Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 423(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 282(@300wpm)
We’re interrupted by a hostess offering to show us to our table. Jules and I follow her hand in hand.
We’re seated in the corner of the room, where I take the seat facing the wall. It’s a nice, secluded spot. I don’t turn to see what’s going on to the side or behind me. The last thing I want is Caroline Hammond coming over to say hello like she’s a long-lost friend. I need to encounter her for the first time at the awards. I’ll be ready for her then.
Instead, I keep my attention on Jules.
“Do you want to share some apps?” Jules asks from across the table. She knows something’s off, but I appreciate her not pushing me to reveal what.
“Sure.” Her mouth is pulled into a smile. She looks worried. “I’m fine,” I say.
She reaches across the table and links her fingers into mine. I can’t tell if it’s for show or because she’s trying to provide comfort. Whatever the reason, I like it. Too much.
Our waitress comes over and we order, after I promise that Jules can have a taste of my potatoes.
“Why don’t I just get the kitchen to do you a separate order of potatoes?” I ask.
“Because it’s launch night and the chefs and waitstaff have got enough to do. I bet it’s chaos in the kitchen. I’d put money on someone getting killed by the end of the night.” She pauses and narrows her eyes. “Or at least punched.”
“What a happy thought. Behind the scenes in hospitality sounds brutal.”
Her eyes widen. “It’s like the Hunger Games, but worse, because you never get out. And the odds are never in your favor.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“And he’s back,” she says, grinning at me. “I thought I lost you for a minute back there.”
“Sorry, I just—”
“You don’t need to explain,” she says brightly.
I should tell her. After all, the awards are coming up soon and she should know before then. If she was my real fiancée, I would have told her. “I just saw a woman from my past.”
She looks at me, her eyebrows raised like she’s waiting for a punchline.
“We were engaged for a minute there. I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
She swallows down the bread she was chewing. “You had a real fiancée? And she’s here tonight?”
“It didn’t last long.” Her father had her enrolled at Berkeley ten days after she told him about the engagement. And then two weeks after that, she ended it. Officially. “I was eighteen, but yes, I asked to marry her. I was… I thought we were in love.” Looking back, Caroline was clearly never in love with me, but I was so besotted by her. I worshipped her. She seemed wise and sophisticated, and the fact that she’d picked me… I’d felt like the luckiest guy in New York.
“But you weren’t in love?” Jules asks.
“Can anyone be in love at eighteen?”
“Why not?” she says. “Is there an age threshold I don’t know about—you know, beyond the age of consent and stuff?”
“I was a very different man back then.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Really? I’m not sure I believe that.”
“I was still working for my dad, doing bread deliveries around the city starting at four in the morning. I had nothing.” I was nothing, I don’t add.
“But what you have doesn’t make you who you are,” she replies simply. “I imagine you are much the man you are now. Handsome. Kind. Hardworking. Not the slightest bit interested in owning a hotel.”
I grin at her. “Maybe you’re right on that last bit.”
“And this woman you were engaged to, what happened? Did she break your heart?”
“And soul and spirit.”
“Whoa. Dramatic much?” She laughs and the corners of my lips twitch despite the unanticipated stress of the evening. “What in the hell happened? Did she knock you out and sell one of your kidneys?” She narrows her eyes like she’s actually waiting for me to confirm she’s right.
I sit back. “Fuck. You heard about it?”
Her jaw goes slack and she covers her mouth with her hand.
I roll my eyes. “No, she didn’t sell my kidney. Are you for real?”
She starts to laugh. Tears are forming in her eyes. “You see? It’s not as bad as it could have been.”
I can’t argue with that.
“And she didn’t run off with your dad and become your stepmom, because your parents are still happily married, so… how bad could it be?”
“Holy shit, Jules, what’s in that brain of yours? I’m seriously concerned.”
“My mom thought I should write crime novels because my imagination is so much worse than the reality of the world.” She sighs as our apps are delivered. “But actually, I think I’m always expecting the worst, or trying to imagine what the worst-case scenario might be. Because…”
“Because?”
She shrugs, taking something involving an aubergine from one of the three plates in the middle of the table. “God, I love eggplant, don’t you?”