Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 83180 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83180 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 416(@200wpm)___ 333(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
I wasn’t giving up on jewelry, but I would have to shift my dreams a little and focus on my Etsy store. We needed the cash, and we needed it fast.
“Did you text him? Call?”
Dexter had emailed Autumn and asked me to call. But what was the point? I needed a clean break. I couldn’t look back. The sooner I resigned myself to my life in Sunshine, the better off I’d be.
“No, and you promised you wouldn’t respond to his email.” If I had something to say to Dexter, I’d say it to him myself. I didn’t need Autumn playing go-between.
“I haven’t. But you were living with him, Hollie. You two were serious about each other.”
“It meant we got more time together, that’s all. I’m sure I wasn’t the first woman Dexter lived with. And I won’t be the last. He’s a great guy.”
“So, you’re not going to do the long-distance thing?”
“You think he’s the kind of guy who does FaceTime sex? Long distance is for relationships that are either super casual or super serious. It’s either ‘I’ll see you next time I’m in New York’ or ‘We’ll bear this time apart before our wedding.’ Dexter and me? We weren’t either. Whatever we had always had an expiration. Long distance would never have worked.” I’d thought about it. In fact, I’d thought about nothing else on the flight home. This was easier. No expectations. I’d go back to life as usual. The last thing I needed was to torture myself by pretending things could be different. Because things weren’t different. As my gramma used to say—deal with what you’ve got, not what you’d like. It was advice to live by.
My sister was staring at me. “So, what, you shook hands, thanked each other for the orgasms and said ‘see you around’?”
“I need to finish unpacking,” I said, getting to my feet and heading to my room. The last thing I wanted to do was pick through the leftovers of my relationship with Dexter. As if leaving him wasn’t bad enough, I hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.
Heat roared in my chest at the thought of not being with him again. I was resigned but that didn’t mean I was happy about it. Just because I’d accepted the way things were didn’t mean it didn’t hurt every time I thought about him. It didn’t mean my heart wasn’t broken.
“Are you okay?” Autumn said from the doorway.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, unzipping my backpack. I knew I would recover. Somehow. Someday. I had to. “I just need a good night’s sleep.”
“Nothing like your own bed, right? Although I imagine Dexter’s bed wasn’t so bad.”
I pulled out a sweater and a pair of sneakers from my bag. “Yeah, I was okay with slumming it for a while.” I tried to squeeze out a smile and make a joke of it, but I felt drained—like my battery was running low and my body was fuzzy and my limbs were stuck in mud.
“At least we’ve got an extra month, right?” she said.
“Exactly.” It was the absence of bad news that equaled sunshine in Oregon. Things didn’t have to go right—if they just didn’t go wrong, that was a good day. I had to push down the memories of my time with Dexter. He’d been from a different time in my life. Now I needed to get back to my reality.
Thirty-Two
Hollie
I plastered a grin on my face, trying to stop the hopelessness breaking through, as I ran my finger down the schedule. “And that one there,” I said to Pauly.
“Are you sure? It means you’ll have four double shifts that week and only one day off.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“Babe, it’s your first day back and you’re one shift in. You’ve forgotten how you’re going to feel after a week back in the saddle.”
“Pauly, seriously. Just put me down. I don’t want to lose out. And call me before you put the next schedule up, will you?”
“I heard you were thrown out of the trailer park,” Pauly said.
Gosh darn it, I was sick of people knowing my business. “So, we’re all set?” I didn’t want to get into it with him. There was no point. I needed the money and working was the only solution.
He shook his head and typed in my employee ID. “We’re all set.” Anyone would think I was asking him to do my shifts for me, he seemed so glum about it. I should be the one picking up whiskey on the way home to get me through the next few months.
I squinted as I opened the door into the daylight of the Oregon afternoon to find my sister waiting for me.
“Hey,” I said. “You need a hand with that?”
She seemed to be weighed down with a thousand bags. What had she been buying and where did she get the money for any of it?