"I'll say it again because it's worth repeating: follow your heart and surround yourself with the right people."
"Even when the right people are two men who you are both very much in love with?" I interject.
"It's like the story of the crab bucket. When you throw a crab into a bucket with other crabs, it's never able to climb back out—not because the bucket is too deep, or too slippery. No, it's never able to climb out because it gets tangled up with the other crabs—their claws and pinchers holding each other back. The same lesson works with people. The wrong people drag you down. The right people help you soar. If I can convince you to follow your heart and to not make the same mistakes I have in my life, it would make me rest easy—like atoning for my sins."
I watch as a single tear slips from his eye. He quickly brushes it away, and for the first time all week, I feel a sense of clarity. I look at my watch. It is now almost noon. Shit.
I look at Karl. He smiles at me and all of a sudden I no longer see a man I need to seek revenge on to vindicate my dad. I see a mentor that despite all the disrespect I’ve shown him thinking I’ve been a strong woman, is still supporting me and helping me.
I smile at Karl and take a step over to hug him. He hugs me back. We stay for a long moment, until I pull back and look at him.
“Karl,” I say, for the first time in my life not sure of my words. “I’m so sorry. For everything. The way I behaved…”
He doesn’t let me finish. Instead, he smiles at me.
“You don’t need to apologize, Julianna,” he says and I feel embarrassed all of a sudden at how big he is. “Not for anything I don’t kick my own stupid ass over.”
I’m about to tell him that he’s wrong. That I’ve been wrong.
But he understands that.
Instead he tells me something different.
“Go,” he says.
I nod my head. Clarity.
I need to find Colt and Ethan.
22
Colt
Jesus Christ, what a fucking week.
Actually, what a fucking month.
If I could go back in time and try to redo anything in my life, it would have to be this month. There's not much else in my life I want a do-over on, but this has got to be one of the major periods.
Although, I mean, what the fuck would I do differently?
If give
n the chance, I sure as hell would get naked and engage in whatever it was that Julianna, Ethan, and I did. I'd fuck her again for sure. Ethan and me? I have no fucking regrets.
Seriously. Despite the constant fucking media chatter, I wouldn't undo any of those actions.
What would I undo?
I look out the window of my condo on the Upper East Side.
I know what you're going to fucking say, okay. Mr. Bad Boy of the NFL lives in the buttoned down Park Avenue condo on 70th Street. What the fuck, right? Why aren't I living like Julianna, at the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle, where Beyonce and Jay-Z live. Why am I living amongst old heiresses and widows?
I'd tell you to shut the fuck up if you asked me that two months ago.
But not anymore.
And now you're asking why I'm not going to ask you to shut the fuck up?