Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99356 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 397(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
“You know, Lin told me about a job here in town.”
“Lin? Am I supposed to know who that is?”
“She’s a Fairhope local. But she has been working for Harper at The Spot for a while now and she just accepted this job in graphic design for the people over there.”
Stone tower was big enough that all I had to do was nod my head in the direction and Steph could see where I was talking about.
“You’re going to leave Manhattan? Like, actually do it? I know you’ve talked about it, but I didn’t think you were serious.”
“I think it would be the best thing for me. I was trying to decide what to do, and I was going to make my decision once I told Dean how I felt. If he wanted to be with me, I thought maybe I’d stay in Manhattan. Maybe I’d even ask him if he was willing to follow me out here for the job. But now? Now I think I need a fresh start. Just get away from the city all together and try life out here. I mean, it’s nice, right?”
“It’s really nice.” Steph looked out over the scenery with a distant smile. “I’ll miss you, though. Small towns aren’t for me, but I’ll come visit as much as I can.”
“I know you will,” I said. “I’ll come visit, too.”
I hadn’t really resolved anything, but I admittedly felt better after talking to her. Somewhat better, at least. I’d gone from “the world is ending” to “the world sucks” in about an hour, which I thought was a perfectly reasonable timeframe to get my shit together. I also knew which direction I wanted to head in my new, sucky world. That was something.
I still felt like part of me was hollowed out and raw, though. That wasn’t going to go away any time soon, but at least I pulled myself together enough to fake it through the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.
36
PEARL
The rehearsal dinner for Lizzie’s wedding was held in a ritzy building near Stone Tower outside of Fairhope. I’d opted to buy a different dress than the green one I had on when Dean came into my dressing room–that one felt like it would just carry the ghost of our encounter with it, and I wanted no part of that.
I had on a yellow dress that I hoped blurred the appropriate line between casual and elegant, which was what Lizzie wanted everybody to wear. The neckline was high and aggressive, but the back of the dress plunged all the way down to my lower back. Okay, maybe it was more on the formal than casual side. Sue me.
A petty part of me wanted to get Dean’s attention, even though I knew that was backwards. He’d made his mind up, and convincing him he was missing out wasn’t going to change it.
For the past two days, I felt like I was doing my best impression of a burglar. I crept toward corners, listening before emerging in case I might run into him. I got to bed as early as I could and pulled the blankets practically over my head.
To his credit, Dean seemed to understand I wanted nothing to do with him and hadn’t made any attempts to talk to me. He came in quietly to the room, usually late at night, showered, and got into his bed without a word. He didn’t even turn the lights on, which resulted in the mildly hilarious number of times he bumped into things on the way to his bed from the bathroom.
But now the avoiding game was over, because we both had to be on our best boyfriend and girlfriend behavior. If it wasn’t for not wanting to spoil Lizzie’s wedding with relationship drama and not wanting to let my mom down, I would’ve just told everyone we split up to save ourselves the trouble. Now that I knew I was planning to leave Pollard Marketing anyway, the threat of being fired had lost its sting.
I still needed to tell Marley about that, and it was a conversation I wasn’t looking forward to.
Dean hooked his arm through mine as we headed in from the parking lot to the big building. It was some sort of fancy hotel, I realized, and we followed signs for the reception dinner to a moodily lit dining room through the lobby. Based on the signs, it was a very fancy restaurant that Jonas Pollard had apparently bought out for our evening. Shocker.
“You doing alright?” Dean asked through the side of his mouth as we headed in. We weren’t exactly early, which meant everybody was already talking and chatting with enthusiasm and hadn’t noticed us enter yet. There were several tables spread around the room with drinks set out, but at the moment, people were just walking around and talking to each other.