Page 38 of On the Line
Amelia appeared unconvinced but plowed ahead with her story anyway. “Well, regardless…you weren’t taking advantage of the golden, six-figure opportunity that had literally fallen in your lap, so I did.”
Lexie shook her head, a million questions swirling through her mind. “How did you get away with posting travel photos without actually leaving the state?”
“Google,” Amelia said. “And I sometimes would go to the airport and pay random travelers to take pictures of me outside, posing with an empty suitcase.”
Lexie let loose a humorless laugh and scrubbed a hand down her face. “Ames,” she said, exasperated. “Berk and Kimber said you’ve been gone a lot…”
“I’ve been going up to TC,” Amelia said, and when Lexie gave her a withering look, she added, “I know, I know. I really went out of my way to make things as difficult as possible for myself.”
“You sure as shit did,” Lexie said. “Especially when I would’ve been more than happy to help.”
“I was afraid and embarrassed,” Amelia said. “And I know you’re mad and probably want me to stop. I’m making better money now, but still not great. I guess I could move some stuff around, starting taking a few trips…”
Lexie watched as Amelia dug her phone out of her pocket and started rapidly typing on it, talking quietly to herself, lost in whatever scheme her brain was concocting to get her out of this mess now that the ruse was up.
And Lexie knew what it was like to have dreams and want so desperately to make them come true that she’d been willing to do anything she could to make them happen. In Lexie’s case, she had been doing whatever she could to destroy her good girl image, forcing her parents to let her live her life apart from them instead of parading her around like some prized show pony.
And Amelia? Well, Amelia had lied to kickstart a career that would ultimately allow her the financial freedom to start her gym.
Lexie may be an ice queen, but she wasn’t heartless, and she couldn’t fault Amelia for doing what she needed to succeed.
“You can keep using my trips for your columns,” Lexie said at last.
Amelia looked up at her, that deep blue gaze narrowing. “What do you get out of it?”
“Can’t I just help a friend in need without having an ulterior motive?”
“Normally, I would say no,” Amelia said, and Lexie smacked her. “But in this case, I really can’t see how any of this benefits you.”
“I’m sure I’ll think of something eventually,” Lexie said with a smirk. “But for now, I’ll send you anything you need when I’m on the road for work. We look enough alike from a distance that carefully angled photos and filters should make it relatively easy to pass me off as you.”
“Don’t you think Kimber and Berkley will notice?”
“If they do, we come clean,” Lexie said with a shrug. “But until then, it’s our little secret.”
Amelia stepped forward and wrapped Lexie in a hug. “Thanks, Lex. I appreciate this so much.”
Lexie pulled away and looked her friend in the eye. “I’ve got your back, always.”
Amelia nodded. “I know.”
And that was that. Over the course of the last two years, in addition to her travel for work, Lexie had begun taking trips for Amelia. Thanks to her trust fund—which her parents finally released to her after one too many drunken exploits in her late teens, when they realized Lexie was harming their precious image more than helping it—and ridiculously large salary from her job, she had a lot of disposable income. It didn’t make sense to either of them for Amelia to blow her nest egg on traveling when Lexie could handle it.
And she was glad to. She had spent the bulk of her life alone, thanks to her parents' careers and their general refusal to acknowledge they had a daughter unless they needed her for their perfect family facade.
She truly loved traveling and felt most like herself when she was exploring some new city and experiencing new things.
Lexie was yet again on the road this week, back in Dallas of all places. The last time she was here, she hadn’t exactly been paying attention to the nightlife and family-friendly events, so Amelia suggested she come back and actually experience the city and not having sex with Mitch whileinthe city.
Every time she came to Dallas for her day job, the company put her up in the Kimpton Pittman Hotel, and despite being in here on her own dime this time, she booked a room there again. The location was unbeatable, since it was right off Main where a lot of the Dallas nightlife was located, but notrighton the main drag so she could still escape the noise. Her first steps into the hotel lobby nearly suffocated her under the memories, though—most of them bittersweet now. When she’d arrived the night before, she wandered out onto Main Street, remembering being here with Mitch. The way his hand dwarfed her own when she slid her palm against his and intertwined their fingers. How they had spent all night long in bed in this very hotel, limbs tangled, making each other come with mouths and hands and…other things.
How something between them had shifted that night.
Lexie was jarred from her daydream by her mother’s voice as she and her father approached the table in the restaurant Lexie had selected for lunch.
Lexie hadn’t seen her parents since the ill-fated day they met Mitch, and she would’ve preferred to go even longer between visits. But when they figured out she would be in Dallas for work at the same time as them–thanks to the fact that her father’s assistant routinely stalks her on social media–they insisted on a meal together.
“Like one big happy family,” her mother had said on the phone two days before.
