Page 87 of The Business of Love Box Set 1: Books 1 - 4

HAILEY

M y sister Hannah stood in the doorway to my bedroom while I wrapped a strand of hair around my curling iron and waited for it to heat up.

I peered at her from beneath a mane of pinned-up curls. “What?”

“Nothing.” She shrugged and stepped into the room. She went to my bed and perched herself on the end of it. “I just have never seen you get so dressed up to meet up with Jackson. Usually, you just slap on some lip gloss and call it a day. But tonight? The curls? The makeup? The—”

“I get it.”

She gave me a wry smile. “Why all the extra effort?”

“It’s his last night in Nashville. He told me it was going to be special. He’s taken me on friend dates on more than one occasion and I don’t want to risk showing up in my trusty old jeans and sneakers and find out he’s taking me to Andre’s or Capello’s or something fancy.”

My sister made an unconvinced sound in the back of her throat.

I let the curl tumble off the iron and caught it in my palm.

I cursed under my breath at the heat as I pushed it up against my skull in a coil and slid a bobby pin through it to secure it in place while it cooled.

I had thick hair, and if I didn’t pin it, the weight of it would just pull the curls down.

“I know you’re skeptical,” I said, “but Jackson and I are just friends. He’s moving away tomorrow.

We just want to make tonight special. We see each other every single day.

It’s going to be really weird not being able to stop by his apartment any time I’m downtown or have drinks with him on a patio somewhere.

I’m really going to miss him, Hannah. So please.

Don’t make this one of your ‘why don’t you just kiss him’ speeches. ”

“I have that speech?”

“Yes. I’ve heard it a thousand times.”

Hannah leaned back on her hands and rolled her eyes toward my bedroom window. “Well if you’d listened the first three times, you wouldn’t have had to hear it nine hundred and ninety-seven more times, would you?”

“I heard that.”

“I wasn’t trying to be quiet.”

The last curl fell from around the iron. I secured it with a pin and shook out my aching arms before dousing my head in hairspray.

Hannah choked on the fumes and fanned the air in front of her, trying to chase the hairspray out of the air. “Holy hell, Hailey! Jackson isn’t going to take you anywhere if you smell like a nuclear plant!”

I glowered at her in the reflection of the mirror on my vanity. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m not. You shot that shit right at me.”

“I need strong hairspray, okay? Otherwise, it won’t hold and all this effort will have been for nothing.”

Hannah stood up and went to the window. She slid it open and stayed near the fresh air. “Are you going to spend the night at his place?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should.”

I twisted around in my chair. “Why are you trying to make this goodbye harder on me?”

“It didn’t have to be a goodbye. He asked you to follow him to New York! Why the hell would a guy ask a girl to come with him unless he secretly had feelings for her?”

“Oh my God, not this again.” I got up with an irritated sigh and went to my closet, where I pulled out my favorite blush-colored tank top with olive green and light gray flowers on it.

Next I stepped into my favorite jeans, a dark gray wash, and paired them with a pair of nude flats and a long gray cardigan.

“Jackson doesn’t have feelings for me. He wants me to go with him for the same reason I want him to stay. ”

“Because you love each other.”

“ As friends. ”

Hannah left the window with her arms crossed over her chest. “Who are you trying to convince? Me or yourself? Look. I know I’m being a pain in the ass.

I just can’t help but worry that you’re letting the best thing that ever walked into your life go, all because you’re too afraid to admit that you care about him more than friends care about each other.

I love you, Hailey. And when I see something so good for you that makes you so happy, it drives me fucking crazy that you won’t just grab it and hold on to it! ”

“I’m not going to hold him down. His career is taking off. He’s right where he wants to be. And so am I.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You work fifty hours a week at a telecommunications call center getting ripped apart by lonely housewives and angry middle-aged men. You want to try to convince me again that you’re where you want to be?”

I began pulling all the pins out of my hair. My curls tumbled loose and wild past my shoulders and I raked my fingers through them. “You’re pissing me off, Hannah.”

“The truth pisses everyone off.”

I marched back to my vanity, arranged my curls so they were swept heavier to one side, and added a bit more hairspray to break up the curls and rough them up. I loved big hair for special occasions. It made me feel a little edgier. A bit sexy, too. And that was a feeling I didn’t have very often.

Once my hair was done, I turned around and held the hairspray nozzle down for five seconds, pointing it in Hannah’s direction. She squealed and raced out of my room.

“That’s what you get for acting like Mom!” I hollered after her.

I stood outside the grand front doors of Jackson’s apartment building and jabbed the buzzer button on the intercom system. I waited for a fuzzy beep to fill the speakers, and it was shortly followed by Jackson’s voice. “Who goes there?”

“Jack. Don’t be funny. It’s me. Let me up.”

“Me? Me who?”

“Hailey, you dolt.”

“Hailey Brown?”

I groaned with exasperation. Why was my best friend such an immature child?

His carefree laugh filled the speaker. “Ah. Yes. Definitely Hailey Brown. Nobody sighs with as much disdain as you do. I’ll buzz you up.”

The buzzer rang and the front doors clicked softly.

I pushed through them and crossed the grand lobby to the elevators, where I had to ride up with a bunch of hoity-toity apartment residents who I always felt were judging me based on my outfit.

The women wore sky-high stilettos and the men wore tailored suits and clutched briefcases that probably cost more than my share of rent at Hannah’s apartment.

I was the last to get off on Jackson’s floor, and when I stepped into the hall, I found him waiting for me outside his door with a cheeky grin on his handsome face.

Hannah’s voice rang in my ears. Just kiss him already.

Jackson whistled as I walked toward him. “Look at you.”

I hated how my cheeks burned. “I can never trust you, Jackson. You said tonight would be special, so I wanted to be prepared for whatever your definition of special might be.”

“Nobody has a best friend as pretty or as clever as you.”

He greeted me with a hug. He smelled like pine and sandalwood and nostalgia, and I held on a little longer than usual, knowing hugs like these were few and far between. How many more would I get before he was on a plane tomorrow morning? Three? Four if I was lucky?

My throat felt suddenly tight and I released him before I got emotional. “So what are we doing tonight?”

He pushed open his apartment door and gestured for me to go in ahead of him. “After you, my lady.”

I performed a mock curtsy. “Thank you, my liege.”

God. We were such dorks.

As soon as I walked into the apartment, I was struck with two things. One, how empty it was, and two, the smell of pizza.

“Is that deep dish from Antonia’s Pizza?” I asked as my mouth started to water.

Jackson closed and locked his front door. “Sure as shit is. I figured it was the perfect last meal to have together. Did I hit the mark?”

“Definitely.” I let my purse fall from my shoulder as I moved into the living room.

It was barren save for a collection of blankets and pillows right smack in the middle of the room, centered in front of the grand exposed brick fireplace. The pizza box was on a tray on the blankets, and there were bags of our favorite snacks all over the place.

It was perfect.

However, I was a little overdressed.

Jackson walked over to the blankets. “Sorry about the setup. The guys came and took all my shit out of here this morning, so I had to improvise.”

“Are these blankets even yours?”

“Yeah, found them wedged in the back of one of my closets. Don’t worry though. I washed them first.”

We made our way over to the blankets and sat down.

I stretched my legs out in front of myself and adjusted the waistband of my jeans.

They weren’t the sort of pants for sitting on the floor like this.

Or for doing much eating. They were for sitting up perfectly straight and sipping drinks, and if eating was necessary, I would opt for a low-carb lighter meal, like salad.

Not pizza.

I frowned down at my tummy as the jeans cut into me. “Jack?”

“Mm?”

“Can I borrow a shirt?”

He glanced at my outfit and smirked. “Jeans a little tight?”

“I didn’t expect to be eating on the floor. Not that I’m complaining. This is perfect. But I want to be comfortable.”

He laughed and pushed himself up onto his feet. “I’m not complaining either. There’s no other way I’d like to spend my last night than with my beautiful best friend wearing my shirt… and no pants.” He winked before scurrying off like a boy who knew he was about to get whacked upside the head.

I sat waiting for him with a smile on my lips.

But it was gone as soon as I remembered he was leaving. My heart shrank a little and my shoulders slumped. What was I going to do without him?

I needed Jackson Smithe in my life. I had since I was just a teenage girl trying to find my way in a world that never stopped feeling too big and overwhelming.

Who was going to bail me out? Who would make me feel a little less lonely at the end of a terrible workday? Who would pick me up and remind me that I was a fighter if not Jack?

You have to be present in this moment, I told myself. Time with Jackson was slipping through my fingers. Just enjoy it while you have it and mourn it once it’s gone but not before. Otherwise, you’ll ruin the good and spend too much time living in the bad inside your own head.

That was a trick Jackson had taught me. It helped pull me up when I was down every time.