Stone Cold, page 7
“Hi, I’m Chet,” he says. “Sorry about your wait. What can I get you ladies to drink this morning?”
We both order orange juice, but I have a feeling I’m going to be too distracted to enjoy it. The energy in this quaint diner is suddenly different now, and the carefree morning we’d been having is officially … off.
I’ve spent the last five years trying not to think about Jude (or the heartless way in which he left me). After the initial shock wore off, the rest of it was relatively easy. He was out of sight and out of mind. Every once in a while, if I heard an Oasis song or happened to be flipping channels and TBS was airing Dumb and Dumber, I’d be transported back to my college days with him. But other than that, life was moving on just fine.
“You should say hi,” Monica says.
“Why?” I scrunch my nose because I’d much rather prefer to be two passing ships in the night—or in this case, two passing sailboats in a seaside café.
“Because he’s already spotted us,” she says. “And now he’s coming this way.”
Before the shock of her statement has time to register, Jude is already standing beside us.
“Jovie,” he says. “Monica. Wow. Haven’t seen you guys in ages.”
Monica and I exchange looks. His casualness is a little off-putting given the magnitude of our last interaction combined with the accidental tag the other week, but if he can pretend like nothing happened, then so can I.
“Jude,” I say. “Hi. It’s been a minute.”
His lips—the same ones I used to kiss—arch into a warm smile. “It’s so crazy running into you here. You in town visiting or what?”
“No … I live here,” I say.
“She moved here with her husband last year,” Monica volunteers.
“My ex-husband,” I clarify, not that it matters.
Jude’s dark gaze drinks me in a moment longer, as if he’s studying me in a new light, imagining me as someone else’s wife.
“Love, I’m going to use the ladies’ room. Meet you outside in the car?” A sinewy blonde brushes her hand along his arm, leaning in and depositing a peck on his cheek with her pillowy lips the color of cherry blossoms.
I’ve only ever seen Stassi in photos—images I was certain were photoshopped or filtered. Now that I’m seeing her in person, I can confirm that she’s just as flawless as she appears online. There isn’t a blemish or wrinkle across her entire face, and her glossy golden hair drips down her shoulders in slow-motion, like a shampoo commercial. A subtle whiff of expensive, exotic perfume fills the air, competing with the scent of coffee and maple syrup.
“Sounds good,” Jude tells her. He doesn’t introduce us and for that I’m glad: no need to make this ten times more unpleasant than it already is.
He watches her walk away.
But so do I.
With her pink and green Lilly Pulitzer dress and the cashmere sweater draped over her shoulders, she looks like she belongs at a tennis match—not a hole-in-the-wall diner. Not only that, but she’s got the long-legged strut of an international fashion model, and I count no less than five turned heads by the time she disappears into the restroom.
“How long have you been living in Portland?” he asks.
“About a year. You?”
“I came here right after senior year,” he says. “Stassi’s dad offered me a job.”
“So what is it you do for work?” Monica asks, batting her lashes like she’s innocent when we both know she’s digging for dirt.
“I’m the chief logistics coordinator for Guinness Oil,” he says.
“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds important.” Monica shoots me a wink.
“I heard you write books,” Jude says.
I nod. “I’ve written a few …”
Monica swats her hand at me. “Jovie’s being modest. She’s written a bunch of bestsellers and one of them was just optioned for a TV series.”
His brows raise. “Wow. Good for you.”
Our eyes catch and he lets his linger for a minute too long, as if he’s adding up all of these tidbits of information and trying to form an idea of the woman I’ve become without him. Despite the fact that we’ve remained ‘friends’ on social media, my profile is pretty bare bones. A handful of images and no mention of my quickie marriage anywhere. I prefer it that way—privacy is priceless, and the ones who need to know what’s going on in my life will always hear it from me firsthand.
Our server returns with our orange juices and a promise to come back to take our orders shortly.
Jude waves his ticket and glances toward the cash register in the front of the diner.
“I better go take care of this. It was good running into you guys,” he says before his attention locks on me again. “I’m glad you’re doing well, Jovie. I really am.”
“Thanks,” I say, leaving it at that.
“Monica.” He turns to her, tipping his chin down. “Good to see you too.”
“As always,” she says, plastering a fake grin on her face that would appear genuine to anyone else but me.
The instant Jude leaves, I exhale a long, hard breath.
“That was interesting.” Monica dips a paper straw into her orange juice and takes a sip. “Did you see the way he was looking at you?”
I roll my eyes.
“No, really. He couldn’t take his eyes off of you,” she adds. “And did you see the look on his face when I mentioned you moved here with your husband?”
I reach for my glass. “I wasn’t really paying attention …”
“Whatever,” she says.
Our server returns just in time for Stassi to emerge from the ladies’ room. For a fleeting moment, our gazes intersect. She looks away first, her nose tilted up ever so slightly and her high heels clicking on the tile floor as she passes.
“Who the hell wears five-inch heels to a diner for breakfast?” Monica asks once Stassi and our server are long gone.
“Maybe they were going somewhere else after this.” I shrug, unfolding my paper napkin and spreading it across my lap—as if that could make our food arrive any faster.
“Do you think she has a personality?” Monica asks.
I chuckle. “You don’t have to do this …”
“Do what?”
“You don’t have to rag on her to make me feel better,” I say. “It’s fine.”
“I’m not ragging on her. I’m genuinely curious,” she says. “She just seems like such a little snot. And we already know she’s a boyfriend stealer.” Monica shudders. “Something about her just turns me off. I don’t know. It sure makes you wonder what he sees in her. She looks like she’s allergic to fun and costs a lot of money to maintain—and you’re telling me he wants to spend the rest of his life with that?”
“Stop, stop,” I stifle a laugh and wave my hand at her. “I don’t pretend to understand it. I figure they probably deserve each other and that’s all I need to know.”
She stirs her OJ with her straw. “You’re a bigger person than I am. If Chauncy ever left me for someone like her, you’d have to stop me from giving him a vasectomy with rusty scissors.”
None of that surprises me.
Monica’s loyalty to her husband is only outpaced by her mile-wide jealous streak.
“Anyway …” I say when our breakfast arrives at warp speed.
We spend the rest of our meal discussing her newest PR client and my next book idea and where we want to go for our girls’ trip this summer. By the time we’re done, I almost forget about our run-in with Jude.
Chapter Fourteen
Stone
* * *
“Tuxes are officially ordered,” Jude says over the phone Monday afternoon.
“Ah, good. I was starting to worry,” I say, monotoned.
“Don’t act too excited,” he sniffs back a laugh. “Stassi changed them to black and white at the last minute. She said the navy blue was too cliché.”
“She would know,” I say, still monotone as I sent an email to my assistant about pulling a file for me.
“You sound like you’re busy.”
“And you sound like you’re bored.”
Odds are he is. When he first started dating Stassi, her dad took a liking to him and offered him a job here in Portland; some mid-level management position where he was in charge of a small department. After a few years, he worked his way up. And once he and Stassi got engaged, her dad created some position for him at the top—something with a respectable title, minimal responsibilities, unlimited PTO, and a fat paycheck.
Some people are born lucky.
Others marry into it.
“I ran into Jovie over the weekend,” he says.
I stop typing, my fingers frozen over the keys.
“No shit?” I ask. I didn’t mention running into her at the grocery store the other day. It seemed neither here nor there. That and we hadn’t spoken since last week.
“She looked good. Like different. But in a good way. Older.”
“Did you think she’d still look like that baby-faced twenty-two year old you once knew?”
He exhales. “Yeah. Kind of. In my mind, she looked just the way I remembered her. Did you know she got married?”
I squint. “No.”
She mentioned she moved here for an ex, but I assumed it was a boyfriend, not a husband.
“I guess she moved here with her husband, but then she said it was her ex-husband …” his voice dwindles into silence. “It’s just so weird.”
“What’s weird? That she moved on?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“Did you think she’d sit around waiting for you to come back or something?”
“No,” he says. “I mean, I don’t know. I guess I never really thought about her that much over the years.”
I’m not surprised. He couldn’t get rid of Jovie fast enough once we got back from Tulum. With Stassi as the new object of his affection, it was out with the old and in with the new.
“Aren’t you two still friends on Facebook?” I ask.
Right after he dumped her, he mentioned to me he wasn’t going to block her on social media because he thought it would be “healthy” for her to see him happy and moving on. He thought it would give her closure. I figured eventually she’d unfollow him or cut ties, but she never did. The whole thing was strange, but I tried not to look into it. People do all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons.
“Yeah,” he says. “But I don’t think she’s updated her profile in years. At least last I checked.”
“So you creep on her sometimes?”
“I have a couple of times over the years.” His tone is sheepish. “Don’t you ever get curious about people and wonder what they’re up to?”
“Of course, but the last place I’d look is online. None of that shit is real,” I say. And I know from experience since almost every divorce I handle involves one spouse submitting incriminating screenshots from social media and the other spouse denying their validity because ‘everyone lies online.’
“I wonder who the guy was,” he says.
“And I’m wondering why you give a shit all of a sudden. You’re getting married in less than two months. You need to get your head in the game, not out of it.”
A light rap at my door provides the perfect interruption to this conversation.
“I gotta go,” I say. “Thanks for the update on the tux.”
I end the call as my door swings open.
“That was fast,” I say, expecting it to be my assistant with the files I requested a minute ago. Only it’s Becca. “Oh.”
“I’m going out of town next week and I need you to meet with one of my clients.” She lays a file on my desk.
“I’ll have to check my schedule.”
She rolls her eyes. “Please.”
“Can’t you ask one of the other partners?” I ask. “We just brought on two new junior partners in the last month.”
“I don’t trust them with this case.” She taps her candy apple red fingernails against my desk. “It’s not as cut and dry as the ones they’re used to. It needs a little more … finesse.”
“Which part needs finessing? The case or the client?”
“Both.”
Few things in this world excite me more than a chance to get my hands dirty with a good challenge.
“I guess I can help,” I say, keeping a straight face.
“He’s coming in next Friday,” she says. “One o’clock. I’ll have your assistant add it to your calendar.” Checking her watch, she adds, “I’m late for a meeting.”
Becca tuns to leave.
“You’re welcome,” I call out when the door swings closed. Reaching for the file, I glance at the name along the label tab.
Jason Whitlock.
Never heard of him.
Chapter Fifteen
Jovie
* * *
Age 21
* * *
“Do you ever get tired of being the third wheel?” I ask Stone as we camp out in Jude’s car as he pumps gas.
“I should ask you the same thing.” His nose is buried in his phone.
I give his shoulder a playful smack. “I’m not trying to insult you. I’m asking if you ever thought about, I don’t know, dating someone. Then we could double date or something. Could be fun?”
He looks up from his screen, though his eyes are focused on the hood of the car.
“I date,” he says, a hint of umbrage in his tone.
“When?”
“All the time.”
“I’ve never seen you date anyone,” I say. I’ve been with Jude almost two years now and not once has Stone brought a single girl around or so much as mentioned one.
I’m beginning to think he has impossible standards. He probably has some over the top notion of what the ideal woman is like, and anyone who doesn’t hold a flame to that is automatically cast aside. I knew a guy like that once. Nothing less than perfect was good enough for him.
“Do you think I sit around twiddling my thumbs when you guys are out?” He messes with the radio before settling on a classic rock station. A Led Zeppelin song plays over the speakers.
“I don’t know what you do when we’re out …”
“Trust me, I’m not sitting at home alone feeling sorry for myself.”
I raise my palms, apologizing. This conversation took a wrong turn and now it’s completely off the tracks.
“So what are they like?” I ask.
“Huh?”
“The girls you’ve dated. What are they like? What’s your type?” Before he has a chance to take my question the wrong way, I add, “Maybe I have a friend or something you might hit it off with?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Are you … do you … are you into … men?” I ask, hoping I don’t come off as insensitive.
“Definitely not,” he answers without hesitation. “Not that there’s anything wrong with dating men, but I very much prefer women.”
That settles that.
Jude climbs behind the wheel once he’s done fueling, putting an untimely end to my Spanish Inquisition.
I settle into the backseat behind Stone, where I always sit. Despite being Jude’s girlfriend, I’ve always let Stone ride up front. I figured I pilfer enough of Jude’s time as it is, the least I can do is not steal Stone’s spot.
One of the first things Jude ever told me about Stone was that they were like brothers, and that they made a pact when they were kids that they’d never let a girl come between them. I respect that, and I’d never want to come between them anyway.
Their bond is special, and I love that they have each other’s backs come what may.
We should all be so lucky.
Chapter Sixteen
Stone
* * *
Age 11
* * *
“Mr. Hudson, as you know, this kind of behavior is strictly prohibited at Callahan Elementary,” Principal Higgins folds her hands over her desk as she talks to Jude’s dad.
Paul’s leg bounces as he sits across from Principal Higgins, and as he chomps his cinnamon gum, his jaw flexes with each chew.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve met regarding Jude’s behavior, nor is it the second,” she continues, “and should your son decide to put his hands on another student again, we’ll have no choice but to expel him.”
“And what about the other kid?” Paul breaks his silence.
Jude and I exchange looks from separate corners of the room.
Principal Higgins blinks slowly. “I’m not at liberty to discuss the disciplinary actions of other students.”
“From what I understand, the other kid’s been messing with Stone for the past couple of months,” he says. “We’re talking constant, incessant provocation. Now, Stone’s done a stand-up job ignoring it because he’s a good kid with a straight head on his shoulders, but seeing how the school has done the bare minimum in thwarting the antagonistic actions of this other student, Jude took it upon himself to take matters into his own hands.”
The principal’s gaze flicks from Jude, to me, then back to Paul.
“Jude and Stone are a package deal, all right?” Paul says. “They’re brothers. They look out for each other. What hurts one, hurts the other. You mess with one, you’re messing with both of ‘em.”
“I can appreciate their bond, Mr. Hudson, but as the administrator of this school, the physical safety of my students is paramount,” she says.
“Which is why your staff should have handled this day one, not let it drag out for months until it escalated into the very thing we were all trying to avoid.” Paul rises, turning back to us. “Boys, grab your bags, this meeting’s over.”
Principal Higgins sits frozen, her mouth half open, and we follow Paul to his parked Impala out front.
The ride home is quiet; not even the low drone of the talk radio station Paul usually listens to any time we’re in the car.
