Chapter 17 #3
“I’m so happy to hear that. He’s such a great guy.” Nikki practically bounced on the bed as she celebrated Jordan getting laid. “I love this!”
“So you said. Twice now.”
“You’re not excited?”
“I’m trying to keep it real, Nik. He lives here. I live in LA. We’re having fun, but that’s all it is.”
“How can you know that’s all it is when you’ve only known him a few days?”
“Because eventually, I’m going to have to go home and deal with my life.”
“Maybe not.”
“What’re you talking about? Of course I’m going home. I live there.”
“Who says you can’t live somewhere else?”
“I appreciate what you’re saying, and I love how things have worked out for you here with Riley and the Wayfarer and the house. But that’s not going to happen for me.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because! I do not live on Gansett. I live in LA. That’s where my life is.”
“It’s where it was. Who’s to say that couldn’t change?”
Jordan put down the coffee, got up from the bed and turned to face her sister. “Nik, honestly, get real.”
“Mason is a great guy, the kind of guy who doesn’t come along every day. Why couldn’t you make something of this thing with him and figure out a whole new life for yourself?”
As she tried to form a logical response to her sister’s question, an odd feeling of elation came over her, along with vivid images of what it would be like to live here with Mason, near her sister and Riley, to make new friends who genuinely cared about her and not what she could do for them, like so many of the people she’d associated with in LA.
To find work that was meaningful to her, to be far away from the madness that was her former life, to have babies and a family of her own.
The flood of emotion that came over her as each new image presented itself in high-definition precision left her feeling gut-punched and breathless.
“J? Are you okay?” Nikki jumped up to come to her. “Is it the asthma?”
Jordan’s eyes filled as she shook her head.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong. For the first time in a very long time, nothing is wrong.”
Nikki hugged her tightly. “All I’m asking you to do is to consider it.
Nothing has to be decided today or even any time soon.
Just consider it. You’re the captain of your own ship.
You can be and do anything at all. Your slate is blank right now.
Draw your own picture of what you want your life to be. ”
“Is that what you did?”
“It is, and I found every single thing I want and need right here. I found things I didn’t even know I needed.”
“Just because you found Riley here doesn’t mean that’s going to happen for me.”
“Maybe not, but you just spent the night with a man who isn’t him, days after you met him. Think about that. You’ve never been with anyone else, and a couple of days after you met Mason, you’re sore after spending the night with him.”
“I found out other important things were lacking in my marriage besides the stuff I already knew about.”
Nikki smiled widely. “Did you now?”
“Oh, yeah. It was… I had no idea.”
“I know what you mean. I felt that way after the first night I spent with Riley.”
“Well, you’d only had something awful to compare it to. I was in love with Brendan, and it was nothing like with Mason.”
“I feel like I should throw a party or a parade or a fireworks display or something to celebrate this fantastic development.”
“No celebrations needed,” Jordan said, amused by her sister’s euphoria.
“You should celebrate this. It’s a big deal to connect with someone the way you have with him.”
“I don’t want to get ahead of myself, Nik. It’s important to me that no one gets hurt here, especially him.”
“What does he say about it?”
“That he gets it. My life isn’t here. His is. We’re just having fun. Everyone else is making more of it than we are.”
“Gran and I are excited to see you excited about someone who isn’t what’s-his-name.”
“And I get that. I really do, and I’ve given you both good reason to be happy to see me with anyone other than him. But please don’t jump through gold rings and white picket fences, Nik. That’s not what this is about.”
“I hear you. I’m only asking that you keep your mind open to all the many things this could be, in addition to fun.”
“Okay. I will. Now, can I drive you to work so I can borrow your car? I have a few errands to do today.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Let me just grab a quick shower, and then we can go.” As she showered and packed a bag to take with her, Jordan tried to erase the array of images that had suddenly appeared before her earlier, each of them featuring Mason at the center of her life.
She was getting caught up in the romantic silliness her grandmother and sister were tossing at her. After everything she’d been through, Jordan didn’t have a lot of faith in the power of romance. No, she still believed that it was best to keep it real with Mason.
This was about fun and maybe a little bit of a rebound to reset herself after the disaster with Brendan. To make it into anything more than that would be courting all-new disaster, and she’d already had more than enough disaster for one lifetime.