Life in a Rut, Love not Included (Love Not Included series Book 1) (7 page)

“Yeah, who would have thought? Well I’m glad they’ve replaced me. Wouldn’t want the company stuck in the mud without work being done.” Just as I finish choking out my sentence, I feel Jack’s heat emanating from behind me. He gently brushes his hand against my lower back and hands me my coffee with his other hand.

“Oh my! Sarah, who is this? I didn’t know you had a brother!”

OK, that’s it!

“Hey. Jack.” Jack introduces himself with a head nod, then turns my direction and wraps his arm around my waist and places his body very close to my side. He slowly leans into me and presses a soft kiss to my neck.

Becky is practically drooling. “Oh, well hello there, Jack.”

“Babe, you ready to go?” Jack pulls his head away from my neck and locks eyes with me. For a second I am not quite paying attention because I don’t even realize it’s me he’s talking to.

“Oh yeah. I’m all good. Let’s go. Well Becky, for real, great seeing you. Hope we can make this a reccurring event.” I barely finish my sentence before I start walking towards the door. Jack is right on my heels, still pressing his hand behind my lower back. I toss the door open and try to suck the air into my lungs. I am not looking forward to a breakdown in the middle of a Starbucks parking lot, but with my luck lately it seems inevitable.

“You OK?” Jack asks.

“Oh yeah, just fine,” I say while speed-walking to his truck. We reach the passenger’s side and he steps forward to help boost me up, but I need no help since I have adrenalin pumping through my ears. I pretty much jump into the seat. He shuts my door, walks around and gets in, then starts the truck. He turns towards me. I’m pretty sure he’s assessing how safe it is to speak.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.

I’m not sure what there is to talk about. Somehow it all pours out anyway.

“I think Becky pretty much spilled my beans. Girl has perfect job, perfect boyfriend, and perfect friend. Perfect life. One day girl walks into perfect apartment and catches perfect boyfriend in bed with perfect friend. Girl then proceeds to make an incredible scene at perfect job where she works with perfect boyfriend, then she quits her perfect job. Now perfect girl is not so perfect and is camping out in her parents’ house while waiting for the world to end so she doesn’t have to get back out in it . . . Did you get all of that?”

He is quiet for a moment, and then he says, “Sarah, I’m sorry.”

I raise my hand. “Don’t. Just don’t, OK? I don’t need your sympathy, all right? Just . . . take me home.”

We drive back in silence and all I can do is think about how pathetic I must have looked just now. Here I am judging Jack the whole time of being this big McJerk and look who turns out to be the pathetic one. They replaced me at work. I’m not going to deny that I was stalking the job posting that went up not twenty-four hours after my theatrics, or how the position was filled two days later. Seven years of my life I gave that company and they just fill my position with someone in a seventy-two hour time span. I kind of thought they would look past my outburst. Give me some time and ask if I would return. Possibly threaten to demote me due to my unprofessionalism, at worst. I thought I meant something to that company. Apparently I was just another number to them, making them tons of money. I was easily replaced. Just like that. It hurts to know I wasn’t worth fighting for. In my work nor in my relationship. Steve didn’t bother fighting to keep me. He just let me go. He agreed this was for the best. And Stacey wouldn’t even look at me to fight for our friendship. She obviously chose the latter. And the latter was not me.

I snap out of my misery-induced coma-like state to realize we are parked in my driveway. Jack has been sitting here quietly, assessing me again. I don’t look his way. I open the door and climb out of his truck. I walk with a bit of a hustle towards the house, hoping he will just let me go in and pretend this day never happened. Then, as I reach the door and turn slowly to face him, I notice he is practically touching me, he’s that close. He stands just inside my personal space with his hands resting deep inside his front pockets. Due to our height difference I look up and my eyes lock directly with his lips. I can’t help but remember that soft but luscious kiss he pressed to my neck at Starbucks. Subconsciously, I bring my fingers to my neck, where I can still feel the heat of his mouth against my skin. I lift my eyes to meet his. He stares at me intensely, as if contemplating my next move.

“Hey Jack, thanks for playing hot wingman back there,” I say as nonchalantly as possible. “I really appreciate it. Hopefully it gives Becky something to gossip about for the next week.” What I should be doing is throwing myself at him, not talking.

“Sure,” he says quietly as he looks at me with sadness in his eyes. I give him the goodbye head nod and turn to trek inside. Jack lets me go.

No sadness here. The last thing I need is for anyone to feel sorry for me. I’m a big girl. I can handle this. I’m totally fine, actually. So I don’t know why I make it to my room just in time to shut the door and fall flat on my bed right before the dam of waterworks explodes and sends me drowning in my sorrow.

G
UESSING BY THE SHADOW
coming from my window and the crusted drool sticking to the side of my face, I assume that I have been sleeping for a while. Crying like a five-year-old who’s been denied ice cream can really wear a person out. I sit up and scope out my room. First things first: Search out that coffee. Now I know I am a waste of good looks at this point but a perfectly good latte should not pay the price. I find my neglected cup sitting on a makeshift desk made out of boxes. I sip the liquid goodness, hoping to get bits and pieces of whipped cream (oh yeah, best part) and fail miserably. Then I proceed to exit my Home Shopping Network cave.

I’ve come to the realization that I need to make a list. Don’t people make lists at my age? To-do lists? Bucket lists? Things they want to conquer before they die? On the fast train of public humiliation that I am on, my time has to be nearing soon. Might as well start making some plans before I dispose of my good-looking self into the abyss of death. I head for the kitchen in pursuit of some writing materials. When I enter, I find good ole’ Aunt Raines preparing for happy hour—already.

“Hey there, sweet girl. I thought you were never gonna get up,” Aunt Raines says. I scoop up a pen and some scrap paper out of the junk drawer and proceed to sit at the table next to her makeshift bar. “What are you up to, sweet Sarah?”

“Oh you know, Aunt Raines, just trying to find the meaning of life.”

She scoots closer to me with her shaker. “Well you have come to the right place, dear. Your Uncle Merle used to sit down with me, a full glass in hand, and tell me there were always answers at the bottom of a glass of happiness.”

“Uncle Merle said this?” I state a bit shocked.

“Oh he sure did, sweet girl. Every time I would get into a tiff with life or upset over something silly, he would sit me down, shake me up some happiness and tell me to sit it out while I sip on it.”

“Huh,” I say, trying to ponder this theory and also imagining my Uncle Merle feeding every problem with a glass of stiff vermouth. Did I mention that my uncle was a minister at a church for seventeen years?

“So what was the outcome? Did you find the answers you were looking for?”

“Well most of the time, no. But I did find a really good buzz and in the end it didn’t matter what I was up in a rut about, because after a few sips to warm my blood I would relax and realize that life is what you make of it. If you take it too seriously you just end up injuring your own self.”

Why do I not spend more time with my Aunt Raines? Her words are so simple but so true. Why was I taking everything that went wrong so hard? Why do I feel like the decisions that other people make around me or for me define who I am? I am not the cheater or the betrayer. I’m the victim. But who wants to be the victim either? I just want to be me again. I want to be happy about something. Accomplishments that I earned. I want to look forward and not to my past. I want my past to be just that—my past.

As I finish my first martini, I begin to write out my bucket list. After I finish my third one though, I am scribbling. “Aunt Raines, what would you do if you were in my position?”

“Well what position are you in, babycakes?”

It takes me just a second to think of exactly how to word it. “My life is in a rut right now and I don’t know how to get out of it.” Because it feels like I do but in a way I don’t. I feel like if I knew what to do, I would have done it by now.

“Well sweet Sarah, you need to think about what you find to be so stuck. People have life altering things happen to them all the time. Some turn out to be for the better. Maybe if you give it time you will see it that way.”

I can’t say I feel too confident with this advice, but I guess I’ll take it. It beats my own advice to myself, and that is to stick my head in the toilet and flush in hopes of a quick and easy death by drowning.

“Thanks, Aunt Raines. I feel better.”

“No problem, sweet girl. Now, how about another glass of happiness?”

A genuine smile crosses my face for the first time in ages as I offer her my glass. “Fill her up.”

N
OW, I AM NOT
sure how much happiness Uncle Merle would offer Aunt Raines, but four glasses of pure happiness later and I am as warm as could be on a summer day wrapped up in the arms of a hot construction worker. Or whomever. Construction worker doesn’t mean anything or anyone specifically. What is it with me and hitting my four-drink limit before my mind and my libido turn straight down McJack-me-up Lane? I just keep finding myself, when not thinking about pathetic topics, a.k.a. my life, gravitating towards him. His smile. The way he lavished my mouth in the garage. The way he caressed my back at the coffee house. His sexy mouth pressed against my neck. The way he gazed at me on the front step with that look of concern and thoughtfulness. I wonder what it would be like to kiss that concern right off his mouth. How he would taste, again. His arms wrapped around my waist while I hold on tighter to his strong arms, and . . .

“Hey . . .”

Huh?

Swimming out of the gutter—or out of the bottom of my martini—I begin to refocus on the large object in front of me.

“You’re looking better than earlier today,” he says. I was looking bad before? Oh yeah: Insert coffee house disaster. Good of him to remember that.

“Yeah. Sorry about that. Things are actually looking up now,” I state, slurring a bit into my glass.

“I can see that. And how is that so?” he asks.

“Aunt Raines over here has suggested that all of the answers are at the bottom of this bottle of vermouth. We’re making martinis.” I turn to Aunt Raines and tilt my martini glass in a salute. As I start to giggle, Aunt Raines begins to stand.

“Well now,” Aunt Raines says, “I think it’s time for me to wrap it up. I have all the answers I need. I’m going to see what your mamma is up to. I’ll just leave you two kids alone.” She sets down her glass and turns to me while winking, then sees herself out of the kitchen. What a bad wingman. Leaving me to fend for myself.

“Do you mind if I sit?”

Sure, in my lap.
“Nope.”

“What’s this?” he asks, grabbing at the rough draft of my bucket list. I half attempt to swat it out of his hands because A) I hardly even remember what it says, but I fail because B) It takes too much effort. I’m lacking effort nowadays. I don’t even think I like vermouth.

“So, is this some sort of list?” he asks with a hint of humor in his tone.

“You can say that. I figure it’s about time I wake up and get out of my parents’ house. I’ve been here for almost four months now, ya know?”
Did I just admit that?

Kill me now.

“So what’s stopping you?” he says.
Man, this guy’s good.

“Nothing is stopping me. I’m still trying to figure things out. Where my place is. Maybe I don’t want to go back to a fancy firm with fancy people and fancy things,” I say defensively, more to myself than to Jack.

Maybe that life was never meant for me in the first place. When I got my degree in Marketing, I wanted to build ads and create powerful logos that stuck with people, that made a difference. I wanted to draw architecture and create billboard ads. I wanted to feel good about a product I was selling and feel honest about the message I was sending across. I felt that way in the beginning of Hamilton Corp. All the fresh faces and challenging projects. I would complete one to jump right into another, knowing that the drive and competition were just part of the thrill. But in the end, it was never fulfilling. I was never able to create an ad and feel homely about it. In the end it was all about selling the client and locking in the highest bidder.