Finding peace, p.11
Finding Peace, page 11
“I missed Atlanta when we moved to Colorado. I was always cold, and I hated skiing.”
She laughs. “That’s almost a criminal offense in Colorado, from what I understand.”
“Practically,” I say. “That’s one of the reasons I chose Emory for college—from the time I left, I wanted to go back home.”
“And now you can’t wait to leave and get back to Hawaii. You’re a complicated person, Ethan Trainor.”
I shrug. “I might be one of those people who always looks back on things a little too fondly. When I was in Colorado, I missed the soft southern accents, the friendly people, and the iced tea. I even missed the warm, humid weather and the swimming in the early fall months.”
“And then you got here and remembered that sweating all the time stinks?”
I snort. “Something like that. But even though I didn’t really see any of my old friends or live in the same places, I still fell back into some of my old Georgia behaviors.”
“Like fighting with people?” She lifts her eyebrows.
“I left my gym and trainer back in Colorado,” I say. “But my anger at Mom’s death didn’t just go away.” I can’t explain exactly why I needed to come back to Atlanta on my terms or how much fury came back when I did. “I needed an outlet to deal with my . . . frustration, and I met Harrison the first week here.”
“You looked up gyms?” she asks.
“I wish.” I snort. “I got into a bar fight.”
“At eighteen?” She frowns.
“With the bartender who wouldn’t serve me a drink because I was underage.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Punching him would have been really, really bad, except the owner of the bar had spent some time with Harrison Lunger, so instead of calling the cops, he called the man who became my trainer.”
“Oh man, really?” She whistles. “Instead of community service, you were asked to punch more people.”
“Something like that.”
“But why didn’t you tell your friends then? Geo told me you were kind of a beach bum who held down a job.”
I laugh. “That’s not totally wrong. I hadn’t been inside a boxing ring in more than five years when I walked into Harrison’s the other day.”
“What made you go back inside?”
I shouldn’t forget she’s an author, at least not until I’m ready for her to know every single thing about my life, which might be nice. But it would also definitely scare her away. “Let’s just say that I had a rough week,” I say. “I waited too long to deal with some family drama.”
“And now that you’re back in Atlanta, so is that recurrent anger. Is that why you’re so eager to get back to Hawaii?”
Is it? She’s far, far too intuitive. I hadn’t even considered that, at least not in such plain terms. I shrug. “Maybe.”
“But I still don’t see why you don’t want your friends to know you’re a boxer. I think it’s pretty cool. I’d tell everyone.”
“In high school, Dad pointed out how people would react and encouraged me to keep quiet,” I say. “But once I started at Emory, I kept it hidden to keep it from him. He never would have approved of me actually fighting other people in real matches. He came to visit me here pretty often, and I didn’t want him to yank his financial support for my schooling, so I kept it a secret from everyone to be safe.”
“But now?” she asks. “Your dad still doesn’t know?”
I shrug. “I guess I don’t really have any reason to hide it anymore. Even if Dad gets mad, it’s not like he’s paying my tuition.”
“Wait.” She points at Luke and Mary’s house, which is now across the street from us. “Does that mean that I can go inside right now and tell them all that you’re training at a boxing gym next door to my restaurant? Because it’s pretty cool. Not many guys actually know how to throw a punch.”
It’s probably more accurate that very few guys can take a real one—or throw an effective punch. And she’s right that if my dad finds out now, there’s not much he can do about it.
And I’m not a kid anymore. I shouldn’t have to hide anything—not from friends, and not from my dad.
“Sure,” I say. “I guess so. Go ahead.” It’s an odd feeling, not hiding that part of myself.
Anica releases Andy from the leash before we’re even through the front door. Andy’s clearly eager to be free, and Anica looks almost as eager to share my news. It’s kind of endearing, actually. I can’t think of a time when I had someone who was proud of me, someone who wanted to brag about me.
“Hey,” Mary asks Anica a few minutes later. “What restaurant are you working at? You never said.”
“It’s called Golden Gloves,” Anica says.
“Golden Gloves?” Paisley frowns. “Shouldn’t it be white gloves?”
“If it were a fancy place,” Anica says, “sure.”
“It’s not fancy?” Geo asks.
“It’s a diner,” Anica says with a sneaky grin. “And it’s called Golden Gloves because it’s next to the best boxing gym in Atlanta. Golden Gloves is a boxing thing—I looked it up.” She glances at me sideways.
“It is, yeah,” Paul says. “The biggest award an amateur boxer can win.”
“That’s the reason Ethan’s here, really.” The gleam in Anica’s eye makes me smile. “After an epically bad first date, if I hadn’t been interviewing for that job and he hadn’t been sparring next door, I’d probably never have seen him again.”
That’s an unsettling thought. I met her, I took her out, and I almost let her sashay away forever because I was too stupid to see how great she was from the outset.
“Wait, are you serious?” Trig looks at me. “You were fighting someone? Easygoing Ethan Trainor? For real?”
“I’m telling you, he’s downright scary in a boxing ring with wraps on his hands,” Anica says.
Geo and Paisley immediately start laughing.
Trig looks me up and down analytically, trying to decide whether it’s all an elaborate joke, probably. Paul tilts his head sideways and narrows his eyes.
“I’m serious,” Anica says. “I watched him destroy someone.”
Geo stops laughing. “Wait, really?”
Anica nods slowly.
“Oh come on,” Paisley says. “No one starts boxing at thirty. What are you thinking, Ethan? That’s not safe, and what’s the point?”
“To be fair, it’s not a safe sport when you’re in your twenties either,” I say. “But for the record, I’m not just starting. More like, making a comeback.”
“A comeback?” Trig asks. “From when?”
“From when I almost won Georgia’s Golden Gloves Boxing Championship in 2012.”
Paul whips out his phone and starts tapping on it. He looks up at me with the same narrowed eyes, squinched even more tightly closed.
“I’m a light heavyweight,” I say, because I know exactly what he’s trying to figure out. “I fought right at two hundred pounds.”
“You’re serious,” Trig says.
I shrug.
“You’re so much cooler than I realized,” Brekka says.
“Why would you hide that?” Rob asks.
I shrug again. “I didn’t hide it. I just didn’t broadcast it,” I lie.
“It says the championship fight that year was between Ethan Sims and Jace Blackwell.” Paul spears me with a glare. “You’re Ethan Sims? I thought Paisley said your last name started with a T. Trevor or Treager.”
“Is there a video?” Anica folds her arms under her chest. “Because if there is, you’ll see that it’s him.” She must have puzzled out that the name difference has something to do with my adoption, but she can’t know the truth—that I used Phillip’s name to avoid drawing attention to Dad. Beyond that, I always thought Sims was fitting, since Phillip caused the rage that made me so quick to use my fists in the first place.
“I don’t see a video.” Paul frowns. “Maybe on YouTube.”
“Hey, if you don’t believe him, you’re welcome to come grab some lunch at the Golden Gloves Diner and then go a few rounds with him.” Anica’s impressively confident in my skills. Paul looks pretty fit. He might shred me. “Just make sure you let me know when you’re going so I can watch.” She smiles beatifically.
“Please don’t let your new boyfriend ugly up my husband. I like all of his teeth.” Trudy slings an arm around Paul’s shoulders.
Her new boyfriend. I like the sound of that—probably more than I should.
“Ouch,” Paul says. “Where’s the vote of confidence? I boxed in college too.”
“At Harvard.” Trig coughs. “Against a bunch of other pansy Ivy League guys.”
“Well, I think it’s fascinating,” Geo says. “You think you know someone after a few dozen study groups, but apparently you don’t.” She frowns. “What else don’t we know about you?”
Trig takes her hand. “Alright, Detective Geode, before you pick a fight with our pugilist friend that I definitely can’t win, we better get home.”
Geo yawns as if they planned this exit strategy. “Mark is still getting up several times at night.”
Trig yawns next. “That kid is a brat already.”
Mary laughs. “Stop yawning.” She and Luke yawn next, and before I know it, everyone is getting their coats.
“I ought to head home too,” I say quietly, reluctantly. “But I agreed to head over to Harrison’s tomorrow afternoon. Are you working?”
Anica shakes her head. “Well, not at Golden Gloves, anyway. I’m writing tomorrow.”
“Oh, right, you said that.” She doesn’t look very excited.
“I hope it goes well. It’s hard to anticipate whether a writing session will be productive in advance.”
“Well, if it’s going poorly and you need a break, text me.” Play it cool, Ethan. Don’t freak her out. “If not, I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”
“Right,” she says. “Sure.”
I wish I knew where we were—did Trudy calling me her new boyfriend freak her out? Is she still upset I’ll only be here a while? Asking will only make things more awkward. It’s better if I drop in on her at Golden Gloves and ask her out again there, probably. Right?
Women should come with some kind of specific user manual, because I never know quite what to do or say.
“Well, see you around.” She doesn’t even walk me to the door, and I’m not sure whether she’s freaked out, or just trying to play it cool around her not-quite-in-laws.
Maybe it’s the boxing, or the girl, or the family drama, or some combination of the three, but I can’t sleep at all. I toss and turn until the sun comes up and Partner starts licking my face. I groan and pull a pillow down over my head. “Sleep, dog.”
Of course that doesn’t work. Not with a collie. “Ugh!” I finally throw all the covers on the floor and get up to take her for a jog. Even without much sleep, and even at this absurd hour, and even though it’s drizzling outside, I keep thinking of Anica’s face when she said, “You’re a runner, aren’t you? I should’ve known.”
The mock horror. The adorable disdain.
And when her fingers grazed my belly.
I shake off like Partner does and head in to take a shower. A cold shower.
Afterward, I’ve got a voicemail. It’s not a number I know, but I expect it’s from work, or maybe Harrison. I tap play, but when the voice emerges, it’s not a welcome one.
“Hey there,” Phillip says. “I haven’t left a phone message for anyone in a long while. This is sort of weird. I’m calling to let you know that Adriana has reached out to me. Twice. I haven’t called her back, but she said she was going to come by soon. I’m not sure how to avoid that, and if I’m being honest, I don’t want to. I also don’t want to upset you. I was hoping to talk to you—maybe even see you. And I have a favor to ask, too. Call me back, please.”
I want to hurl my phone against the wall. I want to punch him in the face. And I want to talk some sense into Adriana, or maybe tie her up and duct tape her mouth until she realizes he’s a bad, bad man.
I do not want to call him back.
But I’m not an angry little kid. I’m an adult, and I do things I don’t want to do all the time, so I force myself to return his unwelcome call.
“Ethan!” He answers immediately.
“I’m not calling to chat,” I say. “What favor do you need?” Because I have an idea.
“Oh, okay. Well, it’s a little weird for me to be asking you this, but I know you’re a big business mogul. Adriana tells me you got an MBA from Yale.”
“What do you want?”
“I can’t seem to find a job.”
I swear under my breath. “You want money.”
“No, not at all,” he says. “I mean, yes. I do want money, but not from you. I want the chance to earn it. The problem is that without work experience or any references, once I tell any employers where I’ve been for the last twenty years, I can’t even seem to get an interview.”
“Eighteen years,” I say. “And how terrible for you.”
“It is terrible,” he says. “Finding a job is a condition of my parole. Usually the government helps you find one, but right now with the economy the way it is, they haven’t been able to—they just say we gotta get one in thirty days.”
“Or what?” Could he go back to prison? That would solve so many problems.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s not great, and it’ll get mighty hard to buy food once this little stipend they gave me is gone.”
“Real life is hard, huh?”
“I’m not complaining,” Phillip says. “I just thought you might be able to help me find something. Or even if I could list you as a reference, that could help a lot.”
“Fine,” I say.
“Yes?” Phillip’s delight buries itself at the base of my spine and worms its way into my body, gnawing away at me.
I remember what his smile looks like, and that makes me even angrier. If I never make him smile in my entire life, it’ll be too soon. “I’ll do better than a referral. I’ll get you a job, but I have one condition to my help.”
“Oh.” He coughs. “What’s that?”
“You tell Adriana you don’t want to see her. You convince her that you want nothing to do with her.”
Silence. Complete silence for far too long.
“Are you still there?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Well, that probably isn’t something you’re accustomed to doing,” I say. “But I’m not just going to dangle here while you figure it out. Text me back when you know whether you want to take the deal.”
“Text?” he asks.
I hang up.
I’m an hour early for my appointment with Harrison, but he takes one look at my face and doesn’t risk making a comment.
10
Anica
“He is unbelievably handsome,” Mary says the second the door closes behind the last guest. “Well done.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Luke jokes.
The wail of baby Jack’s cry emerges from the monitor, and Mary laughs as she stands up. “As if I ever would.”
“It’s my turn.” Luke stands up and waves her back to the sofa.
“And that’s why I’ll never get any ‘ideas,’ as you put it.” Mary kisses him quickly, and then he jogs down the hall.
“He is hot,” I say. “But I want what you’ve got.”
“Luke’s taken,” Mary says.
I laugh. She’s funnier than I gave her credit for at first. “I’m sorry I was so hard on you.”
Mary sits up straight. “It’s fine. I understood.”
“You can be angry with me—you don’t have to be perfect all the time,” I say. “It must be exhausting.”
Her shoulders slump. “It is.”
I laugh harder. “So let go around me. I don’t expect perfection. Heaven knows I’m about as far from flawless as they come.”
This is where Mary would normally feel obligated to correct me, and coo about how great I am, and remind me that I’m wonderful. Except maybe she actually listened when I said she doesn’t have to be perfect. Because she just says, “Ethan doesn’t seem to mind your imperfections.” Then she shoots me a devilish look.
My jaw drops.
“You should have seen how he was looking at you,” Mary says, “like he hadn’t eaten all day, and you were a giant slice of cheesecake.”
“Eww,” I say. “Gross.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, don’t.” I stand up.
But even when I go to bed, I can’t stop thinking about Ethan and his washboard abs. Who has a stomach like that? No one.
Boxers who like to run, apparently.
Or maybe surfers.
But most importantly, Ethan does.
Gah!
I check the clock. It’s almost two a.m., and I still can’t sleep.
I finally do what old Anica would have done. Can’t sleep? Harness the energy. I open my laptop and pull up a blank word document. I usually write in Scrivener so I can toggle between chapters, but for free writing, nothing beats a blank page.
As I stare at the unrelieved white, the stupid prompt that Henri sent comes to mind. A painfully shy main character . . . like maybe a librarian . . . obsessed with other worlds and terrified of her own.
The pastor bores me. Pastors just don’t sound hot.
But what if I wrote a story about a pastor’s son? His father injures his leg and sends the son as his emissary. Then what could the son do for a living? Maybe he could be a fireman. Or a police officer. Or a surgeon who just returned from a gig with Doctors without Borders. That seems like something the son of a pastor might wind up doing. And it’s hot—way hotter than preaching about heaven and sin and brimstone.
Before I have time to second-guess it, I’m drafting my first romantic comedy in years.
And the hero looks and sounds exactly like Ethan.
So what if he does? It’s not like he’s ever going to read it. My last boyfriend was an author and he never read my books. Read a romantic comedy? He had laughed. Not my thing.
My fingers fly over the keyboard in a way they haven’t in years. I almost forget that this was for an IP project and not just for me.
She laughs. “That’s almost a criminal offense in Colorado, from what I understand.”
“Practically,” I say. “That’s one of the reasons I chose Emory for college—from the time I left, I wanted to go back home.”
“And now you can’t wait to leave and get back to Hawaii. You’re a complicated person, Ethan Trainor.”
I shrug. “I might be one of those people who always looks back on things a little too fondly. When I was in Colorado, I missed the soft southern accents, the friendly people, and the iced tea. I even missed the warm, humid weather and the swimming in the early fall months.”
“And then you got here and remembered that sweating all the time stinks?”
I snort. “Something like that. But even though I didn’t really see any of my old friends or live in the same places, I still fell back into some of my old Georgia behaviors.”
“Like fighting with people?” She lifts her eyebrows.
“I left my gym and trainer back in Colorado,” I say. “But my anger at Mom’s death didn’t just go away.” I can’t explain exactly why I needed to come back to Atlanta on my terms or how much fury came back when I did. “I needed an outlet to deal with my . . . frustration, and I met Harrison the first week here.”
“You looked up gyms?” she asks.
“I wish.” I snort. “I got into a bar fight.”
“At eighteen?” She frowns.
“With the bartender who wouldn’t serve me a drink because I was underage.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Punching him would have been really, really bad, except the owner of the bar had spent some time with Harrison Lunger, so instead of calling the cops, he called the man who became my trainer.”
“Oh man, really?” She whistles. “Instead of community service, you were asked to punch more people.”
“Something like that.”
“But why didn’t you tell your friends then? Geo told me you were kind of a beach bum who held down a job.”
I laugh. “That’s not totally wrong. I hadn’t been inside a boxing ring in more than five years when I walked into Harrison’s the other day.”
“What made you go back inside?”
I shouldn’t forget she’s an author, at least not until I’m ready for her to know every single thing about my life, which might be nice. But it would also definitely scare her away. “Let’s just say that I had a rough week,” I say. “I waited too long to deal with some family drama.”
“And now that you’re back in Atlanta, so is that recurrent anger. Is that why you’re so eager to get back to Hawaii?”
Is it? She’s far, far too intuitive. I hadn’t even considered that, at least not in such plain terms. I shrug. “Maybe.”
“But I still don’t see why you don’t want your friends to know you’re a boxer. I think it’s pretty cool. I’d tell everyone.”
“In high school, Dad pointed out how people would react and encouraged me to keep quiet,” I say. “But once I started at Emory, I kept it hidden to keep it from him. He never would have approved of me actually fighting other people in real matches. He came to visit me here pretty often, and I didn’t want him to yank his financial support for my schooling, so I kept it a secret from everyone to be safe.”
“But now?” she asks. “Your dad still doesn’t know?”
I shrug. “I guess I don’t really have any reason to hide it anymore. Even if Dad gets mad, it’s not like he’s paying my tuition.”
“Wait.” She points at Luke and Mary’s house, which is now across the street from us. “Does that mean that I can go inside right now and tell them all that you’re training at a boxing gym next door to my restaurant? Because it’s pretty cool. Not many guys actually know how to throw a punch.”
It’s probably more accurate that very few guys can take a real one—or throw an effective punch. And she’s right that if my dad finds out now, there’s not much he can do about it.
And I’m not a kid anymore. I shouldn’t have to hide anything—not from friends, and not from my dad.
“Sure,” I say. “I guess so. Go ahead.” It’s an odd feeling, not hiding that part of myself.
Anica releases Andy from the leash before we’re even through the front door. Andy’s clearly eager to be free, and Anica looks almost as eager to share my news. It’s kind of endearing, actually. I can’t think of a time when I had someone who was proud of me, someone who wanted to brag about me.
“Hey,” Mary asks Anica a few minutes later. “What restaurant are you working at? You never said.”
“It’s called Golden Gloves,” Anica says.
“Golden Gloves?” Paisley frowns. “Shouldn’t it be white gloves?”
“If it were a fancy place,” Anica says, “sure.”
“It’s not fancy?” Geo asks.
“It’s a diner,” Anica says with a sneaky grin. “And it’s called Golden Gloves because it’s next to the best boxing gym in Atlanta. Golden Gloves is a boxing thing—I looked it up.” She glances at me sideways.
“It is, yeah,” Paul says. “The biggest award an amateur boxer can win.”
“That’s the reason Ethan’s here, really.” The gleam in Anica’s eye makes me smile. “After an epically bad first date, if I hadn’t been interviewing for that job and he hadn’t been sparring next door, I’d probably never have seen him again.”
That’s an unsettling thought. I met her, I took her out, and I almost let her sashay away forever because I was too stupid to see how great she was from the outset.
“Wait, are you serious?” Trig looks at me. “You were fighting someone? Easygoing Ethan Trainor? For real?”
“I’m telling you, he’s downright scary in a boxing ring with wraps on his hands,” Anica says.
Geo and Paisley immediately start laughing.
Trig looks me up and down analytically, trying to decide whether it’s all an elaborate joke, probably. Paul tilts his head sideways and narrows his eyes.
“I’m serious,” Anica says. “I watched him destroy someone.”
Geo stops laughing. “Wait, really?”
Anica nods slowly.
“Oh come on,” Paisley says. “No one starts boxing at thirty. What are you thinking, Ethan? That’s not safe, and what’s the point?”
“To be fair, it’s not a safe sport when you’re in your twenties either,” I say. “But for the record, I’m not just starting. More like, making a comeback.”
“A comeback?” Trig asks. “From when?”
“From when I almost won Georgia’s Golden Gloves Boxing Championship in 2012.”
Paul whips out his phone and starts tapping on it. He looks up at me with the same narrowed eyes, squinched even more tightly closed.
“I’m a light heavyweight,” I say, because I know exactly what he’s trying to figure out. “I fought right at two hundred pounds.”
“You’re serious,” Trig says.
I shrug.
“You’re so much cooler than I realized,” Brekka says.
“Why would you hide that?” Rob asks.
I shrug again. “I didn’t hide it. I just didn’t broadcast it,” I lie.
“It says the championship fight that year was between Ethan Sims and Jace Blackwell.” Paul spears me with a glare. “You’re Ethan Sims? I thought Paisley said your last name started with a T. Trevor or Treager.”
“Is there a video?” Anica folds her arms under her chest. “Because if there is, you’ll see that it’s him.” She must have puzzled out that the name difference has something to do with my adoption, but she can’t know the truth—that I used Phillip’s name to avoid drawing attention to Dad. Beyond that, I always thought Sims was fitting, since Phillip caused the rage that made me so quick to use my fists in the first place.
“I don’t see a video.” Paul frowns. “Maybe on YouTube.”
“Hey, if you don’t believe him, you’re welcome to come grab some lunch at the Golden Gloves Diner and then go a few rounds with him.” Anica’s impressively confident in my skills. Paul looks pretty fit. He might shred me. “Just make sure you let me know when you’re going so I can watch.” She smiles beatifically.
“Please don’t let your new boyfriend ugly up my husband. I like all of his teeth.” Trudy slings an arm around Paul’s shoulders.
Her new boyfriend. I like the sound of that—probably more than I should.
“Ouch,” Paul says. “Where’s the vote of confidence? I boxed in college too.”
“At Harvard.” Trig coughs. “Against a bunch of other pansy Ivy League guys.”
“Well, I think it’s fascinating,” Geo says. “You think you know someone after a few dozen study groups, but apparently you don’t.” She frowns. “What else don’t we know about you?”
Trig takes her hand. “Alright, Detective Geode, before you pick a fight with our pugilist friend that I definitely can’t win, we better get home.”
Geo yawns as if they planned this exit strategy. “Mark is still getting up several times at night.”
Trig yawns next. “That kid is a brat already.”
Mary laughs. “Stop yawning.” She and Luke yawn next, and before I know it, everyone is getting their coats.
“I ought to head home too,” I say quietly, reluctantly. “But I agreed to head over to Harrison’s tomorrow afternoon. Are you working?”
Anica shakes her head. “Well, not at Golden Gloves, anyway. I’m writing tomorrow.”
“Oh, right, you said that.” She doesn’t look very excited.
“I hope it goes well. It’s hard to anticipate whether a writing session will be productive in advance.”
“Well, if it’s going poorly and you need a break, text me.” Play it cool, Ethan. Don’t freak her out. “If not, I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”
“Right,” she says. “Sure.”
I wish I knew where we were—did Trudy calling me her new boyfriend freak her out? Is she still upset I’ll only be here a while? Asking will only make things more awkward. It’s better if I drop in on her at Golden Gloves and ask her out again there, probably. Right?
Women should come with some kind of specific user manual, because I never know quite what to do or say.
“Well, see you around.” She doesn’t even walk me to the door, and I’m not sure whether she’s freaked out, or just trying to play it cool around her not-quite-in-laws.
Maybe it’s the boxing, or the girl, or the family drama, or some combination of the three, but I can’t sleep at all. I toss and turn until the sun comes up and Partner starts licking my face. I groan and pull a pillow down over my head. “Sleep, dog.”
Of course that doesn’t work. Not with a collie. “Ugh!” I finally throw all the covers on the floor and get up to take her for a jog. Even without much sleep, and even at this absurd hour, and even though it’s drizzling outside, I keep thinking of Anica’s face when she said, “You’re a runner, aren’t you? I should’ve known.”
The mock horror. The adorable disdain.
And when her fingers grazed my belly.
I shake off like Partner does and head in to take a shower. A cold shower.
Afterward, I’ve got a voicemail. It’s not a number I know, but I expect it’s from work, or maybe Harrison. I tap play, but when the voice emerges, it’s not a welcome one.
“Hey there,” Phillip says. “I haven’t left a phone message for anyone in a long while. This is sort of weird. I’m calling to let you know that Adriana has reached out to me. Twice. I haven’t called her back, but she said she was going to come by soon. I’m not sure how to avoid that, and if I’m being honest, I don’t want to. I also don’t want to upset you. I was hoping to talk to you—maybe even see you. And I have a favor to ask, too. Call me back, please.”
I want to hurl my phone against the wall. I want to punch him in the face. And I want to talk some sense into Adriana, or maybe tie her up and duct tape her mouth until she realizes he’s a bad, bad man.
I do not want to call him back.
But I’m not an angry little kid. I’m an adult, and I do things I don’t want to do all the time, so I force myself to return his unwelcome call.
“Ethan!” He answers immediately.
“I’m not calling to chat,” I say. “What favor do you need?” Because I have an idea.
“Oh, okay. Well, it’s a little weird for me to be asking you this, but I know you’re a big business mogul. Adriana tells me you got an MBA from Yale.”
“What do you want?”
“I can’t seem to find a job.”
I swear under my breath. “You want money.”
“No, not at all,” he says. “I mean, yes. I do want money, but not from you. I want the chance to earn it. The problem is that without work experience or any references, once I tell any employers where I’ve been for the last twenty years, I can’t even seem to get an interview.”
“Eighteen years,” I say. “And how terrible for you.”
“It is terrible,” he says. “Finding a job is a condition of my parole. Usually the government helps you find one, but right now with the economy the way it is, they haven’t been able to—they just say we gotta get one in thirty days.”
“Or what?” Could he go back to prison? That would solve so many problems.
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s not great, and it’ll get mighty hard to buy food once this little stipend they gave me is gone.”
“Real life is hard, huh?”
“I’m not complaining,” Phillip says. “I just thought you might be able to help me find something. Or even if I could list you as a reference, that could help a lot.”
“Fine,” I say.
“Yes?” Phillip’s delight buries itself at the base of my spine and worms its way into my body, gnawing away at me.
I remember what his smile looks like, and that makes me even angrier. If I never make him smile in my entire life, it’ll be too soon. “I’ll do better than a referral. I’ll get you a job, but I have one condition to my help.”
“Oh.” He coughs. “What’s that?”
“You tell Adriana you don’t want to see her. You convince her that you want nothing to do with her.”
Silence. Complete silence for far too long.
“Are you still there?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Well, that probably isn’t something you’re accustomed to doing,” I say. “But I’m not just going to dangle here while you figure it out. Text me back when you know whether you want to take the deal.”
“Text?” he asks.
I hang up.
I’m an hour early for my appointment with Harrison, but he takes one look at my face and doesn’t risk making a comment.
10
Anica
“He is unbelievably handsome,” Mary says the second the door closes behind the last guest. “Well done.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Luke jokes.
The wail of baby Jack’s cry emerges from the monitor, and Mary laughs as she stands up. “As if I ever would.”
“It’s my turn.” Luke stands up and waves her back to the sofa.
“And that’s why I’ll never get any ‘ideas,’ as you put it.” Mary kisses him quickly, and then he jogs down the hall.
“He is hot,” I say. “But I want what you’ve got.”
“Luke’s taken,” Mary says.
I laugh. She’s funnier than I gave her credit for at first. “I’m sorry I was so hard on you.”
Mary sits up straight. “It’s fine. I understood.”
“You can be angry with me—you don’t have to be perfect all the time,” I say. “It must be exhausting.”
Her shoulders slump. “It is.”
I laugh harder. “So let go around me. I don’t expect perfection. Heaven knows I’m about as far from flawless as they come.”
This is where Mary would normally feel obligated to correct me, and coo about how great I am, and remind me that I’m wonderful. Except maybe she actually listened when I said she doesn’t have to be perfect. Because she just says, “Ethan doesn’t seem to mind your imperfections.” Then she shoots me a devilish look.
My jaw drops.
“You should have seen how he was looking at you,” Mary says, “like he hadn’t eaten all day, and you were a giant slice of cheesecake.”
“Eww,” I say. “Gross.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, don’t.” I stand up.
But even when I go to bed, I can’t stop thinking about Ethan and his washboard abs. Who has a stomach like that? No one.
Boxers who like to run, apparently.
Or maybe surfers.
But most importantly, Ethan does.
Gah!
I check the clock. It’s almost two a.m., and I still can’t sleep.
I finally do what old Anica would have done. Can’t sleep? Harness the energy. I open my laptop and pull up a blank word document. I usually write in Scrivener so I can toggle between chapters, but for free writing, nothing beats a blank page.
As I stare at the unrelieved white, the stupid prompt that Henri sent comes to mind. A painfully shy main character . . . like maybe a librarian . . . obsessed with other worlds and terrified of her own.
The pastor bores me. Pastors just don’t sound hot.
But what if I wrote a story about a pastor’s son? His father injures his leg and sends the son as his emissary. Then what could the son do for a living? Maybe he could be a fireman. Or a police officer. Or a surgeon who just returned from a gig with Doctors without Borders. That seems like something the son of a pastor might wind up doing. And it’s hot—way hotter than preaching about heaven and sin and brimstone.
Before I have time to second-guess it, I’m drafting my first romantic comedy in years.
And the hero looks and sounds exactly like Ethan.
So what if he does? It’s not like he’s ever going to read it. My last boyfriend was an author and he never read my books. Read a romantic comedy? He had laughed. Not my thing.
My fingers fly over the keyboard in a way they haven’t in years. I almost forget that this was for an IP project and not just for me.
