Silence.
“Carys?”
“Are you kidding me, Evie?” she practically yelled.
“Keep your voice down,” I reminded her. “I’m serious.”
“That is insane. You know that, right?”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. My brain was speeding at a million miles per hour, flooded with thoughts and ideas, hopes and dreams. “Julian said he’d take care of me.”
“Well, I think he sort of went above and beyond,” Carys quipped. “What are you going to do with all that money?”
“Good things,” I said without hesitation. “I don’t know what, but all good things. I’m going to make sure he has a damn good legacy. That’s all I know. There’s so much I need to figure out.”
“No kidding. Wow,” Carys said, her voice trailing a bit. “So, what are you going to do now? You coming back here or what?”
I glanced up. I hadn’t realized it, but my car was two blocks away. I’d left the bank on Main Street and kept walking, finding myself in front of the local travel agency—Maxie’s Travels.
“I’ll let you know,” I said, hanging up. Julian and I had once planned to travel the world. If I couldn’t do it with him, I had to do it for him.
The name on the door said Maxine Treadwater followed by a long list of abbreviated acronyms. A neon sign flashed ‘open,’ but the place seemed empty. I pulled on the heavy glass door, bells jingling above as I entered.
“Be right there!” a woman called from the back.
To my left, oceans of brochures depicting thousands of travel destinations pulled me in. I flipped through brochures for Jamaica, St. Croix, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Australia, and settled on a frilly pink Parisian pamphlet with a photo of the Louvre on the front.
“Oh, hello, there!” she said, waddling to the front of the store. Pleasantly plump with sandy-gray hair reminiscent of a sweet grandmother, her infectious happiness nearly reached out and grabbed me. Her kind, blue eyes hid behind red, thick-rimmed glasses as the librarian chains draped down her shoulders. Her chubby thighs rubbed together, making a swishing sound as she neared. “So, what brings you in today?”
Her smile was huge and contagious, and with her crazy high energy, I couldn’t help but smile in return.
“Have a seat at my desk, honey,” she said, squeezing herself into her office chair.
“I want to travel,” I said.
She laughed, revealing a mouthful of fillings on her lightly coffee-stained teeth. She was a woman who had lived life to the fullest—every inch of her said so. “Well, I know that. But where do you want to go?”
“Everywhere,” I sighed. “I don’t know. I can’t decide.”
“Okay, well how much are you looking to spend? We can start with a budget, and that’ll help narrow things down,” she said, grabbing a pen and notebook.
“I don’t have one,” I said.
She glanced at me up and down, her eyes playful. “Well, that’s a first.”
“Maybe we can start with Europe?”
“You going alone or with someone, sweetie?”
“Alone,” I sighed, though I knew Julian would be there with me in spirit.
She rotated toward her computer and began typing feverishly, her long, red nails clicking in tandem with the keystrokes. “That’s an awful lot of traveling to do all by yourself, dear. How would you feel about joining a travel group? You stay together. You travel together. You do everything in a group. Maybe ten or twenty people?”
“Those exist?”
Maxie let out a big old belly laugh. “You’re real cute. I like you!”
I sat back in my seat, relaxing a bit. “I think I could do the group thing.”
“When do you want to leave, honey?” She picked up her pen and pressed it to the pad waiting for my answer.
“Can I leave tomorrow?”
She threw her pen down, a sweet giggle escaping her thin, red lips. This woman thought everything was hilarious. “Looks like I need to get busy, then!”
She pulled up a website, squinting and readjusting her glasses as she read various descriptions.
“There’s a group leaving in a week,” she said. “You could depart from Kansas City, meet up with them in Chicago. You’d fly from Chicago to Dublin and start there. Looks like you’ll be visiting Majorca, Rome, London, Paris… and everywhere in between! Oh, honey, this is a twelve-week trip. You’d be gone until just before Christmas.”
“Perfect,” I said, reaching into my purse and pulling out my seldom-used credit card. “Book it.”
“Do you want to know how much it’s going to cost?” she asked, throwing me a coy look.
“Please call me with the final amount. I’ll stop by tomorrow with a cashier’s check to cover everything,” I said.
“Okay, sweetie,” she said, swiping my card for the deposit and handing it back.
I left Maxie’s Travels with a sense of calm and hope. I closed my eyes inhaling the late summer air and dreaming of Paris, London, and Rome. They were just a fraction of the places on our list, but it was going to happen. It was really going to happen.
29
JUDE
“I’m so confused,” Samantha whined, skulking back into my sofa as she stared at the screen of my laptop.
“What are you confused about?” I tried my hardest to hide the rampant frustration in my tone. Two days we’d been working together, and in two days, she’d learned nothing. Perhaps if it had to do with makeup or handbags, she’d have taken more of an interest. She spent more time texting on her phone than doing anything else.
“Everything,” she groaned, twirling her dark hair around her finger and batting her eyelashes. She’d been trying to flirt with me nonstop. “We’ve been working all day long. Why don’t we go out and get a drink or something?”
I didn’t want to spend another minute with her. I didn’t want to bear witness to her pathetic attempt to reel me in any longer than I had to. I pretended not to notice when she smooshed her cleavage together or wore low-cut tops. I blatantly ignored her when she tried to bat her lashes at me, and the copious amounts of lip gloss she layered on her full lips was nothing short of desperate. She was pretty, but nothing about her made my dick hard the way it would’ve months ago.
I drew in a long, full breath. Two days with her, and I needed a stiff drink. No question. “One drink. Then we’re calling it a day.”
She sprung up from the sofa, grabbing her purse. “Can I use your bathroom?”
I pointed down the hall watching as she swayed her hips with each step and waiting for ten minutes until she came back in a cloud of perfume and a fresh coat of lip gloss over her lips.
“I’m ready!” she called out excitedly as if we were going on a date. Girls like her, who made themselves easily at home and inserted themselves as an insta-girlfriend, were the reason I never settled down. Shallow and desperate, they were only ever good for one thing.
We headed downstairs to the restaurant down the street where Veronica and I would hold our meetings, and I found us a couple of empty barstools at the bar. She walked a little too close to me on the way there, and I was almost certain she’d have thought nothing if I’d have held her hand. I didn’t want to feel like I was on a date with her, and I certainly didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.
I ordered an amber lager while she ordered a lemon drop martini.
“This is amazing,” she gushed. A thousand skinny metal bracelets dangled from her wrist each time she brought the glass to her lips. “So yummy.”
She bored me to death. I glanced down at my phone, my thumb swiping as I checked for messages. It was all I did anymore. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. I waited by my phone.
“Are you kidding me?” The familiar voice was like nails on a chalkboard causing me to nearly spit out my drink. “You have a new girlfriend already, and you took her to our restaurant?”
I spun around faced with a livid Veronica. Behind her, a table of her gawking girlfriends
watched with amusement.
“Who is this?” she scoffed, pointing at Samantha as if we were all in junior high.
Shoot me now.
“I’m Samantha,” she piped up, puffing out her perky breasts. “Jude’s new business partner.”
Shit.
“New business partner, eh?” Veronica said, spewing venom with her words. “That didn’t take long, Jude.”
Samantha sipped her drink casually leaning closer to me as if Veronica had somehow encroached on her territory. Fucking women.
“Samantha’s father is buying J-Corp,” I said. “We needed a new investor, remember? He’s financing the growth, and when the time is right, I’ll sell the rest of J-Corp to him.”
“So, that’s why you bought me out,” she said, her hand flying to her hip. “Makes perfect sense.”
I didn’t want to tell her that J-Corp was going under, sinking fast. Not with Samantha sitting right there. I’d done her a huge favor, at least in the short run. At the time, it had seemed like the right thing to do for everyone involved.
“I made you a fair deal, Veronica,” I said dryly. “Believe me, I did.”
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Samantha said, turning to me and placing her manicured hand on my clenched fist. Her eyes darted to Veronica. “Maybe we should get out of here.”
Veronica rolled her eyes, and I watched as her fingers gripped her crystal tumbler. She was on the brink of tossing the drink right in my face, and then something inside her clicked, forcing her to switch gears.
“Wait a minute,” Veronica said, her lips twisting into a devious smirk. “This isn’t Little Miss Kansas, is it?”
I turned back to face her. “Nope.”
Samantha wrinkled her nose. “Who’s that?”
“Where is she, Jude?” Veronica asked. “Man, it’s just one after another after another with you.” She snapped her fingers repeatedly. “What happened to her little job at Cedars?”
And then it dawned on me. Veronica was the only person who knew about Evie’s job at Cedars besides me, Carys, and Jax.
“It was you,” I said, blood boiling and sending me into a contained rage only the Hulk could rival. I stood up, towering over her as she giggled like a deviant child.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her nose twitched as she pursed her lips in an attempt to hide a smile.
“You really fucking did that,” I seethed, jaw clenched and teeth gritted. “You know she lost her job, left town because of what you did.”
Veronica shrugged taking a sip of her drink and raising her eyebrows as if to declare she was pleading the Fifth. If she weren’t a woman, I’d have socked her right there. I had to get out of there before I did something stupid. Veronica wasn’t worth it. I slapped a twenty on the bar and flew out of there, man on a mission, leaving Samantha sitting there alone and confused, jaw hanging open.
But I didn’t fucking care.
“Evie, call me back,” I said that night. It was only the fiftieth voicemail I’d left her since she went back home a week ago. “Please. I need to talk to you. Please.”
I threw my phone across my bed and situated myself under the covers preparing for another lonely night of tossing and turning and wondering what the hell was going through her mind.
I flipped the TV on surfing mindlessly and desperate for a distraction until my phone began to ring.
“Evie?” I answered, after seeing the caller ID. It didn’t feel real, as if I’d dreamed it.
“Hi,” she said softly.
I sat up, adrenaline coursing through my veins. If I could only talk to her, if I could get her to forgive me, maybe I could get her back.
“Are you okay? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I was calling to let you know I’m going to be out of the country for the next three months.”
“Wait. What?”
“I’m traveling,” she said. “Europe.”
“By yourself? Evie, you can’t—”
“No,” she cut me off. “With a group of tourists.”
“I should go with you,” I said, a thousand horrible scenarios flooding my mind. I had to protect her. She was too sheltered. Too naïve.
A polite laugh slipped from her end of the phone. “Jude, I’ll be okay. Thank you, though.”
“When you get back, you coming back here?” I had to know.
“Yeah,” she said. “But I don’t know where it leaves us.”
Her words burned the deepest part of me reconciling everything I’d ever known about how I didn’t deserve her. I knew the day would come when she’d realize it for herself.
“Remember,” she said, “don’t wait for me.”
“Evie,” I sighed. “I’m not going to run out and find a new girlfriend.”
“I was your girlfriend?” she interjected.
“Yeah,” I said as if it were obvious.
“I never knew that,” she said meekly.
“You moved out here. We spent every day together. We slept together. We were exclusive,” I said. “Did you need more validation than that?”
A quiet pause from her end kept me on edge.
“Sometimes it’s nice to hear the words, Jude,” she said, though I understood she was talking about more than us being girlfriend and boyfriend. “You leave so many things unsaid.”
“Evie,” I said, not wanting to get into it with her from two thousand miles away. “I know I messed up. I’m sorry. I can’t take back what I did, but I can show you that my feelings for you haven’t changed.”
“You think I’m leaving the country to get away from you?”
It seemed pretty drastic. “Yeah.”
She laughed. “Not everything’s about you. I’m doing this for Julian. For his memory. He made a promise to me. I’m doing this as a way of thanking him. It’s something I have to do.”
The brokenly beautiful little thing I’d met months before was blossoming into a fearless woman, suddenly forced to take life by the reins. I could only imagine how therapeutic it felt for her to finally have some say in what happened in her life.
“I’m going to do a lot of soul-searching when I’m gone,” she said. “I’m not making any promises, Jude, but…”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I told her. I knew from experience the less pressure I put on her, the better. There was nothing sexy about a guy sitting back home pining away for you while you are out having the time of your life. “I won’t wait for you, Evie.”
Silence from the other end as if she were shocked by my words.
“I look forward to seeing you when you come back,” I said. “And I hope you have a wonderful time.”
30
EVIE
Three months later…
“I’m baaack!” I announced as I entered my parents’ house. I shook the snow off my boots and inhaled the cinnamon fragrance wafting through the air. Christmastime was in full effect at the Cawthorn house, warming me inside and out.
“Hello, hello,” my dad called from down the hall.
“Evie, so good to see you,” my mother said as she hurried to the entryway and wrapped me in a hug. “We missed you so much.”
“We got your postcards,” my dad said. “Your mother has them plastered all over the refrigerator.”
“Internet cafés are expensive,” I chuckled.
“Is it just me, Maureen, or does she look older?” my dad observed.
My mom swatted at his arm. “He means it in a good way.”
I smiled. “I know.”
“Alexa should be home from college tomorrow,” my dad said. “I know she’s anxious to see you.”
I followed them to the living room where we cozied up by the Christmas tree. I filled them in on how I saw Prince Harry in London with his security entourage, described in full detail how the pastries at the French bistros tasted, and how it felt to read a book lying in the grass by the Eiffel Tower. I told them about how I tried authentic paella for the fir
st time in Majorca, and I rambled on about how small the Mona Lisa was in person.
I whipped out my phone and began swiping through picture after picture narrating each one. My mom beamed as she lived vicariously through my adventures, and my dad nodded, listening intently. In their forty-some years, neither of them had ever left the country.
“I’m so proud of you,” my mom gushed. “My little girl is all grown up.”
“I think she grew up the day she got married,” my dad said.
“Did you ever think our sweet little homebody, Evie, was capable of traveling Europe all by herself?” my mom mused.
“I was with a group,” I reminded them.
“Still,” my mom said, “it takes a lot of courage to step outside your comfort zone like that. You forget, you never even wanted to go to summer camp as a child.”
“I’d like to take us all on a family vacation sometime soon,” I said. “Maybe Hawaii.”
“Evie, that’s very generous of you,” my mom said. “But you need to save your money.”
They still had no idea about the size of my bank account. They all assumed I was living off some life insurance policy I’d cashed in when Julian died.
“It’s fine. I want to do this,” I insisted. “How’s March sound? We can go during Alexa’s spring break.”
I slipped my key into the apartment lock back in LA. I’d left that place over three months ago fully unaware of when I’d be returning.
“Hello?” I called out. “Carys?”
Nothing.
I’d wanted to surprise her, but I knew I was taking my chances. I typed out a text to her, letting her know I was home as I wheeled my luggage back to my room. I threw myself on my bed, slapping the comforter and watching as dust specks floated through the air. That was what three months of being untouched did to a place. It was as if a ghost had been living there.
After traveling all day, the last thing I wanted to do was clean, but I had no other choice. A whirring in my stomach at the thought of seeing Jude again forced me to go running into the arms of a distraction. I had to keep busy. I had to keep myself from throwing myself at him like a complete idiot.
The End of Everything - Garner-Willoughby Brothers Duet Book Two Page 15