Hiring Mr. Darcy - Valerie Bowman Page 0,84
thought about all the erasing I would have to do in my planner if Harrison and I broke up. Hell, I’d probably have to throw it out and get a new one. Sob.
By the time I came back into the bedroom wearing black yoga pants and a gray T-shirt, Jeremy was already in navy boxers and a white T-shirt. He held up a bottle of red wine. “Dinner?”
I grinned at him. He really was great. “Looks delicious.”
He poured two glasses and handed me one while I sat on the end of his bed. I took a halfhearted sip.
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I think I am. At least, I know I will be. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“You mean being cheated on? Like you told me last night?”
“Yep, and I know I should be sad and mad about my boyfriend kissing an actress, but I’m only pissed that I screwed up the competition.”
The hint of a smile played across Jeremy’s face. “We’re not out of it yet. Where’s that competitive spirit of yours?”
I stood and made my way over to the window, where I pushed back the curtains and peered out to see Harrison and Lacey, their arms behind each other’s backs, smiling for the ring of cameras that surrounded them as if they were on a red carpet. “It’s been trampled to death by the paparazzi.” I let the curtains fall back into place and settled onto my little bed, my wine glass still clutched in my hand.
Jeremy sat on the side of my bed near my feet. I was wearing socks but I could no longer care about whether he was horrified by my hooves. Great, apathy. How attractive.
I laid back and stared at the ceiling, the wine glass resting on my belly. “Why is life so hard?”
Jeremy lay back next to me and did the same thing. “A question for the ages.”
“Seriously, why?” I said with a sigh.
“Life is hard,” he said. “But it’s a hell of a lot easier when you’re doing what you love. I can tell you that.”
I propped myself up on an elbow and took a sip of wine, facing Jeremy. “Is that why you quit being an engineer?”
He continued to look at the ceiling. “That’s exactly why I quit.”
“Why did you major in it to begin with?” I took another sip of wine. Wine usually put me to sleep, but sleep sounded good to me right now. Quiet, restful sleep where the mess my life had become would just go away for a few hours.
Jeremy propped himself up on his elbow too and faced me. We were less than a foot apart. “I majored in engineering because I thought it would earn me a good living. And it did. The only problem was, it turns out a living without happiness isn’t a good living after all.”
I nodded. “I thought I would love being a history professor.”
“Do you?” he prompted, taking a sip of his wine.
“There are parts of it I love,” I admitted.
“But you’d rather be writing novels?” he prompted.
“I don’t know. I think so. But what if I try it and hate it?”
He pressed his lips together. “There are no guarantees in this life, Meg Knightley. There are only gut feelings. No one ever promised that following your dreams would be easy.”
“Yeah,” I said solemnly, taking another sip of wine. “You’re right. But I don’t do well with failure.”
His brows shot up. “Is that why you’ve never tried? You’re afraid to fail?”
I sighed and stared at my wine glass. “Ellie would tell you that’s exactly why I’ve never tried. I’ve spent most of my life being a super-organized planner with every step mapped out. Writing a novel is messy. I can’t control what will happen there.”
“Yeah, about that,” Jeremy said. “What made you such a control freak anyway?”
I groaned. “Do you want my pat answer or the deep one that I paid a psychologist thousands of dollars to tell me?”
His lips quirked into a smile. “The expensive one, please.”
I brought my wine glass up to my nose as if I could hide behind it. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but here goes.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t know if you know this, but my dad had...has a gambling problem.”
“Yeah.” Jeremy nodded. “Luke’s mentioned it.”
That’s right. Jeremy had already met my kooky parents. Both of them.
“Well, growing up getting letters threatening eviction because our rent wasn’t paid wasn’t exactly the easiest thing on a kid.