Page 73 of Wedding Bet

There it was, in bold letters, unmistakable.

“Oh, God, Jamie, is it bad?” Chase’s voice came from the phone, which was cradled between my ear and my shoulder.

“It’s worse than bad,” I managed to say as a pit formed in my stomach. “I came back to a shitstorm. Holy Christ.”

It had been nonstop since the moment I’d gotten back to Stellara Beach. When we landed after the flights, I took Mom back home, dropped her off, and immediately went to go grab a few essentials from the grocery store to fill her fridge.

By the time I was done at the store only twenty minutes later, I checked to see five voice messages from my mother.

In each one, she’d sounded more panicked. She’d had a bad fall on her driveway, and the concrete had screwed up her hip—a hip that wasn’t in great condition to begin with. The pain got worse and worse until she had no feeling in her leg at all, and in the span of just a few minutes, an elderly neighbor had called an ambulance for Mom, even though she begged her not to do it.

Mom knew exactly how much it would cost. But the old neighbor didn’t drive anymore, and the moment she heard about the numbness, she’d made the call.

And the ambulance, hospital, X-ray, and fees were now staring me in the face.

Mom was okay, but our finances weren’t.

“Shit,” Chase said, his voice full of sympathy. “Well, you know I’ll contribute, too, as much as I can. Fuck, I wish I could be there right now.”

“I wish I hadn’t been browsing different types of potatoes at the grocery store at the time,” I said. “I’m glad Mom is okay. Chase, we’ll manage this somehow. Even if I have to max out a credit card again. You should be enjoying your newlywed status right now, not worrying about this.”

“I’m so sorry,” Chase said. “I love you, J. Call me later, okay?”

“Love you, too. I will.”

I hung up the phone and glanced at the clock, already late for my second shift at the restaurant. I’d been working my usual long brunch shifts and then picking up many late afternoon ones, as well. I glanced around at the kitchen, tension knotting in my chest. The sink was overflowing with dishes that my roommates hadn’t touched. The trash was a mountain of garbage spilling out onto the floor. Splatters of tomato sauce and coffee dotted the whole counter, and empty old pizza boxes cluttered the small table.

It was a fucking mess. A mess that I almost always took care of, either by nagging my roommates or just getting fed up and doing it on my own.

But I didn’t have time. And I sure as hell didn’t have the money to hire a cleaning service.

I drove into work in my old car, the gas tank hovering dangerously close toempty.When I walked into work, Idiscovered that one of our line cooks had spilled an entire vat of old frying oil onto the floor while changing it out.

The floor was covered in slippery old grease, and we wouldn’t be able to start our shift—and start earning tips that Idesperatelyneeded, until we cleaned it up.

The threat of tears prickled at the corners of my eyes and my throat was tight as a vise. I helped the other workers, all hands on deck, cleaning up the spill as fast as we could. My shoulders ached. My feet throbbed like hell. And even after we’d cleaned everything meticulously, we opened up shop for the afternoon and found that it was a painfully slow day.

The slowest we’d been in weeks and weeks.

I’d be lucky if I could even collect half of my usual tips on a night like this.

I held myself back from breaking down for almost the whole shift.

It was only when I headed outside to toss a bunch of cardboard in the recycling bin that I got a quick moment to check my phone.

Landry’s name had popped up on my screen.

And that’s when a couple of tears finally broke off from the corners of my eyes, drying in the night air.

It was a simple text, just him asking how I was doing, and probably wondering why the hell I had been silent for the last many days. The truth was that I’d thought of Landry almost every day, in any spare minute that I had the chance to think at all.

In my head, I’d drafted a million different versions of things I could say on a phone call to him, or texts I could write. Flirty things, hopeful things. Memories and jokes from when we were in Colorado.

But the reality was that from the second I’d landed back at home again, Colorado had felt like another lifetime. Anotherversion ofme, entirely—a version that had free time, that had no cares in the world, that could do things like spend afternoons walking with Landry in buttery sunlight, followed by snowglobe evenings with him in bed by the moonlight.

It didn’t feel real anymore.

And now I choked up imagining any sort of world where Landry would drive down here, expecting the Jamie he’d known back there in the snowy wonderland, and instead finding therealme, and my total mess of a life. He’d find out how totally unprepared I was for adulthood, even when I’d been a working, independent adult for well over a decade.

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