Taking the Heat (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 3)

Veronica pushed her plate toward Isabelle. “Go ahead, but that’s not what I meant. I need help with a letter.”

“For your column?” Lauren gasped. “Oh, my God, I’ve always wanted to help with your column. Is it a question about being a sexy middle-aged librarian? Because I know all about that.”

Veronica laughed. “No.”

Isabelle held her fork up. “Hot chick on the run from the feds?”

“No! I just... Well, here’s the thing. A woman wrote to say she got a job offer in a big city, and she wants to go. It’s her dream life. But she’s engaged to a man here in Jackson who wouldn’t be willing to leave, and he doesn’t know about the offer. She wants to know if she should chase her dreams or stay here and marry the man she loves.”

Lauren nodded. “So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is—” Veronica cleared her throat “—I want to tell her to stay. I want to tell her that following her dreams is a terrible idea.”

They both frowned at her. “Why?” Isabelle asked.

Here it was. The truth. Her ears buzzed with anxiety. “Because,” she said, “I followed my dreams and it ruined my life. That’s what I want to tell her, and I have no idea if it’s the right answer or not.”

Her friends stared at her. Veronica stared back. Or tried to. But her gaze flicked back and forth between the two women, then finally dropped to the table. They looked too shocked. And probably a little disappointed.

“What do you mean,” Isabelle started, “that it ruined your life?”

She slumped. She’d never told them any of this. As far as they knew, she’d spent a few years living it up in New York and then she’d moved back here to work at her hometown paper. “I was a complete failure in New York,” she admitted. “I thought that my life was going to be there, and the truth is I was miserable. It took me four years to admit defeat and move back here.”

“But that’s not defeat,” Lauren said. “You got some experience—now you have a job you’re great at here in Jackson.”

Veronica nodded, but it wasn’t true, and eventually her nod switched direction and she was shaking her head. “I’d been planning to make my life in New York City since I was a little girl. It was all I worked for. I never even considered having a serious boyfriend, because I didn’t want to end up in the position that this woman is in. I thought...”

She took a deep breath. “I never felt like I fit in here. Not with my family. Not in school. And I thought I’d fit in in New York. That people would get me there. But it was lonely and scary and isolating. I hated it. I moved back home, and I now live in a building that my dad owns and I work at a job that my dad got me. And the truth is that people write to me with their problems, but I’ve never even been able to figure out my own.”

She took another deep breath. Gulped in air. When she looked up again, both of her friends were still staring at her. She shouldn’t have told them.

“Ladies,” the cute waiter said from behind her. “Care to take a look at the dessert menu?”

“Can I get a cosmo?” Veronica said too loudly.

Lauren held up a hand. “Leave the dessert menus, please.”

He passed the menus out, and then they were alone again, both women watching her. She hoped the bartender wasn’t busy. She hoped the waiter would reappear within seconds.

Isabelle suddenly leaned forward and took Veronica’s hand. “Life is never what you plan for it to be,” she said. “You know that, right?”

Veronica shrugged.

Isabelle squeezed her hand. “I was going to be a doctor. I was engaged to the man of my dreams. I’d never set one foot out of place my whole life. I had everything planned. And then I lost it all. I failed at family and love and school and a career. I stole someone’s Social Security number and lived under an assumed identity and hid in the mountains for fifteen years. And last year I almost ran again. I had a fucking bag full of cash and I was ready to disappear. So don’t tell me how much you screwed things up, V. I almost went to prison.”

Lauren was nodding. “Yeah. I actually did everything I planned to do. School, career, marriage, a kid. And I was terrible at it. I hated being a wife. I was the mom who always forgot to send lunch money. My version of fleeing New York and returning home was getting a divorce and starting over again. You’re not a failure, Veronica. The things you’ve tried, the things you’ve failed at, the dreams you worked toward, all of that is what makes you good at what you do now.”

Veronica frowned. “I don’t see how that can be. Maybe if I’d gone through all that and had it figured out now...”

Lauren rolled her eyes. “You’re doing fine.”

“I’m not! I’m just...pretending.”

“Pretending what?” Lauren pressed.

She was going to tell them. She even wanted to. But how could they understand? They’d both been having sex for decades. They’d both had normal relationships. Hell, Isabelle had even managed to take lovers while she was hiding from the feds in a mountain cabin. Veronica couldn’t manage to get laid when she was living in the middle of a city of eight million.

“Just everything,” she finally said.