You and Me and Us - Alison Hammer

Chapter One

Alexis

It’s dark outside by the time I finally look up from my computer—so much for being home early. I check my phone to see just how late it is: 11:10. So close to the lucky minute I’ve been wishing on since I was old enough to tell time. I wait for it, keeping my unblinking eyes on the screen until it hits 11:11.

Even though it’s silly to waste a wish on something I get to do every night, I wish I were home in bed with Tommy, not sitting in the ergonomic chair designed to be so comfortable that I forget I’m going on fourteen hours at my desk. I love my job, I remind myself.

My eyes find Tommy’s smiling face in the silver frame on my cluttered desk, his arms wrapped around our daughter at her eighth-grade graduation last summer. I linger on CeCe’s face, a younger version of my own, partially hidden by the thick black glasses she insists are “totally on-trend.” I missed seeing her cross the stage in her cap and gown by minutes thanks to a creative presentation that ran late, but I made it in time to take the picture.

An incoming email dings and my focus shifts back to my computer like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Another Google Alert, their frequency increasing at the speed of Monica’s fame, which unfortunately has been gaining momentum in the past year.

Setting up a Google Alert for Tommy’s ex-wife wasn’t exactly my proudest moment, but I couldn’t know she was out there and not know what she was up to. With CeCe’s acting obsession, it’s a small miracle she hasn’t figured out that it isn’t a coincidence the semifamous actress shares her last name.

The information is out there if she’d ever google it. Or asked. But CeCe would never think to ask if either of us had been married before. The only conversation about marriage in our house is centered around the fact that her dad and I never took that “till death do us part” step.

I’m the one who’s resisted all these years; we’d be an old married couple by now if it were up to Tommy. But he didn’t grow up in a house like mine, with parents that were married in name alone. There was no love between them, and that was not the kind of relationship I wanted to model ours after.

I glance back at the email and consider deleting it unread, but curiosity gets the best of me. Lately the alerts have been full of sightings around L.A., pictures of Monica on the arm of a dozen different celebrity bachelors. I keep hoping one of them will stick so she can take someone else’s name, but no such luck yet. I open the email to see what the devil is up to now.

“Netflix’s The Seasiders adds Monica Whistler to its cast.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I accidentally say out loud.

Becky, my best friend and business partner, peers over the giant monitor where she’s making the fourth round of revisions to an ad for Dox Pharmacy, our biggest client. “What’s up, buttercup?”

“Nothing,” I mutter, too tired to explain that not only did Monica land another big role, but she’ll be filming all summer in Destin, Florida.

Of all the beaches in all the world, Destin is our beach. It’s where Tommy grew up, where he and I first met as kids, spending every summer together until the year I turned twelve and stopped going to my grandmother’s beach house. It’s where we reconnected twenty years later, fell in love, and had the oops that turned into CeCe. We still go down there as often as we can, just not as often as Tommy would like.

It’s a small miracle we don’t have a trip planned this summer—CeCe’s too excited about a theater camp here in Atlanta, and I pretty much had to say goodbye to that much time off when I opened my own ad agency three years ago. But still. I cringe at the thought of Monica going back to the beach where she left Tommy with a broken heart and a condo full of modern furniture that was as hideous as it was uncomfortable.

I stand to stretch and start gathering my things. Now that my concentration has been broken, I might as well get some sleep.

“You going home?” Becky asks, running a hand through her signature pink hair. She looks as tired as I feel.

“Yeah, I should have left hours ago—Tommy had something

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