Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Julie
I toss the last couple sweaters into my suitcase in a heap and slam the lid shut with a little more force than necessary. I pause.
I can leave them like that.
I’m fine.
This is fine.
I absolutely can’t leave them like that.
Cursing under my breath, I open the suitcase back up and fold the sweaters into perfect squares before closing the lid and zipping it shut.
Muffled laughter has me turning towards the bathroom where Molly is standing in the doorway with a hand over her mouth, very clearly laughing hysterically.
I side-eye her. “I could have left them like that.”
Molly just laughs harder. “Jules, I love you, but there is no universe where you leave sweaters in an unfolded tangle and close the suitcase. I don’t know what possessed you to take this road trip with the sexy quarterback, but you’re still you, even though you taking two weeks off means I’m a little worried you were temporarily abducted by aliens who did experiments on your brain.”
“What Molly said.” Hallie comes strolling into my room, a bag of peppermint Hershey Kisses in hand, Emma following closely behind.
“Come on, Hal, that’s my last bag—you couldn’t pick a different snack?”
The stash from my December supermarket sweep usually lasts until Easter, but since my kiss with a certain football player, I’ve been stress eating.
She just shrugs, hopping up to sit on my dresser in a move she knows drives me insane. “I like them too.”
Emma reaches her hand into the bag and grabs a couple. “Same. Anyway, you’re leaving for two weeks, so you won’t be needing them. Why are you leaving for two weeks again?”
“What Emma said.” Molly flops on my bed, rolling over onto her stomach. Resting her chin in her hands, she kicks her legs up behind her. With her pink leggings and striped socks, she looks like a teenager at a slumber party.
“You’ve been changing the subject every time we bring it up for the last week. Not that I’m opposed to some alone time for you and the hot quarterback, but leaving town for two weeks with a guy you barely know is so unlike you, it’s not even in the same universe as you.”
All three of my friends, plus Ben, and even my parents, have taken turns asking me why I’m leaving with Asher for two weeks, and I haven’t given anyone a concrete answer. I can’t even summon a decent lie. They don’t know about the kiss or the text messages, and they definitely don’t know about the panic attack. To them, this is coming out of nowhere. As far as they know, Asher stopped by my office last week after he met with Jeremy and Emma and asked me if I wanted to go with him. They’re not wrong, but they’re not exactly right either .
It’s been a week since I agreed to go with Asher on his off-season road trip to Boulder. And I use the term agree very, very loosely. It was just a panic attack. No one died. I got through it. There’s no reason for him to be making such a big deal over it. I ignore the voice in my head telling me there was nothing just about that panic attack. That, for what seemed like hours but was probably only minutes, I actually did think I was going to die, and the only reason I got through it is because Asher wrapped his big, strong quarterback arms around me and talked me through it.
The voice in my head is an asshole.
Once it was over, Asher wanted me to tell my friends and I refused. Then he told me to call Ben, and I refused that even harder. When he asked me if I wanted to take a road trip, I just laughed and turned back to the papers I was sorting through. But Asher didn’t move from where he was sitting on the edge of my desk before casually dropping his bomb.
Come with me on my road trip to Boulder, or I’m telling Ben about your panic attack .
His habitually cheerful face was deadly serious, and that departure from his norm had me sitting up straighter. It was his quarterback face. The face that leads a team of men to victory on the football field week after week. The face that got me to agree to a week in the car with him and a week at his parents’ house when I have only spent a grand total of five hours, two weeks’ worth of text messages, and one afternoon mid-panic attack with him in my entire life.
I’d be lying to myself if I said it was just the quarterback face that got me to agree.
I’m worried about you.
I don’t want you to be alone.
You don’t have to be alone.
Let me help you, Blondie .
In my life, no one has ever offered to help me. I’m the one who does the helping. I help and plan and lead and organize everyone and everything and no one offers to help because everyone knows I would never accept it. But Asher either doesn’t know me well enough to know that, or he understands me so well, he knew exactly how to ask. I’m not naive enough to think it’s the former.
We’ll take a week to drive there and make some fun stops along the way.
I can’t wait to show you everything there is to do in Boulder.
Just pack a suitcase and leave everything else to me. I’ll take care of all the plans.
I think Asher offering to take care of everything melted my brain because I found myself saying yes, spending a week clearing my calendar and getting Molly and Emma to cover whatever I couldn’t cancel or reschedule.
Molly is right that this is unlike me. But with my suitcases packed and my friends crowding my space, I admit something to myself. Something that has been hovering in the background of my mind all week, since I agreed to Asher’s insane idea. That the relief of saying yes to Asher, of clearing my calendar and getting away from it all for the first time in my life, was so overwhelming that it almost brought me to my knees. And that’s fucking scary because if I’m not the go-getter who always wants to be in the office, the attorney who thrives on the pressure, the has it all together law firm partner, then who the hell am I?
The doorbell interrupts my thought spiral.
“Tacos!” Molly jumps off the bed and runs down the stairs to answer the door with Emma close behind her, leaving Hallie and me in my room.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” Hallie says from her perch on top of my dresser .
I just scoff at that. “Proud of me for what? And can you get off my dresser? You know I hate when you do that.”
She smirks at me but doesn’t move. “I know. I’m proud of you for going on this trip and for taking the time away. You deserve it, Jules. I won’t ask you again why you’re going because I know you have your reasons, but I just want you to know I think it’s a good thing.”
“You don’t think it’s crazy? A two-week road trip with a guy I barely know?”
Hallie grins at me. “Oh, it’s definitely crazy, but the good kind of crazy. Asher is a good guy, Jules. He and Ben have a miles long text chain and are basically besties. Jeremy wants him to come work for the foundation full time, and you know how protective Jeremy is over who gets close to his baby. And did you know he went to the gym with Ben, Jeremy, and Jordan yesterday?”
I did, in fact, know that because Asher texted me a selfie they took and fuck if his smiling face next to some of the most important people in my life didn’t hit me right in the feels. And…other places. I really need to get a handle on myself before I get into his car tomorrow morning.
“It’s nice that he’s making friends with them. It seems like he doesn’t have close friends here which is weird because he’s played for the Renegades for eight seasons.”
Hallie looks at me strangely. I realize my mistake almost immediately and start talking before she can question how I know anything about Asher’s friend situation.
“Anyway, it’ll probably be weird and if it gets too awkward to be stuck in a car with him and I have to escape and fly home from some tiny town in the middle of nowhere, can you come pick me up at the airport?”
Hallie hops off my dresser and wraps an arm around my waist, squeezing me in a side hug. “Literally anytime, day or night.”
Both the hug and the reassurance go a long way towards calming my nerves about the next two weeks. Things may be different now that Hallie and Ben are together, but moments like these remind me that we’re still Jules and Hallie, even if she’s also part of Hallie and Ben.
“Thanks, Hal. We better get down there before Molly and Emma eat all the good tacos.”
As if on cue, Molly yells from downstairs. “Jules, Hal, get your asses down here. I’m already pouring my second margarita, and Emma’s eating all the chicken tacos.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Emma calls up. “She’s actually pouring her third marg.”
Hallie and I both dissolve into giggles and head downstairs. I spend the next few hours sitting on my living room floor with my best friends, laughing and eating too many tacos and getting a little drunk on margaritas, and trying not to think about the gorgeous man with the strong arms and the sky-blue eyes who somehow sees the parts of me I bury deep and why I don’t hate that nearly as much as I want to.