by Sara Whitney
He leaned forward, his head lolling. “Tell that to my unemployment officer.”
She was saved from answering when the greenroom door opened and Jake strolled in. He crossed to her and, without a word, pulled her into his arms, bent her dramatically backward, and kissed her hard. They broke apart when Dave pointedly cleared his throat, and Mabel, fanning herself a little, said, “I didn’t know you were stopping by the station today!”
“Brandon just called so we could go over the most recent ad-revenue numbers. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I know he’s not happy.”
“Great,” Dave moaned.
“I just hope he keeps it short. I’ve got a last-minute conference call with the Chicago office in an hour,” he said, checking his watch.
“The drudgery of the upwardly mobile.” She winked.
“It’s the only way to the top, and you know that’s where I wanna be, baby.”
She kissed him again because his work ethic was damn sexy.
“Anyway,” he said when they separated, “between the numbers and Finn’s focus group research, I’ve done all I can.”
“I know,” she purred. “And you’ll be rewarded with displays of my gratitude tonight, whatever happens.”
Dave’s moaning morphed into a retching noise, which she ignored as she tugged Jake’s lapels back into place. “By the way, you really need to start packing, friend-o.”
“I cannot wait to be on a beach with you where I don’t have to spend a second thinking about work,” he said. “I’ve already got my swim trunks and my sunblock laid out. Do I need anything else?”
She stroked a hand down his abdomen, covered in layers of office-wear. “Not on my account. In fact, if you forget to pack any shirts, that’s fine by me.”
The seventy listeners who’d signed up for the station’s Jamaica trip were departing the next morning for the five-day, four-night resort vacation, and Dave, Mabel, and a handful of Brick Babes, including Thea, were going along to mingle with the fans and do periodic broadcasts from paradise. A still-safe-to-fly Ana was also going, but more importantly for Mabel, Jake had managed to swing the time off from BPS, so the two of them were looking forward to their first trip together even if it would be work-adjacent.
“I’ll leave all my shirts at home, I promise.”
Home. Was he thinking of Beaucoeur as home? The thought warmed her as much as the sunny Jamaican beach no doubt would, and she kissed him until she was breathless, flustered, and unconcerned about anything, including the ratings.
That afternoon, Mabel and Dave walked side by side to face Brandon.
“Have a seat.” He smiled his oiliest smile and gestured to the guest chairs in his office. “You’ve reviewed the Nielsen numbers by now?”
They both nodded, and when Dave drew breath to speak, Brandon held up a hand. “Save it. Your morning numbers aren’t where I’d like them to be, and the ad people are having a harder time selling for the show. Even though Thea’s doing relatively well, the feedback we’ve gotten from advertisers is that they miss the old partnership the two of you had.”
Mabel’s heart started to trip in her chest as Brandon looked from her to Dave and back again. Then he shrugged. “I’m not perfect, and I do admit my mistakes. We could let it ride until the next book comes out, but between the ad revenue and lover boy’s focus groups, I see that I was wrong.”
Mabel groped for Dave’s hand and squeezed it. Was this really happening?
“So congrats,” Brandon said, rubbing a hand over his brow. “The week after Jamaica, Mabel, you’re back on the morning show with Dave. No more solo show, no more guest hosts. Full-time Dave and Mae. We’ll find somebody new for afternoon drive.”
Dave let out a shaky breath as Mabel breathed, “For real?”
Brandon nodded. “Numbers don’t lie.”
She gripped the arms of the chair, terrified this was some kind of cruel joke. “Really? Really and truly?”
“Really and truly.” He tapped his pen on the Nielsen book sitting on his desktop. “And Lowell Consolidated’s going to pay for an advertising blitz about our return to morning-show greatness. What do you say, team? Think we can rebuild the show, take it to number one in the market?”
Elation filled her chest, and she scrambled to her feet, whooping. Dave joined her, and they both jumped and hollered like kids while Brandon winced at the noise.
Her joy kept expanding in her chest until she felt like she might burst with it. She had her job back and her best friend grinning like an idiot next to her, and when she got home from work that night, an amazing man would be waiting at her house for her. Could any one person handle this much happiness in life, this much love filling her heart?
She guessed she’d just have to get used to it.
Thirty-Six
That night, Jake sat in Mabel’s kitchen and waited for her to get home. He didn’t have the radio on like usual. No TV, no iPad, no newspaper. Nothing but the cold silence of the empty house and the cold knot in his stomach.
Tybalt scruffed himself against Jake’s ankles before leaping onto the stool next to him, where he tucked himself into a cat loaf and tried to drill a hole into Jake’s forehead with his Sphinx eyes.
“I know, buddy.” He sighed, running a hand down the cat’s back.
They stayed like that until Tybalt’s ears perked up and he hopped off the stool with a grunt to mince toward the front door. A few seconds later, Jake heard Mabel’s steps on the porch. He stood and tried to calm his pounding heart.
The door creaked as she pushed it open, and he heard her stomping snow off her boots and baby talking to Tybalt.
“Hey, sexy man,” she called from the front hallway as she dropped her purse and shrugged out of her coat. “It’s freezing out there! I cannot wait to be on a beach with you. Less than twenty-four hours now!”
She walked into the kitchen and joined him in front of the island, wrapping her arms around him for a quick hug. “Wow, do I have some things to fill you in on.” She pulled away to move toward the refrigerator.
But Jake finally unfroze and grabbed her wrist, pulling her back against him. When he spoke, his voice was low and desperate. “I love you.”
She looked up at him, a slow smile melting across her face, and she tightened her arms where they rested around his waist. “And I’m wildly, stupidly in love with you too.” She leaned her head against his chest and continued her bright monologue. “This may be the best day of my life because not only are we disgustingly in love, but guess who’s back on mornings? Brandon admitted he was wrong and put it all back.”
“Seriously? He didn’t tell me he was going to do that.” He pressed a kiss into her hair and held her close. Her joy was a tiny bright spot in the middle of the darkness. “I’m so happy for you, baby.”
“Right? Once we’re home from Jamaica, I’m back to mornings, so you and I will have to find some new time to go to the gym together unless you want to start getting up at, like, three thirty, which I definitely don’t. Is that okay with you?”
She pulled away from him and grabbed a bottle of Prosecco from the fridge, then selected two glasses from the cabinet. But Jake couldn’t take her heartbreaking cheerfulness anymore.
“Mabel, I can’t go to Jamaica with you.” His throat constricted as he watched confusion move across her face.
“But you’ve got the time off work. We leave tomorrow.”
He shook his head. “Not anymore. And…” He forced himself to spit it out. “Sweetheart, they want me back in Chicago as a partner. Full time. Immediately.”
Now Mabel was the one who froze. “So soon?” she whispered. “I thought we had more time.”
“Me too,” he said miserably. “I thought…”
He’d thought it would all work out somehow. His friendship with Mabel had crept up on him, and then their relationship had intensified from see-how-it-goes to… this.
They had aggressively never talked about what would happen once he was ba
ck in Chicago, probably because neither of them wanted to believe this period of blissful happiness would come to an end. He’d thought he’d have a few more months with her at least. More months to come up with a solution that didn’t end up with the two of them living in different cities. More months to get a better handle on what this relationship actually was. But fucking Greg McDonald couldn’t fucking handle the fucking Kriegsman account, and it was Jake’s life that got blown to fucking smithereens because of it.
She set her wineglass down on the island with a clink and stared into the liquid as if she might find answers in the swirling bubbles. Her shoulders rose and fell as she drew in a breath, and he watched her struggle to conjure a smile.
“A partnership. That’s… that’s great! Congratulations. I know how hard you’ve worked for this.” She blinked rapidly, and he hated that this was hurting her. But when he took a step toward her, she shied back. So he kept his distance and tried to explain.
“Things blew up with the BPS guy who was handling one of my biggest clients, and they’ve threatened to pull their business if I don’t come back to manage their accounts full time. That’s what today’s call was, my boss telling me I’m needed back in my office as soon as possible, and Brandon okayed it.”
Mabel nodded once, sharply. “Yeah, that sounds about right. I was just starting to get smug about how great my life was, so this was inevitable.” Her laugh was bitter.
“I did try. I told them I couldn’t just walk away from the Lowell accounts. But they refused to budge, said if I wanted the partnership… Mabel, you know how hard I’ve worked for it. What it means for me. What it means to be able to support my family if it comes to that.”
She swallowed hard. “I do. I know. I’m proud of you.”
Her voice broke on the word proud, and they both fell silent.
It had been so easy to let himself forget about his old goals, his lifelong goals, while living out this dream life with her. Then the real world had come calling. The forever he’d spent his adult life chasing was here, and it was fucking up the forever he’d just started building with Mabel.
“So when do you need to leave?”
“I’ll pack up my apartment and leave in the morning.”
They stared at each other from opposite sides of the island. He wanted to reach across that vast expanse of countertop and take her hand, but she’d retreated into herself.
“And you won’t have much reason to come back to Beaucoeur after that.” Mabel’s voice was as flat as her eyes.
He rocked back on his heels at her words. “I have every reason. I’ll come on the weekends, or you can visit me.” What was she saying? Did she not want to keep seeing him once he was gone? “It’s only three hours away, and we can Skype during the week.”
The corners of her mouth tightened. “And your work hours in Chicago, they’re nine to five and no weekends, right?”
He squeezed the back of his neck, not wanting to answer. When he was in Chicago, he worked into the night and weekends too. Beaucoeur had kept him busy, but it hadn’t come close to the grind that Chicago was.
She swirled the wine in her glass but didn’t take a drink. “And good thing my job at the station never involves weekend work either.” A cold was creeping into her voice, an awful chill far worse than the subzero temperature outside.
“I don’t suppose you’d want to move up there with me?” He kept his tone light, but her annoyed tsk told him that even as a joke, it wasn’t something she’d consider. And he already knew that anyway. He’d thought maybe if she was still unhappy with the afternoon-drive shift, she might consider a city change. But now? Her work was here. Her life was here.
With a sharp motion, she brought the glass to her lips and drained it. “It’s not fair,” she said, her voice low and furious. “It’s a shitty situation, and it’s not fair.”
She turned her back to him to rinse the glass in the sink. “We’ll try the long-distance thing for a while, but it’ll never be the same. Three hours each way doesn’t seem like much now, but it’ll start adding up. We’ll end up visiting each other less and less, and then we’ll start talking less and less, and eventually everything will collapse.”
“It won’t.” His heart raced as he fumbled for the words to change her mind. “We’re stronger than that.”
“No. I was right all along.” She addressed her reflection in the window over the sink. “I should’ve followed my own rules.”
Her own rules? Her rules against relationships?
“Are you saying you regret us being together?” His voice swelled to fill the room, and when she didn’t answer, he walked around the island to stand in front of her, desperate to reach her. “It’s too late for that. I love you too much to just walk away.”
She shook her head and pressed a hand to her mouth, stopping whatever words might otherwise have tumbled out. His fingers twitched to smooth out the line between her eyes, but he was scared that if he touched her, she’d crumble.
She leaned against the sink, her eyes focused on some object just over his shoulder, and the longer he waited for her to speak, the heavier his heart sat in his chest. Why wasn’t she putting up a fight? Was she just going to shrug and let him walk away?
When she finally spoke again, it was to say in a hollow, remote voice, “It’s been a big day. I’m going to bed.”
She brushed past him, but he stayed rooted to the spot, unsure if she wanted him to follow.
Then she paused in the doorway and looked back. “You coming?”
He nodded and walked with her to the bedroom, where they undressed in silence and made love with an intensity that felt like goodbye.
When he woke up the next morning, she was already gone.
Packing up his apartment was too grand a description for what Jake actually had to do. He crammed his clothes and the contents of his bathroom cabinet into a duffel and zipped his suits into a garment bag, then stripped the soft sheets Mabel had gotten him for Christmas off the bed and stuffed them on top of one of the boxes with his files and books. And that represented the totality of his life in Beaucoeur. When he left, it would all fit neatly in his Jeep. All except his heart, of course, which rested in Mabel’s hands.
After he dropped his key with the property manager, he pointed his Jeep toward the radio station where he had a few more files to pack up. He was also hoping he’d find Mabel there, but just his luck, he found Brandon instead.
“So you’re actually leaving?”
Jake glanced up from the stack of paperwork he was sorting through. “Yeah. Of course. Have you got an extra banker’s box?”
Brandon didn’t answer, and Jake braced himself for whatever snideness he was about to be hit with.
But Brandon only shook his head. “I’m surprised. I mean, we both know you could’ve gone back to Chicago months ago if you’d really wanted to.”
Jake clenched his jaw but said nothing as Brandon crossed his arms and leaned against the door.
“I mean, have you ever wondered why I’m still in Beaucoeur when this place basically runs like a machine whether I’m here or not?”
“The sketchy midwestern sushi?” Jake asked tightly.
“That’s one reason,” Brandon said. “But mostly it’s because I’ve got nothing in Detroit to go home to. Empty house, angry ex, nightmare father.”
Had Jake been talking to any other human on Earth, he would’ve described Brandon’s tone as lonely, but that didn’t track with the guy he’d known for a decade.
“What’s your point?” he snapped.
“Me? I’m just enjoying some different scenery for a while. But you? You’ve got something to go home to.”
“Yeah. My partnership,” Jake said, intentionally misinterpreting what Brandon was getting at because fuck, it hurt too much to open the door to anything else. “Don’t worry; I’ll stay on top of Lowell’s books no matter where I am.”
Brandon’s face fell. “Can’t say I didn’t try.” And in a blink,
that flash of disappointment was gone, replaced by his usual smirk. “Well, no worries, Jakehammer. I’ll make sure to keep everybody so busy down here that they’ll barely know you’re gone.”
And with that he vanished, leaving Jake feeling even lower than he had ten minutes before.
It got worse when Dave knocked on the door.
“Il Duce said you needed a box,” he said, handing one over. “Gotta say, this is a weird way to pack for the beach.”
Jake swallowed back the bile creeping up his throat. Dodging questions from Dave would be much harder. “I’m not going to make the trip after all.”
Dave tilted his head in a question. “Come again?”
“I’m headed back to Chicago.”
“For the weekend?”
“For good.”
At Jake’s terse explanation, Dave’s brows met over the bridge of his nose. “Wait, you’re leaving?”
Christ, why was this so hard for people to understand? “That’s where my job is. What else am I supposed to do?”
Dave folded his arms over his chest and frowned. “Sure, and nothing changed between July and now. No reason to try to renegotiate your job terms or anything.”
Jake felt a welcome rush of anger at Dave’s sarcastic tone. “I did try. Believe me. But I’ve been working toward a partnership with BPS for years, and I’m not just walking away from it.”
“But you are just walking away from her,” Dave sneered. “Got it.”
He wasn’t doing this. He wasn’t going to argue with Dave about the thing that threatened to crush his heart. Haphazardly tossing the rest of the stack into the box, he slammed the lid closed. He’d go through the fucking paperwork in Chicago, where nobody there would hurt him.
He grabbed the box and turned to leave. “We’ll figure it out.”