1. It's the End of the World - Jules
It all comes down to a fucking toothbrush. The absence of it rips a hole in my heart. No, that missing toothbrush obliterates me, scattering any chance of hope I have that he’ll come back. Clutching my chest, I stumble from the bathroom back to my pitiful spot on the bed, but nothing lessens the sobs holding me hostage to this devastation. It sears and consumes. Makes breathing hard as hell. I can’t see past it, and the idea of going on with this gaping hole in my soul seems impossible.
I hear the front door of my apartment creak open, and the sound busts through my pain-induced neurosis. Sweat drips down my cleavage. It’s ten in the morning, but the temperature has risen to a humid ninety degrees, thanks to Oklahoma summer heat. It doesn’t help that the air conditioner decided to take a crap yesterday.
Fisting my hands over my chest, I watch the bedroom door—the one he left ajar when he stormed from my life an hour ago. Footsteps pad down the hall, and I curse that sliver of hope that makes my breath catch in my lungs.
I know it isn’t him—I fucking know it—but my naive heart speeds up anyway. The footfalls halt, and someone pushes the door all the way open. My sister stands in the hall, somehow impervious to the heat that’s making me sweat buckets. She’s put-together as always despite her ebony hair twisting into a messy bun. She’s not wearing any makeup, so I figure she must be on her way to a photo shoot. I wipe my eyes, hoping she’s in a rush on this Sunday morning and won’t notice that I’m falling apart at the seams.
“Oh, Jules.” She crosses to where I’m sitting on the bed, and the mattress dips under her weight as she settles next to me. “Chris told me you guys broke up.” Her perfect brows furrow in sympathy, but the tone of her voice belies her words. I love my sister. I do. But everyone knows she can be on the self-important side. Even so, just the fact that she’s here when she has somewhere else to be warms my aching heart a little.
“You saw him?”
She seems taken aback for a second. “Um, yeah. At the gas station. He looked like hell.”
The pain of the morning leaks from my eyes, no matter how hard I try to hold it back. “He just…”
Left.
Shaking my head with a sniffle, I dash the salty despair from my face. Will the tears ever stop? I’ve been heaving sobs since Chris made it clear no amount of bargaining or begging would stop him from leaving. The last words we said to each other were the biggest blow, and they torpedo through my mind now.
If you love me, you’ll stay.
Then I guess I don’t love you enough for this shit, Jules.
“He’s gone, Brit.”
“Maybe he just needs some time to cool off.”
I shake my head. That’s what I’d told myself until I spotted the toothbrush holder with only one left in it.
Mine.
Sitting there alone like me.
And I’d known. Chris never took his toothbrush when he “needed space.” He’d disappear for a day or two, but not his toothbrush. That fucker would remain in its rightful place on the bathroom counter next to mine, where it belonged.
Until today.
He’d packed every fucking thing he owned, down to that damn toothbrush.
“What happened?” she asks, brushing a few strays of blond hair from my damp cheeks.
I don’t know what to tell her. The guilt’s been eating me alive for the past two weeks. All the gory details are going to come out soon anyway, and I’ll have no choice but to deal with the blowback. But finding the words to explain what I’d done…
It’s hard as fuck, because I have no conceivable explanation.
“It’s my fault.” I really do need to get this off my chest, and Brit is the closest thing I have to a confidant since my best friend moved to Seattle a few months ago.
“You can talk to me.” Her hand settles on my shoulder, and I wonder if she can somehow hear the struggle going on in my head.
“Remember when Chris and I took a break a couple of weeks ago?”
“Yeah,” she says with a nod. “He took off for a few days. But you worked things out, right?”
“I…” My breath hitches. “I made a huge mistake, Brit.”
Long lashes flutter over her wide sea-blue eyes, but she doesn’t say anything. Brit can be patient when she tries.
“God.” I shudder out a breath before burying my face in my hands. “I’d do anything to take it back.”
She rubs a comforting circle between my shoulder blades, and when I raise my head, I don’t find a smidgeon of judgment in her expression. Only wary curiosity.
“What’d you do, Jules?”
“I got wasted.” That’s significant enough on its own, since I rarely drink. A beat passes in which the words try to lodge in my throat, thick as molasses. “I…I slept with Perry.”
Perry Reynolds. My boss. My gorgeous and persistent married boss.
I wish like hell he hadn’t been there at the bar that night. He’d been surrounded by his usual crowd, including his partner at the firm. Darlene, who hates my ever-loving guts and happens to be his wife’s best friend.
He’d kept his distance at first, but I remember him moving closer with each drink I poured down my throat.
Maybe he’d felt sorry for me because of the way I’d sat alone, drowning my sorrows in the bottom of a glass. Okay, more than one glass. More like eight or nine. Shit, to be honest, I can’t remember how much I drank that night. In fact, I recall zilch after he hopped onto the barstool next to mine.
But the following morning…well, the memory of waking next to his naked hotness in a hotel room is ingrained in my mind.
The people at work would accuse us of heading there all along, of stumbling headfirst into a secret and shameful romp in the sheets. From the day he hired me, the office grapevine took us through the wringer, whispering about the heated vibes between the boss man and his latest assistant. But I never had any intention of acting on the harmless flirting between Perry and me. Besides, screwing unattainable men is far from my style, and I had Chris.
Had.
I choke at the thought.
“It’s really over,” I say, my voice little more than a strangled whisper. A single moment of weakness on my part ended up being the final breaking point in my relationship with Chris. He isn’t coming back.
Brit stands and pulls me to my feet. “So you made a mistake. Get over it, baby sister. Life happens.”
I raise my brows, stunned by her harsh tone, though it isn’t the first time she’s spoken to me like that. “Tell me how you really feel, Brit.”
Dropping my arm, she gestures toward my pathetic state of undoneness, from the blotchiness I’m certain is coloring my cheeks to the faded yoga pants hugging my hips. “You’re a mess, Jules. I’m only telling it like it is.”
“If this is your idea of cheering me up, you missed the mark by a fucking mile.”
She despises when I drop the F-bomb. So does Mom, for that matter. They believe speaking such words is unrefined. Just as I expect, Brit purses her lips.
“I didn’t come here to cheer you up. I came here to get your ass moving.”
Whoa. When Brit cusses she isn’t messing around.
“I’ve gotta go into the city for a shoot,” she says, checking the time on her cell, “but as soon as I’m finished I’ll come pick you up. We’ll get our hair and nails done.”
I sink into the mattress, overwhelmed by the thought of doing anything other than crying into his pillow for the next decade. It’s the only thing of his I have left. “I can’t.”
She crosses her arms, and the hard planes of her face cause my stomach to plummet. I recognize that look—it’s a look few people escape.
“Snap out of it,” she says, placing a hand on her hip. “You and Chris have been at each other’s throats since you moved in together. I’m not surprised you slept with someone else. Don’t you think it’s time you moved on? Everyone saw this coming.”
She has good intentions. At least, that’s what I tell myself as she twists the knife in a little deeper.
“Everyone but me,” I mutter.
“Love makes us blind. Trust me. This is for the best.” Brit hikes the strap of a leather Gucci bag high onto her shoulder, and I cringe to think of how much she spent on it. “I’ll be back, Julie Bean.” Her tone says what her words don’t—be ready, or else.
After she prances out the way she came, I drape my bed with a groan and bury my nose in the pillow that smells like Chris.
I hate that childish nickname, probably because Mom and Brit have a way of making me feel like I’m ten-years-old again. The only time it doesn’t irritate me is when Dad uses it. Then again, he’s the only one in my family who doesn’t go out of his way to push my buttons. Mom and Brit like to railroad me. They are too much alike. Blunt and abrasive. Same dark hair and startling blue eyes. Identical lithe figures with curves that scream fuck me.
The doorbell rings, and I groan again. No doubt it’s Mom. They usually come at me in stages. If Brit is the lightning, then Mom is the thunder. I push off the bed and drag my feet all the way to the front door. The least she can do is barge in like Brit—then I wouldn’t have to leave my bed of desolation. I pull the front door open, and my brain screeches to a halt.
Perry leans forward, bracing both hands on the doorframe. His brown eyes, normally warm with a seductive glint, narrow on me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, retreating a couple of steps. The way he sizes me up is raising the hair on the back of my neck.
“We need to talk.” Letting go of the doorframe, he crosses the threshold into my apartment, and I take a few more steps back. The door slams shut behind him. “I thought we had an understanding, Jules.”
We haven’t spoken of that night, not even once, almost as if we’d come to a silent agreement.
“We…did.”
He brushes his fingers against my cheek, and his knuckles are soft, free of the callouses Chris has from working in construction. Perry has the hands of a man who crunches numbers for a living. “You’re a mess,” he says, and I wonder if he and my sister are reading from the same script.
“Thanks for pointing that out.” I turn away with a scowl and head for the kitchen. Whenever I get nervous, I always fight the need to keep my hands busy, but it’s a battle I’m losing now. I feel him lingering behind me as I open a cupboard. A second later, I close it and move on to the fridge, unsure of what the hell I’m doing.
Avoiding. That’s what I’m doing.
“I’ve been dealing with this shit storm all morning. How the hell did this get out?”
Jumping from the sharp sting of his words, I grip the refrigerator handle and stare at a jar of pickle relish, mustard, and an open package of hot dogs that are going bad. The milk is probably sour as fuck. Forget hair and nails. I need to go grocery shopping.
“I don’t know, Perry.” And I don’t. How am I supposed to know how my boyfriend caught wind of my drunken one-night stand? Between the tears and yelling, I asked Chris, but that only lit his anger on fire. “I was alone, remember?”
Shoving the door shut on the fridge, I whirl and face Perry, and it’s weird how he doesn’t seem so appealing to me anymore. His eyes are dull and boring, and his blond hair has no life to it. He’s good-looking, sure, with defined muscles hiding underneath his suits. But now I question the reasons behind my initial attraction to him. The truth, especially when it crashes into you in the form of self-awareness, is ugly.
I’d thrived off the attention. The desire in his eyes. The way his voice strummed my insides. My relationship with Chris deteriorated long before I fucked up and slept with another man. Even though we’d been on a “break,” it still felt like cheating to me.
Never mind the fact that Perry is married. I can’t even wrap my head around my actions, and I’ve never been so ashamed of myself. New tears sting my eyes, and I lower my gaze to the shitty linoleum floor, toeing a crack that’s been bugging me since Chris and I moved in.
“Jules,” Perry says, his tone softening the slightest bit, as if he senses the eruption of tears on the horizon and is tempted to head for the hills. “I’m just trying to figure out how this happened. Did you run into anyone that night?”
“Just you and your usual crowd.”
Darlene was there, and if I have to take a guess, she springs to mind first.
“I trust them. I’ve known them for years. No way did any of them leak this.” He folds his arms, and the way he stares me down hits hard. He thinks I told someone.
Seriously?
“Tell me you don’t think it was me.”
“If not you, then who else? Tell me who could have opened their big mouth?”
“Darlene, for one!”
He shakes his head, dark eyes resolute. “She’d never hurt Vicky like that.”
“Maybe she’s jealous,” I shoot back, taking a guess.
His silence confirms my suspicion. He fucked Darlene, too. His wife’s best friend. His business partner, for fuck’s sake.
But I’m not much better. I slept with my boss. My fucking boss.
I feel sick. Sick and small as I wonder how I ended up here. Cheating on my boyfriend, sleeping with a married man…I don’t do shit like this!
“You’ve gotta go,” I say, pushing him out of the kitchen and toward the front entrance.
He twists the doorknob, his jaw rigid. “I think it’s best if you resign.”
Of course he does.
“I guess I fucked myself in that hotel room, right?”
With a long-suffering sigh that could rival my mom’s, he steps onto the front stoop. “I didn’t want it to come to this. You’re great at your job. You’ll have a new one in no time. I’ll give you a good recommendation.”
I gape at him, floored by his attitude. By noon today all eleven hundred people in Whiskey Flats will hear of my transgression.
They’ll call me a slut.
The pearl clutchers will stone my reputation to a bloody pulp.
But Perry? Well, he’s a man, and everyone knows how men are. They’ll look the other way when it comes to him, but not me. Hell no. Nobody will dare hire me until long after this scandal simmers down.
“Be realistic,” he says, obviously taking my silence for resistance. “My wife won’t have you working for me.”
“Then I guess you have nothing to worry about. Consider this my resignation.” I slam the door in his face, and a few seconds later my ringtone goes off in the bedroom. The chorus of “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” by R.E.M. filters down the hall.
Great. My mother.
I stomp back to the bedroom, most definitely not feeling fine.
In fact, as that song loops its emotional destruction, Mom’s call going unanswered, I feel the walls close in. My chest grows tight with panic, because even though Chris is gone, his presence is inescapable.
In the apartment we shared for three years. In the town where we grew up together. Suddenly, everything takes on new meaning, and I see memories through the acute haze of pain. I won’t be able to glance at the burger joint down the street without remembering all the times we hung out there, chomping away at the biggest fucking burgers you’ll ever find. And the sight of the old theater where we gorged on cheap movies as teens will slice me open to the bone, leaving me exposed and bleeding.
Until Perry, Chris was my first. My one and only.
How did we lose our way? In the midst of arguments, tears, and too many “breaks” to count, we somehow drifted apart.
My cell falls silent, and I stand frozen as a feeling I’ve never experienced before rises inside me. I know I won’t be able to escape that, either.
For the first time in twenty-two years, I want to runaway.
No, I need to.
I pick up my cell and dial Lesley in Seattle.