Page 59 of An Ex Affair

“Tully!” I had to pull the phone from my ear. Joselyn could get loud when she was excited, a fact I’d forgotten about since she so rarely called me these days.

“Hi, Joselyn. How are things?” I hit the back deck that looked out at the steep drop to the ocean below. The view was stunning,probably the sole reason this house had so many zeroes attached to the price tag.

“I’ve been trying to reach you!” Joselyn brushed right past normal pleasantries.

“I know. I texted you back I’m not interested in any television jobs. I’m happy here.”

Joselyn scoffed. “I understand that. That’s why I’m so excited about what literally fell into my lap this weekend.”

“I’m not coming back toFlip or Fail. Even if they begged me.” I cut right to the chase.

“Uhh, they didn’t ask for you back, babe.”

I winced. Ouch. Okay. Typical Hollywood: brutal. “Then why are you calling, Joselyn?”

“I was at a party on Saturday night and literally had a producer trip and fall into my lap. Thankfully, her drink didn’t ruin my Dior skirt. Anyway, she and I got to talking and she follows your socials. Such a small world, am I right? So I pitched her the idea of a reality show. I mean, come on. How perfect is Emmerleigh Slaywright’s business slogan: the sisterhood of the traveling tool belts?? It’s pure television gold, babe.”

Joselyn finally took a breath. My heart was pounding in my chest, mostly from dread. Or from feeling like everything I’d built since coming back to Blueball was being threatened. Sure, I knew I held all the power to say no, but when Joselyn wanted something, she had a way of making it happen whether you wanted her to or not.

“I already said I wasn’t interested.”

Joselyn scoffed again. “That was just an idea we were batting around. Now I have an actual producer interested, babe! She’s going back to her investors with the idea today. We should have an answer by this afternoon or tomorrow on whether it’s a go!”

I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration, probably making my curls go frizzy. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“Listen,” Joselyn cut me off. “Give it some thought. Talk to Emmerleigh. This could bring in significant money for her and her whole crew. Life changing, Tully. I’ll call you later.”

And then she hung up on me.

I stared at the phone in my hand, letting the breeze off the ocean ruffle my hair into an even bigger mess. Then I stared at the waves lapping onto the rocks below, wishing my old world and my current world had never met. Nothing about this felt right, though my brain did get stuck on one thing Joselyn had said. This could help my new friends financially. It wasn’t really up to me to say no. I had to see what Em, Savannah, and Pip thought about the idea.

“I think I liked the smile on your face this morning a bit better than this pacing.” Em came up behind me. That’s when I realized I’d been pacing the deck, my thoughts tumbling around in my head.

“You ever have a dream in your head so real you could taste it, Em?”

She stopped next to me, forcing me to stop pacing too. “I do. This isn’t the first construction company I’ve built from scratch.”

I only knew a little bit about her past. She’d had Georgia from a prior relationship, one that wasn’t exactly healthy from the little bit I knew.

I nodded. “I had stars in my eyes, but also a work ethic and an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time. I was waitressing when I spilled coffee on a guy who’d stopped in for a quick lunch. We got to talking as I apologized profusely. He liked me, despite the stained pants. Invited me to come audition for some show he was just hired to work on. Ended up not getting the part, but the producer liked me enough that when I pitchedmy own show idea on my way out of the studio, he called me back. The rest is history.”

“What you accomplished is nothing short of amazing,” Em agreed.

“Reaching your dream is a weird thing. It’s great on the one hand, but leaves you feeling empty on the other. Like, what do I reach for now?”

“Do they want you back?” Em asked quietly. I could see the concern on her face, but I appreciated the way she kept judgement out of her tone.

“No.” I smiled. “Joselyn has another producer interested in you. Us. The whole female-construction-crew thing.”

Em nodded. “So now you have to choose between two dreams: the old one or the new one.”

I knew Em was a smart woman. One just had to look at the company she’d built herself. But she was also insightful in a way I needed. “Yeah, I guess that’s it in a nutshell. I have to let go of the first dream to reach for the next dream, even if that one’s not certain.”

Em chewed on that for a bit before speaking. “You know, as adults, we have the choice to operate out of old hurts. Or we can choose to put those aside and build our lives the way we want them. There was a time when I vowed never to trust a man again. My ex screwed me over in every way a man can hurt a woman. It’s not easy to get past all that. Or to trust again.” She turned to walk back inside the house. She paused at the French door. “But if I’d held on to that hurt, I wouldn’t have Warrick, or Viv, or this business.” She shot me a wink and headed inside, leaving me to stew on that.

I didn’t know how she knew I had wounds from my past that had shaped my decisions. Then again, I was a woman in my forties. Of course I had wounds. Life just does that, unfortunately. But she was spot-on. I’d run away from Blueballbecause I was afraid I was becoming my mother, my entire life wrapped up in a man. I didn’t want to rely on Colson and then be devastated and handicapped if he died. I wouldn’t do that to my children. I refused to repeat the cycle.

Colson hadn’t listened to me back then. He’d put his head down and worked toward all the things he thought we still wanted, refusing to actually listen when I told him my dreams had shifted. He was different now though. He’d also grown and changed over the years. There was a maturity and confidence to him that hadn’t been there before.

---