voice. It was as though the kiss, the instruction not to give his love to Andrew, had never happened.
“How close are you with Jasmine Portillo?” he asked, dispensing with pleasantries.
“I–we used to be close.” I hadn’t talked to her in over a month, though. Hardly at all since the scandal blew up.
“Any particular reason?” Garrett asked. There was an edge underneath his business-like tone. There was a reason he was asking.
A shiver of dread ran through me. “No. We were just party friends, you know? We didn’t bake cookies and have movie marathons together; we went to club openings and…” I trailed off.
“Yacht parties?” Garrett asked grimly.
A flash of irritation cut through my unease. “One or two,” I said, trying to keep my voice even and unruffled. The real number was probably closer to seven or eight. I didn’t know how Jasmine kept getting us invited to them. I never asked because I didn’t care. It was just fun. She’d send a group text, and all of a sudden, five or six of us would be on our way to Mykonos. Sometimes we bought our own tickets–more often we ended up in someone’s private plane or flying first class on someone else’s tab.
I would have curled up and died before I admitted that to Garrett though. At the time, it hadn’t seemed so strange. Jasmine had wealthy, powerful friends for whom the cost of a private plane was like the cost of a coffee to me. It wasn’t a luxury; it was an afterthought. If you tried to thank them, they smiled in a vaguely confused and then condescending way. Oh that? It was nothing.
It had been something though. I saw that now. I was just so used to the commerce of youth and beauty that it hadn’t rung any alarm bells the way it should have. I’d been naive.
“Why?” I asked abruptly. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing to worry about now,” Garrett said. “Just…don’t go to any more parties with her for a while, okay? I already made sure she’s not coming to Julian’s.”
Jasmine had wanted an invitation to Julian’s Halloween party the year before. She knew I’d gone a few times, and she couldn’t believe I couldn’t get her on the list. I’d had to explain to her that I was barely on the list. Maybe my manager could have wrangled me an official invitation, but there was no way I could have brought anyone. I’d been surprised she needed me to get one. I’d thought with all her wealthy and powerful friends, she could have easily scored an invite.