Page 22 of The Holy Grail
Learning to grovel
“Hi, you’ve reached Malcom Hodge. Please leave a brief message, along with your name and number, in case I decide to call you back.”
Jules waited for the beep, then began speaking.
“Hi, Malcom, this is Jules. Jules Shaw? I don’t know if you remember me, or not, because it’s been a while, but—” she broke off, shaking her head in disgust as she realized how stupid she sounded. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting to get your voicemail … although most people don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize, right? I mean, I usually don’t, so it makes sense you might not, either. Oh, my God, I’m rambling.” She paused to take a calming breath before continuing. “I was just calling because I wanted to talk to you and maybe, I don’t know, um, just talk. Anyway … I really do hope you’ll call me back, so we can talk. I wanted to apologize, among other things, so, please call me back.”
Mortified at the ridiculous message she’d just left, Jules palmed her forehead with an agonized groan, berating herself for not having written something coherent out beforehand, instead of winging it. “Oh, my God.”
She then did something she’d never done with a man before—she waited to hear back from him.
She waited for three days and … nothing.Nothing.
It seemed likely he was simply ignoring her, which was another first for her, and a huge ego buster.
It actually sucked balls. Big, sweaty, hairy balls.
She kept checking her phone, thinking she now fully understood how crappy ghosting him all those months ago was, and decided a gesture was in order, because she wasn’t ready to give up yet. Briefly, she thought about asking Paige what to do, but quickly shot that down, since she would likely give Jules the riot act for having waited so long. Deciding the next best thing would be to ask her mom, Jules made the FaceTime call on Thursday, during her lunch hour.
“Well, hello there,” Edie Shaw answered, warm surprise in her voice.
“Hi, Mom,” Jules returned, taking in Edie’s chin-length, blonde hair and light brown eyes, which made her look perpetually young, much younger than her seventy years. “I was wondering if you had a minute?”
“Of course. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Well, something. I actually need some advice.”
“Is it about your stocks? Because your father is in the other room—”
“No, my portfolio is fine,” Jules assured her. “It’s not about that. It’s actually about … a man.”
“You need advice about a man? That’s rather unexpected, to say the least.”
“I know.”
“All right. So, what kind of advice do you need?”
Jules overlooked her mom’s obvious amusement. “Advice on how to make amends.”
“Did you say ‘amends’?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then that will depend on what you did. I’ll need to know what kind of ‘amends’ we’re talking about, before I can offer up any advice.”
Jules gave her mom the abridged version of events, condensing the last fifteen months into two minutes, ending with the convoluted disaster of a message which had been left in Malcom’s voicemail.
“That’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Edie mused.
“How bad did you think it was going to be?”
“Well, I at least thought it was going to be something you said or did, not something youdidn’tsay or do. So, this might be something I need your dad to weigh in on—”
“Weigh in on what?”
The male voice, belonging to Richard Shaw, interrupted the two women, causing Edie to chuckle and Jules to groan, since she’d been hoping to keep her dad out of this situation.
“It’s nothing,” Jules said loudly.
