Page 43 of Mostly My Girlfriend
Therapy
Ethan
“I knew it! I knew you weren’t happy about me getting engaged.Congratulations.” Jules said, mimicking my voice. Badly.
“And you knew I wasn’t going to be happy! It’s why you looked like you were facing a firing squad when you told me. Be honest. You only said yes to a proposal after three months of dating because of Paris!”
She folded her arms over her breasts.
“How long were you engaged, Julia?”
“Ten minutes,” I snorted.
“Two weeks,” she answered.
“In the end, I didn’t even have to do anything,” I told Carol. “I just had to wait him out and it worked. Jules wouldn’t tell me what happened between them. So tell me now. What ended it?”
“I’m not telling you,” she insisted.
“Come on,” I urged her. “It was years ago, and we’re here to air all the dirt, remember? So let’s have it. Did you realize you only said yes to his proposal to spite me?”
“It wasn’t to spite you! I really wanted things to work with CJ.”
“Then what happened?”
“Fine. If you must know, I called out your name…in bed. There, are you happy?”
Was she kidding? I was ecstatic.
“It was awful,” Jules said, closing her eyes. “He kept trying to justify it for me. We worked so closely together, we’d known each other for so long. It was only natural you might be on my mind. I knew then he would have spent our entire marriage qualifying my horrible behavior when it came to you and I couldn’t let him do it.”
“I feel bad for the guy,” I said.
“You do not,” she accused me.
I didn’t. I really didn’t.
“Okay,” Carol announced with a soft clap of the hands. “So Ethan you’re not dating anyone. Julia, after your engagement ended, was there anyone…”
She shook her head tightly.
“The two of you are continuing to work closely together. And then Ethan, you lose your father suddenly. Can you talk about that? About what happened?”
I looked at her and Julia looked at me. We both knew what happened.
My world suddenly exploded.
* * *
Three months ago
Ethan
“We did it!” I stood on top of Jules’s desk and popped the cork from the bottle of champagne. We were in the Nebraska plant and I’d shut down production so that everyone could hear the news.
People squeezed close to the far side of the building and Jules was swatting my legs to get me to move off her stuff, but this was too big. Too important.
“Everyone! We have just finalized our deal with Tokyo. Phoenix Airlines is now in the U.S., Continental Europe, and officially Asia!”
