CHAPTER 44 Everleigh Bradley
Wallowing
“Another scoop?” Penny asks the following Saturday night.
I nod, and she gets me a big one filled with goodies before plopping it into my bowl. She pushes it across the counter to me with a spoon before she makes her own bowl.
She made me come over after she got the boys to bed. I’d rather be at home wallowing under a blanket in front of my television as I watch some sappy rom-com, but instead I’m at Penny’s place for a girls’ night eating Snicker’s ice cream and drinking a tequila sunrise.
Mr. Langford fired me.
Not only did I lose Maverick in this whole mess, I also lost my job.
I thought I’d have something to return to here. I guess I’d already been replaced in the Chicago office, and he didn’t have a space for me—or losing the position in Vegas told him everything he needed to know about me.
So it’s one more thing to wallow over. One more thing I’ve lost. One more reason I should have listened to my initial gut instinct when Langford first told me about the job in Vegas.
When I say she made me come over, I mean it.
It wasn’t at gunpoint or anything dramatic like that, but she told me I wasn’t allowed to sit at home by myself on a Saturday night, and she’d either pack up the boys and bring them to my place—which she really didn’t want to do—or I could come there.
Those were the two options she gave me, and as much as I want to sit at home cursing my life, she’s right. It’s not healthy to wallow alone.
The ice cream and tequila don’t really go together. At all. Both options are working hard to heal what’s broken…but it’s not working.
A night with my best friend—wallowing under a blanket in front of her television rather than my own as we watch a sappy rom-com together—is helping a little.
I’ll spend the night in her guest room, and we’ll spend the day together tomorrow entertaining the kids.
I want to help give her a little break since her deadbeat nearly ex-husband currently only sees them every other weekend, and I have a plan to steal them away to take them to the movies tomorrow so we can gorge ourselves on popcorn and slushies while we watch the latest and greatest animated movie.
I can be cool Auntie Ev and fill them with sugar and carbs before I send them back home.
And then I can return to my lonely existence and wallow on my own some more.
I blow out a breath as I feel myself not looking forward to that at all.
“How are you doing?” I ask Penny, if nothing else to get my mind off of my own problems, as she slips onto the stool at her counter beside me.
“I’m hanging in there. I just want this thing finalized so I can move on with my life, but Brent’s making things incredibly difficult.”
“What’s he doing?” I ask.
“He’s dragging everything out. Arguing every point.
He wants to see his kids every other weekend, but he also wants authority on making decisions.
He’s disputing every single thing my lawyer comes up with.
Child support, division of assets, you name it.
” She sighs heavily. “I’m afraid I’m going to give in on things I shouldn’t just to be done with his bullshit. ”
I dig around in my bowl for some chocolate. “I’m sorry. What about the viral video? Can’t you push things forward with that evidence?”
“Not really. It doesn’t show him endangering our children or anything. It just shows him being a stupid cheating son of a bitch, and apparently there’s nothing illegal about that.”
I wrinkle my nose. “That sucks. But the good news is he’s out of this place, and you don’t have to deal with him every day.”
“Yeah. But the bad news is that he wants to sell it and force me and the kids to relocate.” She purses her lips, and she looks like she’s going to start crying.
“Can you buy him out?”
She shakes her head. “I make decent money at Langford, but not enough to buy him out. Not when our finances have been combined for the last ten years.”
“Can I buy him out?” I ask.
Her brows twitch, and her head whips over to me. “What?”
I shrug. “I have a trust fund, and I want to help. I’ve heard real estate is a good investment.” I say it for her benefit. I don’t want her to feel like it’s charity, but my best friend deserves a fresh start, and if I can be the one to give it to her, I will.
She shakes her head. “I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask,” I point out. “Look, I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to do it. If you don’t like the idea, then you can come stay at my place for a while until you can get on your feet. But I don’t want you to have to uproot the kids when they’re already going through a lot of changes.”
“Can I think about it?” she asks, snagging her lip between her teeth.
I nod. “Of course. The offer isn’t going anywhere, Penguin.
” I try to be creative with my nicknames for her.
Since her full name is Penelope, I go with anything that starts with Pen.
You know, like Pencil, Pensive, Penchant, Penalty, Penicillin, Peninsula, or Pennylicious. But Penguin is probably my favorite.
She giggles. “Whateverleigh, Everleigh.”
I wrinkle my nose. I’ve heard Evie-boo, Neverleigh, Beverly, and Foreverleigh from this girl, but Whateverleigh is a new one.
“It’s a no?” she asks.
“Sorry my name doesn’t lend itself well to nicknames.”
She giggles, and I laugh too. Despite the heaviness in here, I can always count on my best friend for a good laugh.
My phone dings with a new text, and she shoots me a sharp look.
“What?” I ask innocently.
“Phones on silent after children are asleep,” she reminds me.
I make a face and turn off my volume. “Sorry. I guess if I ever have kids someday, I’ll understand why.”
“You will—both understand and have kids, I mean,” she says.
I shrug. “The window on that feels as if it’s getting smaller.
I’m thirty-two, got dumped by the guy I thought I’d have kids with someday, and then got into something new only for that to end as well.
” I make a face, not really sure how to define what happened between Maverick and me.
Can we really call it a breakup when we were never actually together?
How do we define what we had, and how do we define the end of it when we never really defined it to each other?
I’m not sure it matters. We’re apart now, and that seems to be the thing that matters in all this.
And I hate it.
If I could turn back time…would I? Would I handle things differently? I’m not sure.
“So who just texted you? Tell me it was Manly Mav.”
I shoot her a look. “Manly Mav?”
“What?” she asks. “Do you prefer Mountable Mav? Monstercock Mav?”
“He did have a monster cock,” I mutter. I grab my phone and take a peek. “Nope, it wasn’t Monstercock after all.” I flash the screen at her to read the text.
Billy: Heard you’re back in town. When can I see you again?
She raises her brows as if to ask…well?
“Should I reply with half past never o’clock?” I ask as I consider my response.
“It’s really over?”
I nod. “I think it’s that whole hindsight thing. He didn’t like my red lipstick.”
She shoots me a look. “So?”
“It’s part of who I am. You know? It’s those little things. And honestly, after being with Maverick and comparing them side-by-side, which I know is wrong as fuck, the things I felt for Billy were perhaps nothing more than a crush.”
“But what you felt for Mav?”
I press my lips together as tears heat behind my eyes. My stomach churns, and it’s not from the ice cream-tequila mix. “More than a crush,” I finally say.
“Then go get him, Ev. What’s stopping you?”
“It’s just so complicated,” I say. “He wants to feel like I chose him, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t pick someone I’ve only known a couple months no matter how much I think I’ve fallen for him.
I knew Billy for years, and he turned out to be someone other than what I thought he was.
But my family…they’re the ones who’ve been there to pick me back up my entire life, you know? ”
“Do you feel like you’ve said that a hundred times in the last few days?” she asks.
My brows quirk. “Why?”
“Because it sounded canned, babe. I suspect even you know it’s nothing more than an excuse.”
I lift a shoulder. “So what if it is? It doesn’t change anything. He doesn’t want to be with me if I can’t put him first.”
“Then…put him first. Duh.” She smacks her forehead as if the answer is so obvious.
It’s not.
Not to me, anyway.
“So…what, then? Turn my own father in?”
She presses her lips together. “Yeah, I guess you’ve got yourself a conundrum there. Would you consider giving him the permission he needs to tell the DA who he thinks is behind the operations?”
I twist my lips. “I’m not sure,” I murmur. I feel like I’ve already made my decision on that.
Still…maybe talking to my father about it will give me the closure I feel like I’m so desperately looking for.
“One more question,” Penny says. I raise my brows as I wait, and when the question comes, it’s one I’m not sure how to answer. “You said your family has always been there to pick you up your entire life. Can you honestly say that specifically about your father?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
I finally text Billy back. I’m all out of fucks for today, so I don’t play games as if I have some left to give.
Me: You broke me when you ended things, but I’m whole again. I’m sorry, but I won’t travel back down that road again.
I send it off, and when he doesn’t reply, I’m pretty sure my message went through loud and clear.
I may not be with Maverick anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’d even consider for a second settling for anything less than everything I deserve.