Riding His Longboard - Sienna Blake Page 0,54

seconds later.

“Babe, what’s wrong?” Rachel asked.

I poured out the whole story and my confusion on how Joel had found out about it, how he had yelled at me, and how I’d slapped him.

“And now I’m stranded with no money in a foreign country with no way home,” I tried to say, but it was mostly hiccupping and crying by that point.

“You’re at the airport, right?” Rachel asked.

“Uh-huh.” Hiccup.

“Wait a second…okay, can you get to a flight that takes off ninety minutes from now?”

“Uh-huh, but I can’t pay for it.”

“I can,” she said, and I could hear her typing on her laptop. “And…you’re booked. I just emailed you your confirmation number. It should be on your phone.”

“Rachel, no! You can’t afford it either!” I protested.

“I just got a paycheck,” she said. “Pay me back when you can. You just focus on getting home. No need to read the article right now.”

It turned out the flight was in a different terminal and it took me a while to get through security. There was an entertainment network playing on a TV screen at my gate and the top story was Joel and his quest to adopt Jackson. They ran with shirtless photos of Joel on the beach and even a few videos of him out on the town with Miranda. Then they showed his terrible runs on the surfboard from earlier today. The TV was on mute but the banner at the bottom said, “Surfer Playboy Turned Daddy Wannabe Tanks at Int’l Competition.” They must have ripped the story straight from the magazine.

As I stood in line to board, I thought about my conversation with Rachel. It hadn’t hit me when she said it on the phone, but it sounded like she had read the article too and knew it must be awful if she told me not to read it.

I did a quick search of “Joel Slater baby” on my phone as the flight attendants were giving their safety instructions and an article in a competing magazine popped up. I only got through the first half of it when the flight attendant said that we would have to put our phones on airplane mode. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to finish that article since it had ended my relationship with Joel…and Jackson. The thought of never seeing Jackson again sent another tear rolling down my face.

I didn’t sleep on this flight either. The man on my left was about three inches too wide for his seat and oozed over onto mine. The man on my left was skinny but way too chatty. The only way I shut him up was to cry, which I did for the entire flight home.

* * *

My first stop when I got home was Joel’s house. I punched in the code to the front door and walked down the hall to my room. My old room. I mean, Joel’s guest bedroom. I didn’t have any more room in my one suitcase, so I got some trash bags from the kitchen and shoved my clothes and bathroom items in there and then dragged them behind me to my car.

The only trace I left that I had ever been there was that one photo I took of Jackson and Joel that I’d framed and put in the living room. The only part of me in the photo was my shadow cast on the floorboards of the back deck as the sun set behind me. That’s how I felt, like a shadow that had never really been there at all.

I had told my mum I would be away for another day, so I spent that night alone crying and eating ice cream. Rachel texted and said she wanted to come over and talk. I said I just couldn’t handle seeing anyone right now and told her we could meet the next night.

By morning, I was a little bit better. I had at least run out of ice cream. I managed to make myself presentable enough to go to the hospital and see Mum, making sure my mascara was waterproof in case I slipped and started bawling again.

I plastered what I thought was a reasonable smile in place and walked into my mother’s room but broke down when she immediately asked, “Oh honey, what on earth is wrong?” Ever since she had gotten sick the year before, I had shielded her from even minor bad news. I had had no plans to share my troubles