“Holly!” she squealed as soon as she picked up. “I miss you!”
I laughed. “I miss you too, Rach.” The background was noisy but I couldn’t place any of the sounds. “Where are you?”
“Roller skating rink,” she answered as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
I laughed. “On a Wednesday afternoon?”
“It’s a team building thing. We closed the office early and all came down here for the afternoon. We have two new hygienists on staff and a new receptionist. Dr. Waverly doesn’t know why we keep going through new staff. He thinks a monthly outing will help with turnover.” She scoffed. “Really, he’d get a lot farther dumping the money from these things into his employees’ bank accounts. But hey, what do I know?”
Rachel worked at an upscale dental office, right on the beach. While business was booming, the dentist who ran the place didn’t seem to realize that having a practically ocean-side clinic required that the staff made enough money to afford to live in or around Newport Beach.
“But enough about work drama. How’s life? I need to get up there and see you again soon. When are we going to start scoping out bridal shops? I can’t wait to see you try on some wedding dresses!”
I smiled. “Soon. I promise! You remember the accounting job I was telling you about?”
“The one working for the hot rich dude?”
“I’m pretty sure those weren’t my exact words, but yes.”
“You said he was absurdly good-looking, which is code for he’s hot as fuck, but I have a fiancé.”
I burst out laughing and missed Rachel all over again. Back when I’d lived in Orange County, we were inseparable, spending more nights together than apart during the week, despite California’s beastly traffic and the half an hour distance between us. She’d flown over to Germany once while Jack and I were there and had driven to Holiday Cove a couple of times since our return but it just wasn’t the same.
“Well? Am I right?”
“More or less. But that’s not the important thing. I got the job offer just a few minutes ago.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thanks. I’ll go in tomorrow to do the paperwork and start sometime next week. I know it’s not exactly what I wanted but there are a lot of perks too. First of all, the salary is off the charts. A lot more than I was making, even when I was back in Irvine. Plus, there is a benefits package and something about a company retreat in Tahiti.”
“Whoa! My girl’s in the major leagues!”
“Second, with the security of my job nailed down, Jack can figure out what the hell it is that he wants to do.”
“What do you mean by that? He’s not happy at the museum with his friend?”
I rolled my eyes at how she said “friend” instead of Aaron. The two of them had had a brief dalliance that hadn’t ended the way Rachel wanted it to. “I guess not,” I answered with a heavy sigh. “He dropped that bombshell on me last week. But now that I’ll have this killer job, he can quit and figure out what it is he really wants to do now that he’s not stuffed to the gills with navy stuff.”
“You think he wants to reenlist?”
“I don’t know,” I said softly. “God, I hope not. He could sign a new contract, go back on active duty, and everything would change. He’s told me that isn’t what he wants to do. I think originally he thought he’d be a career guy, but during our time in Germany decided that the reserve life wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. I just wonder if…” I let my words trail off, having not dared to say them out loud before.
“If?”
Leave it to Rachel to drag them out of me.
“If I talked him into the reserves and now he’s resentful.”
There. It was out in the open. Ugly and full of unpleasant implications. If I talked him into leaving his active duty, high flying life, was his recent attitude change somehow my fault? If he resented the decision, that would mean that somewhere, deeply buried, he resented me too.
“Oh, come on,” Rachel said dismissively. “He’s a grown ass man, Holly. He makes his own choices. Besides, wasn’t it his idea to buy the house in Holiday Cove? Why would he have insisted on that if he was looking to go back to active duty? It doesn’t make any sense.”
I sighed. She was right, but there were other parts of the story she didn’t know. She didn’t know about the arguments, the distance, the fact that Jack straight-up refused to set a wedding date. Everything about our relationship was mixed up, tangled emotions and conversations. We went from frosty and distant to having the hottest sex of our lives together. Even this morning, he’d woken me with a kiss and a cup of coffee and then vanished before I even finished putting in my contact lenses.