Keeping Secrets in Seattle - By Brooke Moss Page 0,55
someone like this.”
Hannah grimaced. “I would be upset if my best friend were marrying her, too. She’s a gold digger. Big time.”
“That’s just it. Why is she going after Gabe?” I rubbed my eyes. “I mean, I guess his parents make a decent living. And Missy and Darcy and her husband make good money, too.”
Kim looked at me. “Gabe’s bringing in bank for someone our age.”
Hannah refilled our coffee cups. “If it were me, which, of course, it’s not…I would warn him. Anyone who is marrying Alicia Long probably doesn’t have a clue what he’s getting himself into.”
We finished our lunch, thanked Hannah, and set off to find Dakota Avenue. We drove up the street slowly until we’d finally spotted the name “Long” on a mailbox. An older redheaded woman, every bit as beautiful as Alicia, was loading groceries out of a dented sedan parked at the curb of a faded yellow house, which was in desperate need of some masonry work on the front porch.
“That’s enough. Let’s go home,” I told the girls after watching Joyce Long tromping back and forth with bags for a few minutes.
We found the highway again easily and headed north toward home. There was a part of me that wanted to be wrong about Alicia. I couldn’t bear the thought of Gabe taking the vows with someone so vile and self-obsessed that she would make up an entire existence just to impress people.
The brick in my gut melted into a bubbling cauldron of anger. Gabe needed to know the truth about Alicia, and it was my job to tell him. I’d loved him for damn near twenty years; I wasn’t about to let him throw his life away now.
“You okay?” Kim called from the front seat.
I looked at her and shrugged weakly. “I just need to talk to Gabe.”
Chapter Fourteen
September 16, 2003
Flashes of those ugly twenty minutes haunt me. While I have breakfast with Curtis before he leaves for work. While my mother is on the phone with her clients. While I watch for Gabe to walk past my house on his way home from school. I start to shake. My knees buckle, and I break out in a cold sweat. My mom and Curtis would stay up all night, arguing about whether or not I should see a shrink. That pisses me off. I don’t need one. I need my life back. I need to sleep a full night without waking up screaming. Hell, maybe I do need a shrink…
Gabe let all of my calls go to voice mail for a full week after the almost-kiss at his apartment.
Beep.
“Hi, it’s me. Gimme a call back. Later.”
Beep.
“Hi, it’s Violet. Hey, I need to talk to you. Call me.”
Beep.
“Me again. I need to speak to you. Gimme a call as soon as you get this message.”
Beep.
“It’s me. Call me, all right?”
Beep.
“Dude. You never ignore my calls. Call me back; it’s important.”
Beep.
“Call me back. There’s been a terrible accident. Please…”
Beep.
“Okay, okay, there was no accident. But I really do need you to call me. It’s important.”
Beep.
“Seriously. Call me back. I’m not calling about what you think I’m calling about, okay? That almost-kiss in your kitchen is already forgotten. So…call me back. Soon.”
Beep.
“You suck. You suck suck, suck, and then suck some more.”
Frankly put, by the time seven days passed, I was spitting fire. The fact that we almost kissed shouldn’t have shaken him up. It wasn’t like Gabe to be so rattled by something like that. He’d kissed more than his fair share of women over the years.
My frustration with him was starting to leak into other aspects of my life. Lizzy, my boss at The Funky Fox, sent me home early when I mistakenly gave a client eggplant lowlights instead of royal blue. When I tried to explain my way out of the mistake, Lizzy had just patted my head. “Go home and cry it out, kiddo. No man is worth this much thought.”
Kim and Betsy tried to cheer me up as best they could, but no amount of pedicures and reality TV could perk me up. It was impossible for me to forget everything that was weighing on my mind: Gabe’s fast approaching wedding; the fact that I would soon be seeing Cameron Hakes again; that delicious almost-kiss in Gabe’s kitchen; my relationship with Landon that seemed to be on hyperspeed; and, of course, all of Alicia’s lies and deceit. I was completely overwhelmed.
Even the ever-cheerful Landon took notice of my darkening mood as