Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 93699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 468(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 468(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
I waited in silence as she continued staring. My heart twisted in a mix of sympathy and agony.
“I was remembering something before, but then I…” She looked at me. “I’m so sorry, Tati. What were we talking about?”
“Mr. Perfectly Complicated.”
“Oh, right.” She smiled. “He did so many over-the-top, sweet things for you, and to have that fall apart is utterly tragic.” She fell back onto the couch. “Speaking of which, guess what?”
“You know I hate guessing.”
“I asked Hayden to add a ‘Find My Lost Love’ feature to his dating app. Then I made him promise to make you the first beta tester.”
“You did what?”
“It’s a super early birthday gift!” She squealed like a teenager. “I don’t think it’s fair to go another year without at least finding out where Mr. Perfectly Complicated is. What if he’s single and wondering about what happened to you, too?”
“Please tell me that Hayden doesn’t know anything else.”
“Well, kinda…I also told him how you took a one-hundred-thousand-dollar loan from me and turned it into a multi-million-dollar beauty brand in months. He’s as impressed as I am.”
“Speaking of that loan—” I paused. “I need a lot more time to pay you back.”
“No rush. Just keep my name on the ‘Investors Who Love Me’ page and pay it back when you’re beyond profitable. At the rate you’re going, you’ll be there before you know it.”
“Penelope, look. The truth about my business is…” I stopped talking.
Penelope was snoring, fast asleep.
I sighed and covered her with a blanket, vowing to serve her the truth on another day.
That evening
I flipped the light switch in my condo, but nothing happened.
I flipped it a few more times, and the darkness remained.
Shit.
Using my phone’s light to walk into the kitchen, I eyed the bills I’d become an expert at rotating and half-paying. The one on top, a final notice for the electricity, sported a due date from weeks ago.
Sighing, I opened a cabinet and pulled out candles, setting them on surfaces all over the room. I opened the living room windows to let in the night breeze, and stared at the calendar that hung from my hearth.
An upcoming date was marred with the ugliest words I’d ever written: Eviction process starts today if rent isn’t paid.
I didn’t have a landlord to talk to—only a cold automated call system, and I’d exhausted favors from every person I knew.
Taking deep breaths, I weighed my options.
I could restart my TikTok account and try to go viral. Then again, my previous six months of crafting creative videos three times a day only netted me seventeen followers and comments like “Make $1M in a week fast! Like this comment for a chance.” (I liked every single one of those and never heard back.)
There was the option of begging my bank for a cheaper monthly payment, but they’d already lowered it three times. Any lower and they’d assume I wanted it to be free.
Pushing my coaching services and requesting speaking gigs via skating organizations was a possibility, but those opportunities were few and far between.
Tears welled in my eyes as my latest client’s words played in my mind.
Become a world champion, all to end up coaching like you?
I refused to allow those tears to fall.
Instead, I racked my brain for more options, and as I contemplated four more, my phone rang with an unknown number.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Hey there, sexy,” a familiar deep voice said. “Miss me yet?”
“Huh?”
“It’s me. Dennis. I miss you, and I hope you’re missing me.”
“We haven’t talked in forever, Dennis.” I wasn’t sure why he still had my number. “What do you want?”
“To check on you and see how things are going in your life.”
“Have I somehow stumbled into an episode of All My Ex-boyfriends or something?”
“No.” He laughed. “It is cuffing season, though.”
“What does that mean?”
“Since it’s about to get cold outside, you go through all your contacts to make sure you have someone to cuff under the sheets because you’ll be inside for most of the fall and the winter.”
What the…
“So, are you interested in having me during the fall or the winter?” he asked. “You can’t have me for both.”
I hung up in his face.
I didn’t want to think about the ridiculousness of cuffing season or anything related to my finances for the rest of the night. I needed something to distract me, something that made me feel like my life wasn’t hanging by a thread.
In the spirit of another ex-boyfriend making a guest appearance in my life, I opened my phone’s photo gallery to revisit the only relationship I could never get over.
I unlocked a hidden folder, swiping and staring at the endless pictures Travis sent when we were miles apart, at the screenshots of naughty texts still capable of turning me on.
This slight stumble into the past should’ve been enough for me to fall asleep while dreaming of our sweetest memories, but I didn’t want those.