Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Hollie
I abandoned my suitcase, peeled off my coat and collapsed on our second-hand, brown velour couch as if it was good to be home. It wasn’t.
“I don’t know what you did to Buck Newland, but thank God,” Autumn said, handing me a glass of water and coming to sit next to me.
My first stop on the way back from the airport hadn’t been our trailer, but Buck Newland’s—Greg’s dad.
I hadn’t managed to get him to lower the rent, but I had managed to get us an extra month to find another place to live.
Buck had known our family a long time, and he knew the burden of sorting out new places to live was going to fall on me. He’d taken pity on me.
“It’s still not long,” I said. “Did you find the listings?”
“You think he might still come around?” She handed me a newspaper and flipped to the rentals page.
“I doubt it. We’ve been here a long time and arguably we should be paying more rent.”
“Not triple the amount.”
“No. But Buck knows that apartments around here are few and far between. And he’s punishing us because .
. .” Autumn already felt responsible for what had happened.
I didn’t need to rub it in. “I need to focus on getting a rent deposit together for an apartment. We’ll have to live together and you and I will have to share a room until you leave.
” The next few weeks I’d have to do a lot of extra shifts at the factory.
It still wouldn’t be enough. All that extra work to go backward—back to living with my parents.
At least Autumn would be able to leave Sunshine.
“Mom is going to have to contribute from her work at Trader Bob’s and she’s going to have to keep working there if we’re going to have a hope of making what we need.
” I was going to have to keep an eye on Mom, make sure she kept her job.
“You think you’re going to miss London?” Autumn asked.
That reminded me—I needed to unpack my carry-on and then the last traces of my trip to London would have left me. “It’s nice to be back to see you,” I said, avoiding the question.
“What about Sexy Dexter? Will you miss him?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s moved on. You saw him.
” I desperately wanted to know if he’d won the competition.
It was late in London. The winner would have been announced by now.
There would probably be an article about it online tomorrow.
Dexter was sure to win. I’d seen the designs from the other competitors and there was no comparison.
Dexter had some kind of instinct or genetic programming that allowed him to see what would work and what would be too much.
It was the elegance and simplicity of the Daniels & Co jewelry that I’d take as inspiration from my trip.
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.