I shake my head and get up to slip out of my dress when my phone beeps from the bed. I pick it up, not knowing that it will change the course of my life. I pick it up, not expecting that at that moment, my whole life is going to change. I pick it up innocently. The only thing going through my mind is me walking down the aisle. I pick it up with a smile on my face when I see it's from Joseph, and it's an email. My finger hovers over it as I press the notification to open it, and just like that, my house of cards comes falling down!
Chapter 4
Ace
"Aren't you going to change out of your suit?" I ask Joseph when I walk down the steps to the living room. "You were bitching in the car that you felt suffocated." We got home from the wedding rehearsal about thirty minutes ago. The first thing I did was walk upstairs to my bedroom and put on my gym shorts and a T-shirt. I thought he was going to do the same, but now that I think about it, I didn't see him bring in his bag.
"Yeah, in a bit," Joseph says, looking up from his phone. He is in the middle of the couch, his fingers flying, going a million miles a minute. The television is on over the fireplace, playing the highlights of all the baseball games that are going on right now.
"Beer or whiskey?" I ask, and he barely looks up at me.
"Whatever you want to have," he mumbles, and I walk into the kitchen right off the family room. When I went looking for houses, I knew that I wanted to buy a house where I could start a family. The kitchen area is what sold me on the whole house. There is a massive island in the middle with stools all around it that faces the fridge and stove, and I can just see everyone coming together in this spot.
Pulling open the double-door stainless-steel fridge, I see that my cleaning lady made sure that it's stocked for the weekend. I see the prepared meals on the shelves with fruit right next to it.
I grab two bottles of beer from the door. Even though the house has an amazing kitchen, I've cooked in it maybe twice in over a year. I open two drawers before I finally find the bottle opener, and I have to laugh at myself and make a mental note that I'm going to cook for myself at least twice a week starting next week. Or at least get to know what is in the drawers and in the cabinets.
"Here you go." I walk out of the kitchen toward the family room with two bottles of beer in my hand. I sit next to him on the long L-shaped big comfy couch and hold out my hand, offering Joseph one of the beers. I see that he's still on his phone, his eyebrows pinched together as his fingers still go. "What are you doing?" I take a pull from my beer as he slouches down on the couch with his cell phone in his hand. He presses the send button and finally looks over at me.
"Just sent out a last-minute email before I leave for seven days on my honeymoon." He reaches out for his beer while he puts the phone down on his chest once he goes back to his original position.
"Always grinding." I smile at him, and he just laughs.
"Well, I do have you to thank for this job," he says, holding up his beer to me. I lean over and click the neck of my beer to his. He graduated a year after me in finance. He had no direction to where he wanted to go. I invited him to come and stay with me for a couple of weeks to see if he could get a job at the local bank since I knew the branch manager. He was hired a week after he moved here. He is trying to build his client portfolio to start his own financial planning business.
"Anything for you," I say, taking a pull of my beer. Joseph and I have been best friends since we were in elementary school. Always in the same sports. Always on the same team. He was more of a brother to me than a friend. There is nothing that I wouldn't do for him. Always attached at the hip until college. We both applied to the same college, but he didn't get in, so we went our separate ways. Luckily, we were always in touch with each other.
"I thought I would be more advanced in my job, that's for sure." He takes a pull of his beer. It is coming to him slower than he wants it to come, which irritates him. He never did have patience.