Page 7 of As a Last Resort

SAMANTHA

With the Rock Island contract in the near-distant past, I decided to trade in my predictable Sunday of run, shower, and work at a nearby coffee shop to browse the weekend morning market near my apartment.

Ivy said I needed to live a little. Breaking my routine was the least I could do.

Baby steps.

And Jack was still ignoring me. No response to any of my apology texts after the text on Friday.

I debated going to his apartment but didn’t want to look desperate.

Maybe he just needed time to cool off. I did, in fact, forget his complete existence for a few hours. My feelings would probably be hurt too.

“Hello, sunshine!” Italian Marco called out as I walked by his flower stand.

I gave him my best smile. “Today feels like a flower day, Marco.”

He clasped his heart and looked toward the sky. “I have nothing as beautiful as you for sale, but I will try.”

I wondered if he grew out his mustache and dyed it black as part of his whole thing , a direct contrast to the vibrant rainbow of colors splashed across his stand.

As I wandered through the ranunculus and garden roses, “Tainted Love” blasted from my phone.

I pushed ACCEPT.

“Hi, Mom.” My insides braced for what was to come. I never knew what version of my mother I’d be getting, especially at 9:00 a.m.—the I-just-woke-up-twelve-hours-sober version or the I’m-still-awake-from-an-all-night-bender version.

“Hey, sweet pea! How’s your Saturday?”

“It’s Sunday, Mom.”

“Do you remember Melissa Makecroft from elementary school?”

Aaaaand here we go. “No, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Well, I ran into her mother at the grocery store yesterday and she just got divorced. Apparently, her husband ran off with his secretary after she had a miscarriage. Isn’t that awful?”

“Wow. Yeah, that is awful.” I was half listening. My weekly calls from my mother always included thorough updates about childhood acquaintances I didn’t care about.

“You used to run around with her when you were little. She’s the one who froze your underwear at your fourth-grade birthday party. Do you remember that? She was always a mean little thing.”

“Nope. Don’t remember her.” I picked up a bouquet of large white and light pink garden roses in full bloom. I loved the way the petals curled in on each other.

“Well, you remember Johnny, her brother. He’s still sleeping around with half the girls in town, spreading syphilis like it’s butter on a knife. That poor mother. She had a fifty-fifty shot at one of them turning out.”

“Sooooo,” I drew out, trying to change the subject without setting her off. “Have any fun plans for today?”

“Are you coming home for the Fourth?”

She was hitting all the fun subjects at once.

The famous Fourth of July block party on the island was when people from high school who never left poured into downtown, their kids running barefoot down the middle of the street holding a lit sparkler in one hand and a hot dog dripping ketchup on their Old Navy flag tank top in the other.

The last block party I came home for, I ran into Boston Smith, the star quarterback of our football team and my junior and senior year crush.

He was the hottest guy in school, one of the nicest, and not surprisingly, not one of the smartest. There’s that saying, Not the brightest crayon in the box .

I don’t even think his crayon made it into the box to be considered.

We were partners for two years in chemistry, and I basically took every test for him.

He turned and waved when he saw me, and gave me an enthusiastic “Hi, Sasha!” I was mortified.

A tall blonde turned around with a baby on her hip.

Of course, it would be the one and only fearless leader of the Blondtourage, Crystal apparently-now -Smith because the mean girls always snag the hot guy in the end.

She gave me a condescending smile. “Oh, her name’s not Sasha, babe.

What is it again? Gosh, it’s been so long. ”

And that wasn’t even the worst of the visit.

I got a call in the middle of the night from a rando saying he was with my mom, but she couldn’t remember where she lived.

I told him I’d meet him to come get her, and when I pulled up, my old gym teacher was waiting for me.

That’s when I found out my mother had a thing for dating my old instructors.

He still looked exactly the same, wearing neon-yellow gym shorts with a slit up the side and a dry-fit sleeveless shirt.

It scooped just a little too low in the armpits so that if he leaned forward at all, you had a clear shot of his side nipple and dusting of hair around his areola.

He was an extra straight out of a Richard Simmons workout video.

I took a deep breath. “I’m really slammed with work. I don’t think I’m going to make it this year.”

“It’s over a month away. And you haven’t been home in over two years,” she snapped. “If you just don’t want to come home, you should say that.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The mixed smell of peonies and freshly baked bread filled my nose and dulled the daggers threatening to spill out of my mouth. “I’ll see how it looks closer to the date. I’ll try though, I promise.”

My eyes scanned over the tops of the sky-reaching sunflowers in the market and landed on the back of a familiar head. A very familiar head.

Oh God .

Jack.

He was turning around.

Okay, perfect. This was good. I could talk to him in person, apologize for being a jerk, and we’d go to Angelo’s for lunch like we always did every Sunday afternoon.

I took a deep breath, took a step in his direction, and that’s when the really pretty blonde holding the biggest sunflower I’d ever seen turned around.

Okay. Maybe a friend.

She threw her head back and laughed, Pantene-commercial style, then he kissed her on the cheek.

Okay. Maybe not a friend.

Then I did what any other self-respecting woman would do.

I ducked.

“Sunshine!” Italian Marco’s booming voice pierced the air. “What are you doing on your hands and knees? Here, let me help you up.”

“No, it’s okay. Really. I just dropped something down here.” I hugged the ground.

Cue the rom-com movie montage of unexpected and humiliating events because that’s my life .

I crawled away from them under the flower stand, bumping my head on the wooden cradle nestled with buckets of brightly colored tulips that tipped over in slow motion.

That, of course, knocked into the three-year-old standing next to it and spilled her strawberry smoothie down the front of her cream-colored linen jumper that her mother most definitely overpaid for.

I clearly ruined the perfect photo op from the next Mommy Influencer and she was not happy.

I continued to crawl on all fours past the colorful mound of petals, dragging my knees through the strawberry and milk mixture that smelled glorious, and stood up holding the garden roses to fully block my face from view, only to then run into a man eating a Magnolia Bakery red velvet cupcake that smashed into his nose before I bolted away from the market.

“You have to pay for those!” I heard Italian Marco yelling as I sprinted down the crowded sidewalk.

I ran for three blocks, turned twice, and leaned back against a brick wall, still carrying the stolen flowers in my hand.

I was a thief. Or a fugitive. I guess technically both.

And Jack was with someone else.

I walked into the office Monday morning to a sticky note that read, Glenn’s office, ASAP . He didn’t even look up from his desk when I walked in.

“Go home and pack. You’re catching a flight to Florida in less than three hours.”

The wall clock read 8:03 a.m. Three minutes into my day and already we’ve hit a land mine. “I’m sorry, what?”

Glenn glared at me over his glasses and pointed toward the door. “Go home. Pack. Robby got appendicitis and has been in the hospital since Saturday. He was trying to leave against the doctor’s orders and they called his emergency contact, which apparently is me, for some godforsaken reason.”

“Is he okay?”

“If he keeps his hind end in the hospital he will be. He’ll be sedated for a few days from the sound of it.

” Glenn shuffled around a few papers, then put them back in the exact same spot.

“Game time substitute. Funding got pulled on the Oakstone project, so it’s perfect timing.

You can start the due diligence down there for the first week or so.

We’ll swap you out once he’s feeling up to par.

I pushed the intro meeting with the seller to tomorrow morning, which should give you plenty of time if you prep on the plane. ”

All the air was knocked out of my lungs.

“You’re from down there anyway, right?”

I blinked. “Florida’s a pretty large state, sir.”

“Robby said you were from Rock Island.”

My throat started to tighten. “The general area, yes, sir.”

“Headed back home then. Good. It should take half the time if you already know the territory. Maybe it’ll give you an upper hand in getting what you need from the locals.”

I think my head was nodding up and down.

“Robby’s assistant will shoot Ivy all the travel details that have been rebooked in your name. There’s a car out front waiting for you to take you home, then to the airport. Better get moving if you want to make your flight.”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

The clock on the wall read 8:06 a.m. Three minutes and my week had been shot to hell.

ME: My house. STAT.

I’m going to Florida.

IVY: with pugbug?

ME: Without PugBug.

IVY: wait y

ME: Appendicitis. Emergency surgery.

I’m going until he feels better.

Few days.

A week max.

IVY: ummmm 4 weeks says google

ME: Google could be wrong.

IVY: google is never wrong

ME: Yeah, well Google says it’s illegal to have oral sex in Florida.

IVY: y do u know that

ME: MY HOUSE. NOW.

I stood in my apartment, which was uncharacteristically quiet. Was I really going to hop on a plane and go home for a month? A month .