Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 94106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94106 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 471(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 314(@300wpm)
I nodded and shoved my hands into my pockets. I really was a shit liar. “How’s it going?”
She tilted her head. “Good. Busy. You?”
“Good. Good.” I had to ask. It would have been rude not to. “How’s Valentina doing?”
She seemed to think about the answer before speaking. “She’s doing amazing. Loves her job. Met an Italian teacher. Getting back into the swing of things.”
“An Italian teacher?” Apparently, I needed it spelled out for me.
Eve shrugged as if the next words weren’t going to make me feel like she’d kicked me square in the nuts. “She’s taking it slow, of course. The whole dating scene is new for her.”
I swallowed and nodded, but my expression went from bullshit happy to wounded. “I gotta run.”
“Right.” Eve smiled like she’d enjoyed delivering the blow. “Your meeting nearby. I guess you have a lot of those. You should get to that. Take care of yourself, Ford.”
The entire night and next morning, I was fucking useless. I sat in on a meeting and read a few emails, but I couldn’t tell you what the hell either was about. Thankfully, it was Friday. I walked out of my office at only two o’clock.
My assistant looked up. “Late lunch today?”
I shook my head. “I’m going to take a ride over to the Long Island City property, just to check in. I won’t be back. If you need me, you can reach me on my cell.”
“Okay. Have a great weekend.’”
“Yeah. You, too, Esmée.”
I walked to work, but kept my car parked in a garage a few blocks from the office. Since it was still early, I managed to navigate through the city and out the tunnel in less than a half hour. My mind was stuck replaying everything about Valentina over and over again…from the time we spent together to what Eve had said last night. The only good thing was that being so sorry for myself about what I’d lost kept me from thinking about my father and all the shit that had gone down in Chicago.
It was a beautiful, warm day—we wouldn’t have too many of those left now that it was almost mid October. So I decided to get off the Expressway at the next exit and pull over to put the top down on my car. Some fresh air might help to clear my head on the half-hour drive. But as the roof lifted off the top of my car, instead of blue sky, all I saw was a billboard.
A giant damn Match.com advertisement that had to be three-stories tall.
I laughed sardonically and shook my head. Forget fate, it read. Take your future into your own hands. Join Match.com today. She’s waiting for you.
The universe is really fucking with me today.
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “She’s not waiting for me.”
I took a deep breath, put the car into drive, and turned on the radio—only to have the song end and a new one come on. One by the Backstreet Boys. I reached down to turn it off but couldn’t bring myself to push the damn button.
Forget fate? It was pretty hard to when it was busy throwing shit in your face.
***
Long Island Expressway West—Manhattan.
The large, green road sign up ahead showed an arrow pointing to the two left lanes. The sign next to it had an arrow pointing right.
Long Island Expressway East—Eastern Long Island.
Home was left. Yet when I came to the fork in the road, at the last second I jerked the car right and took the turn to get on heading east.
Why? I had no fucking idea. It just felt like I needed to go out to Montauk, for some reason. Maybe I needed to clear my head…I wasn’t sure. Though, going to the place that reminded me of my parents sham of a happy marriage and the woman I loved who’d just started dating another man probably wasn’t the best place to find clarity.
But once I got on the road, there was no turning back. For some reason, it was where I needed to be today.
The fall traffic wasn’t too bad, and I pulled down Old Montauk Highway just as the sun started to go down. I still had the top down, and the air temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees between the loss of daylight and the breeze blowing off the ocean. Montauk was a ghost town this time of year. Most of the driveways were empty as I passed, including the one next to mine—not that I’d expected anyone to be around. I pulled into our adjoining driveways, the sound of gravel crunching under my tires reminding me so much of summer.
With no suitcase or any bags at all, I parked and took a deep breath of the fresh air before getting out. Closing my eyes, I smelled the ocean and summer. Maybe this really was what I needed to feel better.