Chapter Ten
As Jeremy walked me outside, I scanned the street, hopelessly searching for Derek, but it was fruitless. He was long gone.
“This way. Merlot awaits.” Jeremy led me toward his truck. “I can help you get in.”
He opened the passenger door and pointed to a handle. “Step on the running board and grab the handle.”
It was awkward, but it worked, and I positioned myself into the seat. It wasn’t even that hard to click the seatbelt in place, although it helped that Jeremy held the clip in place for it to be mated together.
The truck started with a rumble.
His shoulders rose and fell. “Tell me about this Derek. How long had you two been going out?”
“A couple of months. He was my first serious boyfriend since I moved here. All sweet and charming, after I literally bumped into him rounding a corner at full speed with a disposable cup of coffee. As we collided, it was icy, and he reached out to hold me up.” The memory of our first meeting replayed in my head. The snow was falling. The awkward meet-up. It was like something out of a Hallmark movie, which should’ve been my first clue that it wasn’t real and wasn’t going to last.
“You are a bit of a klutz, aren’t you?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Should I have bubble wrap for you at this fundraiser?”
I chuckled. “Only if they make it in black. That’s what I must wear.”
“Perhaps that can be arranged.” There was a long side-eyed gaze.
Feeling a light flutter in my chest, I tried brushing it off.
“You sounded like you are a recent transplant to the Jasper area. Where’d you move from?”
“Vancouver.”
“And you came here?” There was so much questioning in his tone, but way more curiosity.
We drove down Connaught Drive, past Rocky Bear Gifts and Jasper Pizza, and I slumped further into the seat.
“I wasn’t happy where I was. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but what I was forced to do.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “So you moved here?”
“Yep. I stopped in a few small towns and worked for a few months until the call to move overcame me.”
“And that makes you happy?”
The wildest part was, yes, it did. No more hours upon hours sitting in a chair getting makeup applied, no lines to remember, no more living in a trailer, although, to be honest, the motel wasn’t much better, but at least it wasn’t on the back lot of the studio.
“Crazy, right? To think that making latte art on people’s coffees and playing the flute in a small community jazz band would be the key, yet here I am living my best life.” The way I wanted.
It wasn’t like that in show business, where egos reigned supreme. The last show I worked, it was a toxic set. For four years, no one got along, the executives were always yelling and screaming, and the show was bleeding money. Ratings sucked and there was a general malaise running through, almost like a form of cancer. When the show was pulled off the network, it was like a sigh of relief. It was life-changing to escape that.
Jasper and the Coffee Loft weren’t like that. The smells, the sounds, how most people were happy. Coffee and warm drinks served with a smile always put a spring in people’s steps, and a latte puns didn’t hurt either. Elliot may be strict, but he was a fantastic guy, and I was 100% certain there wasn’t a bad moment in his body. Life was different here.
Jeremy bobbed his head. “That’s… Wow… That’s really cool that you know what you want to do.”
“For now at least. I have no commitments here, but I love my job.”
“So if you get the urge to go, you’ll just leave?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows. There’s nothing tying me down.”
We hit a pothole, and I squeezed my left arm tighter to my chest.
His arm flailed out but stopped before he connected with me. A heartbeat late, he gripped the steering wheel tight. “Sorry. You okay?”
I nodded and pulled on the seatbelt to snug it more. For a big truck, it didn’t feel like the suspension was top-grade. Like my car. Guess Merlot and Chardonnay had that in common.
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Tell me more about Derek.”
“Why so interested?” I cocked my head to the side, studying his unchanging expression.
“Can I be honest?”
“Always. If you’re going to be anything in life, be honest.” Words I lived by. And also avoidance – I lived by that too.
Like a baby bull, he snorted. “Why would someone like you want to make a lowlife like him who claims, and I quote, how he was only using you to pass the time, desire you? Why not just find someone else? What’s the pull and urge to make him jealous?”
Well, I wasn’t expecting that question at all and didn’t know how to answer it.
Instead, I scanned the horizon as if the answer were there.
“Because I want to…” I paused, reminding myself that I just told him I was honest. “For once in my life…” I tucked my chin into my chest and continued people-watching. “You know what, it’s stupid. Never mind.” Honesty or not, my reasons sounded childish.
“I highly doubt that. Keep talking.”
I faced him, his expression still unchanging. “Well, it’s just that I’ve never been…” Why was this so embarrassing?
A long sigh breathed out of him. “Clearly your reasons are important, and if you share them with me, then I’ll know how to work it so we can make the good doctor more jealous.”
“Oh, yeah, right. My stupid reasons.”
He approached the left turn onto Hazel Avenue and waited at the red lights.
“The reason I want to make Derek jealous is because…” I just had to say it. Spit it out. Maybe putting it out into the universe would change my luck. “I want to feel special enough that a guy wants me for me. For something longer than a few dates, or for an event. It would be nice to have someone see a future with me, not just for a way to pass time.” Those words had stung so much. They had been given free rent in my head, but I couldn’t find a way to evict them.
“You were dating, right?”
“No, I know, but I asked him out.” Maybe in hindsight, his response of Sure, why not? should’ve raised a red flag, but apparently I wasn’t that gifted in reading the signs. “It’s how it’s been the last couple of years; I’ve been doing the asking.”
It sucks to be lonely, but it’s worse being alone when you’re dating someone too.
Countless guys in high school and on set had asked me out, but it was because of who I was, not because they were really interested in being with Molly the person; they wanted Holly the celebrity—someone who could get them into special parties and sweet perks. It was plainly obvious on the first date too. Back then, it was rare for there to be a date number two.
Until I moved away from that lifestyle, and slowly the relationships grew. But they never amounted to much.
The light turned green and we turned onto the avenue, driving past the rock-edged road and over a set of railroad tracks.
“Pathetic, right?”
“No, not at all. Admirable. It’s absolutely terrifying asking someone out.”
We drove by Sleepy Hollow Road, the hustle and bustle of the busy tourist town in the rear-view mirror.
From the side of my eye, his smile pushed high the apples of his bearded cheeks. “Did you ever think that maybe the right guys were afraid to ask you out?”
The most unladylike snort blew out of me, and with it, a bit of snot flew out as well. So attractive.
He handed me a tissue.
“Well, maybe that’s why? They’d get covered in this.” I wiped my nose and tossed the tissue into the little trash bucket he had on the floor between the seats.
“Well, thank you for sharing. You don’t do that a lot, do you?”
Slowly, and unbelievably surprised by his insight, I shook my head.
“In the time I’ve known you, you’ve never once mentioned any family members. Is everything okay?”
I focused out the window, watching as the towering evergreens blurred by and trying to spot an elk lumbering in between or see if I could spot a bear out of hibernation. It was all greens, browns, and the occasional grey from the rocks.
“Sorry. I overstepped. You don’t have to tell me.”
A deep, painful sigh gusted out of me. “It’s complicated.”
Although I wasn’t making the huge bucks like the A-listed Hollywood stars, I did receive a decent income as a B-level actress. However, by the time I was a legal adult, I needed to take control of my finances which were being squandered by my spend-happy parents. When I took that away from them, they cut me out of the family until they begged and pleaded for money. After leaving mid-season, I changed my number and told my PR manager I was taking a hiatus for an undisclosed time. Then it was radio silence. And for a while, I had mostly enjoyed it, but it was lonely. I’d been sheltered for so long that at my age, I still didn’t know how to make friends. So sad. Money brought me everything I could ever need, except deep meaningful relationships.
We passed Tekerra Lodge and crossed over Miette River. We weren’t far from home, thank goodness, and I could put this building awkwardness behind me.
He chuckled, a sweet melodic sound that tugged on my heart. “Show me a family that isn’t plagued with complications, drama, and the occasional rift, and I’ll buy your ocean-front property in Saskatchewan.”
I couldn’t help the snicker that rolled out. “Guess you have complications too?”
He pointed at his chest. “Proud member of the black sheep castoffs.”
My eyes widened. “Me too, but I don’t know that I’m as proud of it as you are.”
“I wear it like a badge as I’ve earned it.” He leaned his elbow on the edge of the window. “Mind you, it took me a while to get to that point.”
“How long?”
He quickly took his focus off the road to look at me. “Years.”
“Then I have time before I’ll get my badge.”
“Maybe. May not.” We turned onto the short road leading to the motel. “So what’s your story?”
“No way, you first.” The gauntlet had been tossed. I’d already shared more than I ever thought I would.
He raked a hand through his hair, leaving some of the waves floating through the air.
“Fair enough.” We emerged from the thick grove of evergreens lining the road into a clearing with the parking lot and the two-level motel stretching out at the end of the small lot. “I’ve always been different, ever since I was a toddler. The two different coloured eye thing never helped either.”
Wow. I found that part of him positively electric and as such, I couldn’t help myself from staring.
“I was picked on in school. For being different.”
“Seriously?” I nearly growled.
“Not for the reasons you think. It wasn’t just the eyes.” He pulled into a parking stall near the far end and turned off the engine. The rumble died down and a strong silence wrapped around us. “I was in an academic school, that groomed you for a post-secondary career in sciences, engineering, or law. Things I was never interested in. I wanted to build things and enjoyed taking things apart to see how they work, and then put them back together.”
It sounded like a branch of engineering to me, but then again, I didn’t know everything.
“I didn’t want to know trig, nor physics, and every time I protested to my teachers, I always got a ‘ Mr. Wentworth, it doesn’t matter if you’ll need it or not, you’re here to learn it’. After a semester of that, I dropped out.”
Whoa. I hadn’t pegged Jeremy for a high school drop-out.
He’d turned to face me. “Everyone was beyond angry and couldn’t understand my reasons, so they kicked me out. I quit my part-time job at Dairy Queen and, as they say, I headed west.”
I swallowed and rolled my lip between my teeth. “How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
My eyes widened. Thanks to on-set tutors, I was essentially home-schooled, aside from a torture-filled year trying out a real high school. By sixteen, I was two courses away from completing the requirements to graduate high school early. As often as I had thought about living on my own, it wasn’t a possibility.
“Wow. That’s incredible.”
“Incredible as in good? Or incredible as in bad?”
“Mind-blowingly impressive. I don’t know how you did it.” As someone in her mid-twenties, who wasn’t touching her sizable bank account for fear some family member would discover where I lived, I struggled a lot to make ends meet on a barista’s salary. How on earth did a sixteen-year-old do it?
“Looking back, I don’t know either. Pig-headedness I presume.” He laughed and rubbed his bearded jawline. “But whatever. It was over half a lifetime ago.”
I did the math in my head, although it took me longer than it should’ve. “You’re thirty-two?”
“Thirty-six.” There was a quizzical frown forming. “Is that an issue?”
Not at all, since we weren’t dating. He was eleven years older, one more than Derek. “You just seem younger.”
“Why, thank you,” he said with a smirk and a slight sparkle danced in his eyes.
“Don’t you want to know how old I am?” I tried my best to be alluring, but it sounded childish.
“I’m not even going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.” He shook his head as he spoke. “It’s bad manners to ask, and even worse to guess. Women are so great at doing makeup and dressing the way they do; an eighteen-year-old can look like she’s pushing thirty.”
He was hard to read, but the sound of his tone suggested there was a reason he knew that; however, I wasn’t going to push.
“I suppose that’s true, but I’m not wearing makeup. It’s easy to tell because these things,” I pointed to the freckles smattered across my cheeks, “are more prominent.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Still not going to guess my age?”
“Nope.” He shook his head.
“Does an age gap bother you?”
His eyes widened and a sudden slack in his jaw appeared. “Are you legal?”
My eyes narrowed. “Yeah, of course.”
A quick breathy, borderline relieved sigh blew out. “Then why would it?”
“For our fake-dating reasons.”
“I can’t see why that would matter.” It was said so matter-of-factly, I was a little put-off.
“Oh, okay.”
With one hand resting on the steering wheel, he set the other on his lap. “Does the age gap bother you?”
“Of course not. You and Derek are practically the same age.”
A low growl formed in his throat. “We’re nothing alike.”
“You really don’t like him, do you?”
He opened the door. “What I don’t like is a guy who mistreats a lady.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Derek never mistreated me.”
Jeremy hopped out of the truck and dashed over to my side, opening the door for me. I unbuckled and readied to slink out slowly with his help.
“He did. You said he said he was using you to pass the time.”
“Yeah, well…” I took his offered hand and placed a foot on the running board. “Isn’t that what we’re doing? We’re just using each other.”
His grip was strong and warm, and his expression matched. “The difference is, we’re being honest and upfront about it. Neither one of us is stringing the other along.”
I stepped onto the running board, as Jeremy slipped an arm around my waist. Feeling that security, I put my trust in him as he held tight, gazing up into his eyes even when my feet were firmly on the ground.
“All good?” He asked.
Words escaped me, so I shrugged and nodded.
“Good.” He stepped back, breaking eye contact, and closed the truck door. “Well, I need to get back to work.” Securing his big truck, he turned and started toward the motel office.
I still hadn’t moved. “Jeremy?”
“Yeah?”
There was so much I thought I could—or should—say, but my brain still wasn’t running properly. “Thanks. For the ride. And last night.”
“I’m glad you’ll be okay. If you need me, I’ll be here until four, and I’ll be back by seven.” With a quick wave, he strode away from me.