Page 62 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Forty-Four

Light hurts, something stinks, and this is where I’ve come to die.

I force my eyes open; a gritty tongue attacks me along with blinding light through a window. A bullmastiff. Thor . I’m at June’s. On her couch. My head is throbbing. What in the time traveling tunnels of hell is happening?

“You’re alive,” June says, standing in the middle of her living room, disapproving look of a mother on her face as she folds her arms over her chest.

I sit up, moaning as the pony-sized canine invades my personal space.

“Go away, dog,” I croak. The earth spins faster. “And no, I’m not.” I put my elbows on my knees and drop my head into my hands. “How did I get here?”

“Ben called.”

Her voice is blurry; I squeeze my eyes shut .

“Do you remember what happened?” she demands.

“I need water, Joo. And for you to lay off with the mom voice.”

“ Lay off with the mom voice ?” She scoffs. “You got in a fight. In a bar. With two people!”

Right.

“Your yelling hurts”—she glares at me—“and they deserved it.”

“God, Scotty!” she says in a half shout, half groan. “That’s not the point!”

“Seems like a good point to me,” I mutter, standing and taking slow wobbly steps to the kitchen, fumbling through her cabinets until I find a glass. “It was Jessicunt and Wanda’s abusive ex-husband. I should be knighted.”

“What happened?” she demands as I slam two glasses of water then dig through another cabinet on a quest from God for aspirin.

“I went to Liberty Tap.” I throw the pills down my throat. “And detected two demons then performed an exorcism.”

She scowls with another shout groan. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

“Thank you,” I say dryly. Even hungover, I know my best friend—she’ll drop it when she sees I’m not talking about the Ford-sized hole in my chest that I used alcohol to fill.

“This isn’t how it works, Scotty. You don’t get to-to-to get in one fight and then call it quits.”

I massage my forehead, leaning over the kitchen sink. I might puke.

“And it wasn’t even with Ford,” she continues. “It was with a teenager! They specialize in fighting! ”

Shut. Up.

“You aren’t special, you know.” I splash water on my face, trying to drown her out. “You aren’t the only one who’s lost someone. Who-who-who knows heartache.” I blot my face with a towel, seeing it covered in black when I pull it away. How much makeup did I wear yesterday?

“Are you even listening to me?” she demands, leaning a hip against the kitchen island next to me.

“You’re hard to ignore right now,” I mutter, praying for death.

“You know what,” she snaps, severe edge to her voice.

“Fuck you, Scotty. You think because you grew up in a trailer park with-with-with subpar parents that nobody else knows struggle? That everyone just knows how to be in healthy relationships and how to parent and life is so easy and la-ta-da-ta-da-ta?”

Her la-ta-da stabs my temples but the fight in her voice stops me cold. She’s not letting this go.

“You think that-that you’re some kind of martyr because your brother died? That you’re the only woman who ever walked out of a hospital without a baby in her arms? Well guess what?” She doesn’t give me time to answer. “You’re not. You’re not special, okay? You’re human like the rest of us.”

I look at her, feeling like a peeled peach with my softest, most vulnerable parts exposed.

“And,” she continues, emotion filling her voice, “even though I have a family in the traditional sense, you’re the one covering my walls even though you keep saying there’s nobody to put on yours.

” I look around her house, almost entirely filled with frames, and land on one of her and I from a few years ago after we let her then-young teenage daughter put makeup all over us.

We’re covered in eye shadow holding wineglasses up high as we laugh.

It socks me in the stomach. “And you don’t call me and you don’t show me your house.

And it’s-it’s-it’s mean. And it sucks. And you suck, Scotty. ”

She’s crying now and it’s because of me. If I didn’t feel like a piece of shit before, seeing her tears most certainly does the trick.

I turn so my back is to the counter and slide down the cabinets until I’m on her kitchen floor; she does the same.

“I’m sorry, Joo.” I sniff. “For all of it. I know I have you. I know I do.” There’s a long pause while I find my next words.

“When Ford moved back it was like a scab ripped open I thought had healed,” I admit.

“Bastard went and made me fall in love with him all over again. And his kid.” I start to cry. “And I ruined it.”

“You didn’t ruin it.” She wipes her nose with the back of her hand before leaning against me.

“You’ve just let yourself get so tangled up in your past you can’t see what’s right in front of you.

Life is messy. For all of us. Not a damn one of us perfect.

But you don’t have to do it alone because you aren’t alone.

” She interlaces her fingers with mine. “Family doesn’t only mean blood, you know? ”

I blow out a breath, dropping my head back against the cabinet. “I got in a fight,” I say. “I should be alone. I’m genetically predisposed to be a disaster.”

She scoffs. “Are you listening to yourself? Do you see your gene pool, Scotty?” She pauses.

“You are nothing like them. Nothing,” she punctuates.

“I could kill you for shutting Ford out—me out—and everything that happened yesterday. But”—she angles her head to look at me, a ghost of a smile on her lips—“I’d have paid good money to see it. ”

I almost laugh as I let her words settle in me, unsure how they apply to me. Unsure if they even can.

“You should talk to your mom,” she says.

“Be the bigger person?” I make a disagreeing grunt. “That sounds like me.”

No, it does not.

“I’m serious,” she urges. “All these years of you shouldering the weight of everything. How she was when you were a kid. What happened to Zeb. Your dad. I know you see her, but have you ever once had a real conversation with her?” I open my mouth to argue, but she adds, “ Really feel?”

Talk to Glory? She knows I haven’t. Glory and I talk the way Glory and I talk: in barely tolerable dark slapstick that isn’t even remotely funny. I wouldn’t know where to start a real conversation with her. My mind goes to Wren and her therapist. Wren telling me I ruin everything and everyone.

I cry.

Again.

“Wren hates me.”

“She doesn’t,” June says with ease. “Kids lash out at the ones they love the most.”

She can’t be right; I saw the look in Wren’s eyes when she shouted every horrible truth at me. How deep every word cut. You couldn’t save your brother, stop trying to save me .

“I can’t be with Ford,” I tell her, sliding my eyes closed. “Not after what happened. How Wren feels about me. And when I tell him the rest . . .”

“That’s for him to decide.”

I open my eyes and angle my head to face her. “This is a whole human, Joo, not a game of hide the pickle.”

My arm vibrates with her laugh. “I know, Scott. But it’s him.” She looks up at me again from her spot on my shoulder, her soothing voice a soft cushion for all my hard edges. “Tell him. Let him decide. That’s how relationships work.”

Guilt talons itself under my skin, but I don’t have the energy to explain why I won’t subject him to me.

I love him too much to bring him down like this ever again.

I’ll tell him, and then I’ll leave. It’s the only way to fix this.

The house is done. The Sellecks will buy Happy Endings.

This was my plan all along, now it’s simply execution.

“You’re right,” I say, wiping my thumbs under my eyes with a sniff. My fingertips are covered in black. “Jesus. How much makeup am I wearing?”

“About that.” Her lips twitch as she pulls out her phone, turns on the camera and flips the screen before handing it to me.

When I look at my face, I scream; she cackles. “The hell, Joo?”

“Sorry,” she says, rocking with laughter as tears roll down her face. “I let the boys use permanent marker because I was pissed.”

I look back at the screen, the word fart is written about forty-three times around a single curlicue mustache above my upper lip. Little shits .

“You’re the worst,” I say before she forces us to huddle together and snaps a picture.

We stand, her still laughing as I grab a napkin and start to scrub my face over the sink.

“Why haven’t you let me see your house?” she asks, mom tone back in full force.

“Because I didn’t want you to tell me how perfect it was,” I confess, turning off the sink. “Pump my tires full of stories of how I belong there. How I should keep it.”

I wipe my face with the napkin.

“You remember what you told me when I wanted to leave Camp?” she finally asks.

I cut my eyes to her. “Stop listening to podcasts.”

Her nostrils flare.

“That I can be more than one thing. You told me I could be a mom and everything else.”

“Solid advice. Your point?”

“My point is,” she says with a huff, “you can too.”

I scoff. “Unhinged and ?”

She grins. “Sure. Why not? You don’t need permission to be happy, you know? Why can’t you be what you’ve been through and who you are? Be you and have Ford? Wren? The house on the lake?”

I don’t bother reminding her Wren doesn’t want me and, soon enough, Ford won’t either. She’ll just argue, make it sound so easy in her leggings and chambray shirt, so beautifully her in the house she’s made a home with toy clutter and dinged-up kitchen cabinets.

Wait.

I drop the paper towel. “Why is your kitchen old?”

“Oh.” She looks at the very unrenovated kitchen and then back to me with a shrug. “I lied.”

“You what ?”

“You were acting crazy, and I needed to buy time before you went and did something stupid.”

Bitch.

“I hate you.”

She looks at me, knowing I don’t, and I’m suddenly overwhelmed with emotion toward her. Less an A-frame house she conned me into and the fact my face looks like a bathroom stall door, her friendship has always been free. I wrap my arms around her.

“How long did you practice that speech?” I ask into her hair.

“All night while I listened to you snore.”

I chuckle. “It was good.”

She snorts, rocking our hug side to side.

“Does Ford know about last night?”

“Who do you think bailed you out?”

“Bailed me out?” I rear back from our hug, panicked. “I got arrested ?”

She pauses, looking at me as shame threatens to swallow me whole. Even Jessicunt isn’t worth jail.

A wide smile overtakes her face. “No. ”

“Bitch.” I slap her arm.

She grins, proud. “But he brought the Bronco back and helped get you into the minivan.”

I cringe. “How was that?”

She gives me a grim look and I jam my palms into my eyes until I see the dim imploding stars of my hangover.

I have to get out of here, erase my face ink, and get my life together. I find my coat, slipping it on.

“Sorry about last night. And everything. Again,” I say as take my keys from her. “About Thanksgiving . . . I don’t know. I have some turkeys but . . .”

“Uh-uh,” she says, in a tone that is very final and very scary. “It’s just us. You can do this. If you’re so hellbent on selling that place and running away, we get one holiday in it.” In my hesitation she adds, “Just make the turkeys, I’ll bring everything else.”

Reluctantly: “Fine.”

“Hey, Scott,” she calls when I’m almost out the door. I turn and look. “Sorry about your face.”

I shrug. “Punishment fits the crime.”