Chapter 12
Holly
“Joana, I don’t know what to do,” I said with a sigh of exasperation. I had been stressing out over things ever since I’d talked to Alex at Central Park.
“What’s wrong?” Joana asked, looking at me in concern with those big green eyes of hers.
She was wearing one of her bright yellow sundresses and the brilliant red roses in the flowery pattern really brought out the fiery red color of her thick, wavy hair.
“Jo, I think I’m falling in love with Alex,” I confessed as I plopped down on her sofa and folded my arms across my chest.
“Okay, this sounds like the kind of convo we’re gonna need a drink to finish,” she said half-teasingly as she opened one of her kitchen cupboards and took out two small glasses.
Honestly, Joana never really needed a valid reason to drink. In fact, I was pretty sure she was only saying that to try and convince me that I needed a drink so that she wouldn’t have to drink alone.
She came over and sat down next to me on her sofa, placing the small glasses down on the coffee table in front of us. Bottle in hand, she filled them with clear liquor, added a few drops of cranberry juice, and then set the liquor bottle down right beside them.
“Thanks,” I said as she handed me my freshly-made drink.
“So, now, what’s all this about Richy Rich Long Schlong, then?” she asked jokingly.
“Jo, seriously!” I said as I laughed, “you’re gonna make me spill this goddamn drink if you don’t stop it!”
“Stop what?” she said with a straight-laced expression, bringing her glass up to her lips and taking a long, slow sip.
“Jo, come on! I’m serious. I really need to talk to you about this,” I pleaded, taking another swig of my own strong drink.
“Okay, okay, all jokes aside, what’s going on?”
“Well, I really am falling for Alex, Jo, and I don’t know what to do about it,” I explained. “He just—he just seems so different from what I was expecting, you know?”
“Well, what the hell were you expecting?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I guess, I assumed that we were just gonna be—well, you know, maybe friends with benefits or something,” I replied. “I mean, at first I had just thought it was gonna be like a one-night fling. But then he tracked me down and wanted to see me again. And, he’s absolutely amazing in bed, of course, but he’s also really cool and easy to talk to. He’s sweet, romantic, and extremely thoughtful. It’s like everything he does, he does with me in mind. I never felt like this when I was with Danny.”
“Okay, go on,” Jo said as she refilled her glass.
“Well, he did the most incredible thing. Last week, I told him that Danny was my ex, and he confided in me how important Danny’s contract was to his company. Then, last night, he actually confessed his feelings for me and told me that he was terminating his endorsement deal with Danny. This is the first time a man has ever put me before his career.”
I sighed and shook my head, feeling slightly woozy from the way my thoughts were spinning around inside my mind.
“Holly, this is a good thing! Shit, it’s actually a great thing,” Jo said excitedly. “Listen to yourself. You’re stressing over this like it’s a bad thing!”
“Jo, it is a bad thing—at least to me. I’m moving, remember? I feel so guilty now, because he made this decision to put me and my feelings before his own billion-dollar company, but I’m leaving.”
I felt like a total ass. To be completely honest, I hadn’t actually expected Alex to make his decision about his prospective endorsement deal with Danny based on the information I had given him. No man had ever put me before his business or career and it certainly hadn’t ever crossed my mind that Alex Westbrooke, a rich, sophisticated, and incredibly handsome playboy, president of his family’s billion-dollar company, would ever be the one to finally do so.
I sucked in my breath and shook my head in a useless attempt to try and clear it.
“Holly, you don’t have to leave. You do know that, right?” Jo pointed out, looking directly into my face as she spoke.
“But I’ve already given my termination notice to the school, and they’ve already found another teacher to fill my position. There’s no way I could go back and just tell them that I changed my mind, and ask them to fire that person just so they can give me my job back,” I explained. I ran my hand over my face to emphasize how stressed out I was feeling over this situation.
Joana took the small glass from my hand, refilled my drink, and handed it back to me.
“Seems like you need this more than I do,” she said half-joking and half-serious.
She looked over at me and winked, allowing a slight smile to form at the corners of her mouth. It was just enough to send me into a fit of giggles. We both started laughing and I rolled my eyes at her.
“Shit, Jo, you always make me laugh—even at the most inappropriate times!” I said, punching her playfully in the arm.
“What the hell are you talking about? It’s never an inappropriate time for a good hard… laugh,” she teased, as she poured herself yet another drink.
“Anyway, what do you think I should I do? I mean, I was so gung ho about moving back down to my hometown but now, with everything that has happened…”
“You’re starting to have second thoughts, aren’t you?” Joana said, interrupting me to finish my sentence. She knew me so well that sometimes it was almost creepy.
“Isn’t life crazy that way, though?” I asked. “Here I am, finally giving up on the idea of finding true love here in the city, and then the seemingly perfect man falls right into my lap when I’m not even looking—just when I’ve already decided to leave this place behind and head back home.”