“Why?” asked Lissy curiously. “I mean, from what you’ve told me, you can certainly afford a new car. And, no offense, honey, but that hunk of junk you’re driving doesn’t look like it’s going to make it past the spring.”
“I know. I might end up having to rent one for a few months. And the reason I’m reluctant to buy a new car has nothing to do with affordability. It’s - well, because I’m probably not going to be living around here for much longer,” admitted Jill. “I’ve already started looking at four-year schools to transfer to, and depending on which one I choose, I might not need a car. Or care to drive one clear across the country.”
Lissy clapped her hands in glee, then gave Jill a quick hug. “That’s great news, Jill! I’ve always told you that you were wasting your time here at community college. A brain like yours should be at a more deserving school. So, tell me, what are your choices so far. Tulane? Clemson? Oooh, you should totally consider Florida State or University of Miami. I hear both of them are great party schools!”
Jill laughed. “Well, considering I’d be a total dud at parties, I’d better stick with the brainy schools. And, frankly, I’d really prefer to go someplace totally different, far away from the South. It’s way too soon to make a decision, of course, but I think I’d like to go to the West Coast. California, maybe, or even Oregon or Washington. It’s so beautiful there, all the forests and mountains, and of course the ocean. In fact, one of my top choices so far is Seattle. The University of Washington has a really highly rated math and finance department.”
Lissy shuddered slightly. “Ugh. Whenever I think of Seattle all that comes to mind is lots of rain and cold weather, even in the summer. Are you really sure that’s where you want to go?”
“It’s definitely near the top of my list,” admitted Jill. “I mean, there’s still a lot of other schools to consider, and who knows if I’d even be able to transfer or get accepted to some of them. But, well, don’t laugh at me, okay?” At Lissy’s nod of assurance, Jill continued somewhat hesitantly. “Sometimes I have these sort of, well, let’s call them premonitions. Or just a certain feeling or sensation, a sixth sense. And when I started reading up about Seattle, I had the oddest feeling that it’s where I’m meant to be. That something amazing is going to happen to me there. Something extraordinary. Something that’s going to change my entire life.”
“Or maybe it’s a someone,” teased Lissy. “Maybe Seattle is where you’re destined to meet your one true love. But, seriously, Jill. If your gut instinct is telling you that’s where you’re meant to be, then you should go with it. Even if I’ll miss you like crazy!”
Jill gave her friend a farewell hug. “Well, no need to miss me yet. The earliest I’d be able to leave is summer, given that I have to finish up this semester at school, sell the house, settle up all the financial stuff. Now, I’d better hit the road before it gets dark. Thanks again for helping me with everything today, though I get the feeling it was just as much fun for you as it was for me.”
“Absolutely!” agreed Lissy. “And you look amazing, Jill, like drop dead gorgeous amazing.”
“Thanks.” Jill looked down at the tips of her brand new ankle boots, the ones she’d fallen in insta-love with. “Though I still can’t help feeling really, really guilty that I’ve been enjoying myself today, barely two days after my grandmother died. I should be home - ”
“What?” interrupted Lissy impatiently. “Mourning? Crying? Praying? I’m guessing you’ve already done more than your fair share of all three. And you deserved today, Jill. You deserve to finally have a life of your own. A life without rules and restrictions and one where you can do whatever you damned well please whenever you want to. Where you can pluck your eyebrows and paint your nails fire engine red and wear a pair of jeans that shows off that great ass of yours. Where you can read racy romance novels and watch an R-rated movie. And where you can finally go out on a date and have your cherry popped.”
Jill’s cheeks flushed bright pink at her friend’s very bold declarations. “Uh, maybe I’ll start with painting my nails red and take it from there, okay? I mean, I haven’t even been kissed yet, for God’s sake! And the, uh, cherry popping is definitely going to wait until I find the right man. The perfect man.” She smiled dreamily. “An extraordinary man.”
Chapter Seven
Two Years Later – Seattle, Washington
“You look awfully nice today, Jilly. Got a hot date after work or something?”
Jill grimaced at her roommate’s teasing question. “The only hot dates I’m going to be having for the next few weeks are with my laptop and a pot of coffee, considering how much work I still have to get done on that research project. And the reason I dressed up a bit today is because Allison was nagging everyone to up their image for the next few weeks. Apparently the company has hired on some consultant to help dig them out of the deep, dark, bottomless financial pit they’ve plunged themselves into.”
Casey, who was Australian by birth and the most fun-loving of Jill’s three roommates, wrinkled her freckled nose in distaste. “From what you’ve told us, old Allison is always nagging you about something.”
Jill nodded resignedly. “Me in particular, it seems. For whatever reason she’s never taken a liking to me, and some days it feels like she goes out of her way to torment me.”
“She must be a total bitch, then, because who wouldn’t like you, Jill?” cooed Casey, giving her a reassuring hug. “She’s probably some jealous old cow, and feels threatened because you’re so young and pretty and smart.”
Jill smiled, wondering what she and the others would do without the ever cheerful, always uplifting Casey to make them feel better about all of their woes and worries. “Actually, she’s very attractive - tall, killer body, perfect hair, wardrobe to die for. And she’s plenty smart enough, Casey. Smart enough to head up a whole department. And I’d guess she’s only in her early to mid thirties, pretty young to have such an important position.”
Casey shrugged, clearly unimpressed. “Bitch probably slept with some old guy to get the job,” she commented matter-of-factly. “Her kind always do that sort of thing. At least, that’s the way it happened in the soap operas I used to watch back home.”
“Well, life isn’t a soap opera,” reminded Jill. “And from the little I know about Allison, I really doubt she slept her way to the top. She doesn’t seem like the kind of woman who’d stoop down to that level. Or who’d allow a man to have that sort of power over her. But you’re right about one thing, Case - she is definitely a bitch.”
Casey’s sherry brown eyes twinkled with merriment. “Ooh, I love it when you actually use bad language, Jilly! Shoshana and I will make a naughty girl out of you yet!”
Jill grinned at her irrepressible roommate. “Except that I just said a little prayer to myself to make up for using a bad word. But cheer up - maybe you can work on corrupting Tam instead!”
Casey snorted. “Yeah, like that would ever happen! She can’t even understand what I’m saying to her half the time.”
“She understands you perfectly,” corrected Jill, unable to suppress her laughter. “Tam might have been born in Vietnam but she speaks fluent English, along with three or four other languages. So if she’s pretending not to understand something you say, she’s messing with you intentionally. Besides, with Tam pretty much devoting every waking hour of her life to studying, the chances of you getting her drunk or dragging her out for a night on the town are even slimmer than they are with me.”
Tam, the newest addition to the household, was quiet, kept to herself for the most part, and was intensely focused on getting her undergraduate degree in three years so she could enter medical school a year early. Tam came from an uber-competitive family, where there was a ton of parental pressure on the children to succeed and thereby achieve the American dream. Her older brother was in law school, while her twin sister was also pre-med. The twins had some sort of intense sibling rivalry contest going on
to see who could get through medical school first, and Tam was determined to come out the winner of that competition.
Casey gave her a sly look. “But at least with you there’s a chance. And you have to admit that you have fun when you actually let Shoshana and I drag you out with us. Except that you’re still a total lightweight when it comes to drinking.”
Jill shuddered, recalling all too well the nasty hangover she’d experienced the last time she had allowed her two slightly manic roommates to strong arm her into going out with them. “I won’t argue with you there,” she replied wryly. “Two glasses of wine or one margarita seems to be my limit. Otherwise, I’m praying for death the next morning. Though I won’t say if it’s my death or yours for talking me into having a third glass.”
“I suppose you don’t have to try and keep up with me and Sho when we go out,” mused Casey. “After all, the pair of us do have a lot more years of drinking under our belts than you do. And you seem to have just as much fun sober as we do stinking drunk. Besides, you’re a damned good designated driver, Jilly. Don’t know what we’re going to do without you when we all graduate this June and go our separate ways. “
Jill patted her friend on the shoulder reassuringly. “Here’s a thought, Case. Maybe you should cut back on your wild ways and give up drinking.”
“Hah, hah. Hilarious,” retorted Casey sarcastically. “Maybe you should move to L.A. with me this summer. While I’m looking for work at one of the studios you can try your hand as a stand-up comic.”
Jill grew somber at the reminder that come this June she, Casey, and Shoshana - or Sho, as Casey often called her for short - would be plotting very different paths after graduation. Casey, whose major was in digital arts, was planning to snag a fantastic job with one of the film studios in Los Angeles. She had more than enough spunk and sass and self-confidence to succeed in such a highly competitive field, and if for some reason things didn’t work out, she’d vowed to return to her native Australia and write scripts for one of those semi-awful soap operas she still loved to watch.
Shoshana was from Chicago, the youngest of four daughters born to Orthodox Jewish parents, and the only one remaining who had yet to marry and start a family of her own. She’d escaped from an upbringing nearly as strict as Jill’s had been, and had no intention of ever moving back or marrying a nice Jewish boy like her parents continued to pressure her into doing. Her major was in genetics, and she was already receiving job offers from several major companies in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas.
Tam seemed hell bent on graduating a year early, even if it killed her - which, judging from how skinny she was and how she never seemed to sleep, was a real possibility - and then heading off to the first halfway decent medical school that would accept her, no matter where it was located. Jill had quickly picked up on the fact that the sibling rivalry between the Tam and her twin sister bordered on the obsessive, and that there was absolutely zero love lost between them.
As for Jill - well, she wasn’t in any particular rush to leave Seattle, the city she’d come to love and think of as home these past couple of years. She never minded the cool, often rainy weather, the frequently foggy days, or the throngs of people and heavy traffic in nearly every corner of the city. Having lived for the first nineteen years of her life in a small, sleepy southern town where everyone knew each other - and more than likely knew their private business, too - and where there was very little to do or see, moving to Seattle had been a true awakening for her. For the first time in her life she’d been able to do exactly as she pleased, making her own decisions and charting her own path. She had never once regretted choosing the University of Washington as her transfer school, and had thrived in these new environments - both academically and emotionally. And from all accounts, it sounded like employment opportunities in Seattle were plentiful, so that Jill would have her choice of job offers once she graduated.
She had made a whole slew of new friends at school and around the neighborhood, finally free to be as sociable and outgoing as she had always longed to be back in Midland. Living with all of her grandmother’s rules and restrictions for so long had kept that side of Jill’s nature cruelly suppressed, but now that she was fully in charge of her own life she was making up for lost time.
She’d lucked out with her choice of roommates, relieved and delighted to have met Shoshana and Casey after seeing a few other, not so ideal rooms for rent, and, in at least a couple of cases, less than ideal roommates. The four of them, including Tam, shared a slightly dilapidated Craftsman style house in one of Seattle’s older, less fashionable neighborhoods. But the rent was affordable, there were four bedrooms which meant no one had to share, and if the bathrooms and kitchen could maybe use a little upgrading none of them seemed to mind very much. It was a little too far to walk to the campus, especially considering the frequently inclement weather, but the bus stopped on the corner and it was a fairly quick ride to the university and downtown from here.
Jill adored her small but cozy room, with its wood floors, pitched ceiling, and bay window that overlooked the backyard. Most of the furniture - twin bed, dresser, nightstand, desk - had been left behind by previous inhabitants, but she’d put her own stamp on the room with bright bed linens and curtains, some inexpensive framed prints to hang on the walls, and a variety of whimsical decorative items she’d unearthed at flea markets.
And, as it so happened, she didn’t spend a whole lot of time cooped up in her room, not when she lived with two people as fun-loving and sociable as Casey and Shoshana. From movie nights to giving each other facials and mani-pedis to cooking up pots of chili or spaghetti or baking brownies, the three girls had quickly become fast friends, and Jill had never been so happy in her life as she’d been since meeting them. They were the best friends she’d never been allowed to have growing up, were almost like the sisters she had always wished for, and it made her very, very sad to think about a time when they wouldn’t be together this way any longer. The eighteen months she’d lived in Seattle thus far had virtually flown by, but while sometimes it seemed as though she had just arrived in town, there were other times when it felt like the boring, going-nowhere-in-a-hurry life she’d known back in Midland had belonged to someone else.
Barely a week after her grandmother’s funeral - which had been a long, drawn-out, and emotional ordeal for Jill - she’d begun the process of sorting through all of Betty’s things, not that there had been all that many of them. She’d gladly let Shirley and her grandmother’s friends take as many of the fussy old antique quilts, teapots, crocheted tablecloths, and other knick-knacks that they wanted. She had kept a few small things for herself, of course, mostly photographs, a pretty vase, a vintage perfume bottle, and a couple of pieces of jewelry that had belonged to Betty. Aside from those few items, plus her own personal things, Jill hadn’t been inclined to keep much of anything, especially since she’d be moving clear across the country come June. Her boss at the real estate company had already given the house a careful inspection, and advised her that the house would be more likely to sell if it was emptied of all the old-fashioned furnishings and then staged with more contemporary pieces. She’d kept just the few pieces of furniture, along with the bare minimum of housewares and linens, she’d need to see her through until June and systematically either sold or gave away the rest.
She had also gleefully packed up every single piece of her old, drab wardrobe - from the embarrassing “mom” jeans to the sweaters that encased her slim figure like a tent to the plain white cotton undies - and donated the whole lot to the same Goodwill store where Betty had once shopped. Jill was very well aware of the raised eyebrows and looks of surprise that followed her around town courtesy of her new appearance - hair, makeup, trendy wardrobe - not to mention the air of confidence that she seemed to have acquired practically overnight. She blithely ignored the whispered comments of her grandmother’s friends and acquaintances, not giving a hoot if they thought she was in dang
er of becoming like her mother just because she wore clothes that actually fit, left her hair loose, and had gotten her ears pierced. After all, she’d told herself, it wasn’t like she was parading around town wearing mini-skirts, low-cut tops, and stiletto heels, or going way overboard with the cosmetics. She looked, she realized with some surprise, just like most of the girls she’d gone to high school with, those same girls who were actually smiling at her now and saying hello. As for the boys who had been her classmates - well, they tended to stare as though they didn’t recognize her, or couldn’t believe that the shy, mousy Jill Parrish they’d known for years could look so different with just a few minor changes to her wardrobe and appearance.
She had wound up applying to half a dozen different universities, all but one on the West Coast, and had been both surprised and delighted when all six had accepted her transfer request. And while she had given all of the locations careful consideration, in the end she’d followed her gut instinct and selected the University of Washington. Fortunately, given the sizeable sum of money she’d inherited, plus the additional monies she received from the surprisingly quick sale of the house, paying for tuition and living expenses wasn’t going to be a problem, and Jill wouldn’t have to worry about applying for financial aid or pinching pennies as she’d been forced to do all her life.
But old habits tended to die hard, and even though she didn’t have to worry about money, Jill was still frugal about expenses. She still tended to buy generic brands at the grocery store, or at least whatever brand was on sale. Aside from acquiring some rain gear and a warmer winter coat and boots, she’d bought very few clothes or shoes since moving to Seattle, especially since she more or less lived in jeans, T-shirts, and sweaters year round. She’d decided against buying a car, preferring to use public transportation, though she had acquired a bicycle to get around town with. And she still drove occasionally, borrowing Shoshana’s car, or acting as the designated driver when her roommates felt the need to get a little crazy.
The One Real Regret Page 10