Chapter 32
CHAPTER 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?
“You can take the whiskey,” she said, pulling out a bottle from her purse. “It was making my shoulder ache.”
“What are you buying whiskey for?” I asked as we made our way through the parking lot. Not toward a car, because I walked the ten minutes it took to get to work. Even in the rain, it was fine as long as you didn’t try and take the shortcut across the field.
“You got plans tonight?” she asked, setting quite a pace back home.
“You mean apart from that conference call with Paris and pilates at the country club?” I asked.
“Good. You have plans with me then. We’re just going to make a start tonight. We won’t get it all done, but we can get an idea.”
I peered into one of the shopping bags she was carrying.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t groceries. “Make a start on what?” I said.
“I’m happy if whiskey is part of the equation but all I want to do is go home and watch Bravo.
” Anything to keep me distracted from thinking about London.
About Dexter. About the life I’d left behind.
At some point I’d maybe start designing again.
I had a couple of ideas but no energy to put down on paper something I wasn’t going to be able to make.
Buck was at the entrance of the park. “Hey, Buck, can’t stop. Gotta get back and pack,” Autumn said, pulling me by the sleeve when I slowed to say hi.
What the hell was up with her. “What have you been buying? You better not have thrown away your textbook money on something stupid and whiskey.”
“Come on and I’ll show you,” she said, marching toward our trailer.
It seemed like time slowed with every pace toward home. It was the last place I wanted to be. Being indoors, I was faced with how starkly different my life had been this time last week.
She was first up the steps, through the door and was emptying her bags before I’d even finished taking my hoodie off.
“What are you doing?” I asked as she spread out what she’d brought back on the table. There were about a hundred Sharpies, each a different color, and a ruler and sticky notes. And then a huge roll of paper.
“Is this an elementary school art project?” I asked, pulling out two shot glasses and setting them next to the whiskey.
“Nope. This is planning HQ.”
I poured out the whiskey, careful not to spill a drop.
“What are we planning? How to not run out of Sharpies?”
She ignored me, came over, picked up her shot glass and held it up. “Here’s to getting out of here,” she said and tipped back the shot.
I’d drink to that. And I did.
The warm, sleepy liquid slid down my throat, loosening my limbs and making the world slightly more bearable. A couple of more shots and I might be able to call Mom and Dad to make sure they were packing.
“So,” she said, screwing the lid back on the bottle. “No more until we’ve done some work. We need to keep a clear head.”
I was hoping a lot of whiskey was the plan to get out of here, but apparently Autumn had something else in mind.
“Come on.” She shooed me over to the dining table like I was cattle.
Autumn clearly meant business. And I figured it was easier to just play along. I’d sneak a couple more shots and just let her talk. And then I’d go to bed, hopefully before the dark and quiet could leave room for thoughts of Dexter to take over in my mind.
She sat opposite me and rolled open the large sheet of paper. “So, I’ve been doing some research. We can do flights to London for five hundred dollars as long as you don’t mind a bit of a layover.”
London? I sat back, the soothing effect of the whiskey lifting like a pigeon when a car backfired. I was totally confused. Autumn removed the lid of the bright pink Sharpie with a pop and wrote “out” at the top left of the page, underlining it twice.
“You want to fill me in on what we’re doing here,” I asked, a little uncomfortable.
I didn’t understand what London had to do with a pile of Sharpies, and there was no need to figure out the cost of flights.
If I ever went back, inflation would have been around the block a few times and who knew what the price would be.
“Because I really want to go and watch some housewives scream at each other.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She looked at me as if I was being deliberately dumb. “We’re hatching a plan to get your ass back to London.”
I groaned and went to stand.
“Sit down,” she snapped. My sister never snapped at me and I could count on the fingers of one hand how often she’d told me what to do.
“I was just going to get the whiskey,” I lied.
“I told you. We need clear heads.”
“For what? I’m not going back to London.
” I needed to be here—to earn money, to keep an eye on Mom so she kept bringing in a salary.
“I don’t have anything to go back for.” My internship was over.
I’d not made any friends other than Dexter really, and well .
. . that was over. And now I couldn’t bring myself to find out who’d won the competition.
I would be devastated for him if Daniels & Co hadn’t, but if they had, I was worried I’d be so bitter about not being there that I’d take that bottle of whiskey and down the entire thing.
“You have the rest of your life to go back for,” my sister said. “You have Dexter. And your career.”
I watched her, scribbling numbers down on this huge sheet of paper. She wanted to help and my bones ached I was so grateful, but there was nothing she could do. I was stuck.
“I think on this side,” she said, indicating the right-hand side of the huge sheet of paper, “we need things that don’t cost money but you’ll have to do before you go.
I’m going to write ‘job’ up here and then we’ll do a bubble where we put all the preparation you need to do to get a job—you know, applications and stuff. ”
“Honey,” I said, placing my hand on her arm. “This is so sweet of you. But I’m not going back to London.”
She turned to me, fire in her eyes. “Of course you are. I’ve never seen or heard you so happy as when you were over there. And Dexter’s there and you’ve never been into a guy like you’re into him. Ever. In. Your. Life.”
Into him. It sounded so cute but so completely inappropriate for what I felt for Dexter.
I tried to push it down but it kept bobbing to the surface—the realization that I was in love with him.
I tried to think back to when I’d transitioned from wanting to rip his clothes off to being in love with him.
It was somewhere after I’d started to like him, then really like him, and it had morphed without me realizing into something much deeper—respect and admiration mixed with an understanding that he enjoyed making me happy just as much as I enjoyed doing the same for him.
I loved the bones of the man.
I loved the heart of the man.
I loved the soul of the man.
I glanced at my phone. It would be so easy to call. Too easy.
“I have responsibilities here,” I said. “I need to be realistic.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m not planning on robbing a bank.
This chart is a real plan. We can do this.
You saved up the first time. And now I’m about to graduate and get a job, we’ll get there a lot quicker.
Which reminds me,” she said, flipping over the paper.
“I need a column because I need to find a job that pays. None of this interning without a salary shit,” she said.
“I’ve started applying and I have a couple of interviews lined up.
But I’m not going to put all my eggs in one basket. I’m going to keep applying.”
It was the first I’d heard about her applying for jobs already. “You’re going to apply around here?” There weren’t many good jobs in Sunshine.
“No, I thought Portland. And I’ve even applied for a couple in New York.”
New York? That was more expense. I’d have to pay for her flights and hotels. But good for her that she wanted to spread her wings. There was no point in two of us being stuck here. After all, giving her a future was what the last years of sacrifice had been about.
“And before you start worrying, I got a scholarship to pay for travel and accommodation to and from job interviews. There won’t be any additional expense.” Autumn was beaming at me.
My heart rose in my chest. “What kind of scholarship?”
“The kind that pays for kids like me to go to job interviews.”
“Wow, I had no idea there even was such a thing.”
“Well, there was and I got it. And then you’re not going to have tuition to pay for anymore.”
I nodded. I just had to get past the bottleneck of deposits on our new apartment—first month, last month, security. Once I did that, I could relax a little. Until the next disaster.