Chapter Thirty-Nine
Phoebe
“You want to break up?” Jake asks behind the pool bar. Erik called in sick this morning along with four other servers who went to the Gulp Seafood & Lounge last night. They all ate the oysters, and now they’re probably making best friends with their toilet bowls.
I was a little bummed I wasn’t invited to the staff outing. Now I’m flying on cloud nine for dodging food poisoning. Since the club is short-staffed, Jake has been the fill-in bartender. Only there’s just one guest on this cloudy fall afternoon.
Carla Evans sips on her mojito and reads a book on an e-reader at the edge of the pool.
She’s way out of earshot unless she has bionic hearing like Wonder Woman. Wait... does Wonder Woman have bionic hearing? I file that question away to ask Nova later.
I tell Jake, “Yes, I would like to break up with you and end our fake relationship.”
“It’s only been a month.” He frowns deeper and wipes some martini glasses with a rag. “You’re supposed to have dinner with my parents the second weekend of November.”
Ah, the reinstated Waterford family dinner. Not high on my to-do list.
But Jake reminds me, “Breaking up with me before then won’t win you points with my mom.”
“Right,” I say. “So you should probably break up with me.”
He shakes his head vigorously. “No, she’ll love that.”
“One of us is going to lose out on this scheme.”
Skin pleats between his brows. I’ve been getting used to Jake’s thinking-too-hard face. “Why do you want to break up, anyway? Is this about Rocky?”
Hearing his name causes a thousand butterflies to flap their annoying wings in my stomach. “It’s about me,” I say, not wanting this to be the way I profess my first real relationship. “And I’m just done lying.”
That feels right.
It feels... good?
Jake thinks this over. “Yeah, I get that. Lies can weigh on you.” He watches me, and I bet he’s waiting to see if I react suspiciously. To see if Rocky confessed about his own con.
I tilt my head. “You say that like you have experience in lying.”
He pauses. I make zero show of playing dumb. His eyes flash hot. “Rocky told you.”
“We don’t keep secrets from each other.”
He curses him out under his breath, and then his worried gaze veers to me. “Phoebe.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” I assure him.
Jake lets out a long, agonized groan, my words not offering an ounce of comfort to him.
“I think it’s sweet what you did for her,” I tell him. “Really.”
His squared shoulders begin to unbind a little. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“We can break up,” he confirms, though the idea looks painful for him. He was not expecting this so soon, that’s for sure. “At the pool party on Thursday.”
He means on Halloween. I’ll be serving at the country club on my favorite day of the year. I would be more bummed, but I’m used to being preoccupied with a job during nearly every holiday.
“I’ll pencil it in.” I smile over at him. “It’ll be the most epic breakup of your life. You’ll remember it forever.”
He groans even harder. “Let’s not take it to the extreme, okay? For your sake and mine.” I try not to hang on to the foreboding tone of his voice.