The Price of Inertia (The Seven Sins #4) - Lily Zante Page 0,98
I’m trying to gauge how long we have, and he’s being vague.
“It means I need more time.”
“How much time?”
“Why the need to know?” he asks.
“So that I know how long it might be before I have to start looking elsewhere.” I am sort of looking elsewhere, but nothing promising has turned up. The job market is as stagnant as a dead lake. Hopefully the meeting with Danny will prove fruitful.
Ward seems irritated by my questioning. “I can’t give you a time limit. It’s not that simple.”
“That doesn’t help me.” I wish he would look at me with longing. Why can’t he?
“You sound anxious to leave. Are you?”
I fold my arms and scratch my nose for good measure, trying to act all casual—which is hard because casual is something I don’t feel about him and me. “No.”
“Then what’s up?”
This stops me. His voice is soft again, his gaze softens too. It’s almost as if I have the old Ward back. The good old Ward. “You haven’t talked about your word count,” I say, curious to know what he’ll answer.
“We were done with talking about word counts,” he says slowly. “You made that clear to me the other night.”
“I’m glad you’ve taken it on board.” I’m not glad but I’m in danger of being as clingy and as desperate as I was with Dale. The first time I found out he cheated on me, I accepted his story of a drunken encounter with a woman at work who liked him. Stupidly, I didn’t heed the warning, and I took him back.
“I got the message.” Ward gets up to leave even though his plate isn’t completely empty. It’s obvious that he’s fed up and eager to get away, because this man has a good appetite and never leaves his plate empty.
“Good.” I toss the word at him as he walks away.
“Yeah, good.”
A visit to Maplewood to see my mon soon buoys up my spirits. She’s back to her normal self again. Today she was my real mom, and she didn’t lapse in and out of remembering. I cherished every second we shared. We talked about my dad, and our family vacations, birthdays, and memorable moments.
And then she asked me about Dale and I almost blurted out that we’d split and how could she forget?
Until I remembered that I hadn’t told her.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t any of it. Me losing my job, or Dale cheating on me and fathering someone else’s child, or me getting evicted.
It hit me then, like a wrecking ball to my heart, that the person I had looked up to and gone to all through my life for wisdom and guidance, was the woman I could no longer go to with my problems.
With my circle of loved ones shrinking, I feel increasingly isolated and lost.
“We’re good, Mom,” I tell her.
“That boy ought to put a ring on your finger,” she says. Instead, I hold her hand and squeeze it and smile through the pain of what I know. I spend the day with her, helping her to eat, and talking about the past. Being around Ward, on a bad day, is like walking through a bombed out site, trying to miss the debris and broken stones and splintered glass. Being with my mom allows me to smell the roses and take in breathfuls of fresh air.
However, the day that had started off so well, doesn’t end so well as I face my new normal. Desperate for friends, connection and belonging, I go over to Jamie’s and break down. I burst into tears as soon as he opens the door, and fall into his arms.
He holds me and cradles my weary body against his chest. He gets out the best medicine: a bottle of wine and chocolates, and we spend the evening on the couch. I tell him everything that was hurting, but I leave out everything about Ward.
I stay over that night and sleep on the couch even though Jamie insists I could have his bed, but I’m not going to put my good friend out like that.
My weekend ends up being wonderful. Like the good old days. We wake up late, have brunch and laze around. Jamie reminds me of all the good things I used to have when I had a life, an apartment, a job and a boyfriend.
I don’t want to return to the mansion. I don’t want to see Ward. I don’t want to get ensnared again into his sticky web. Most of all I don’t