Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75891 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
How is my breaking up such a big deal? You’d think this was the first time in history that someone’s relationship didn’t work out. Most people handle breakups by bingeing on poor food choices and mediocre movies while bashing their exes. I have to navigate this minefield of degenerates to make sure no one spends the night in jail. It’s nuts!
I spent the next hour or so fielding questions from the Thornton-Escalante conclave, which had the added benefit of keeping my mind off of Julius and the long-dormant feelings his presence had reawakened in me. Once the grilling was over and everyone went their separate ways with the reassurance that I was fine, I was left alone with my thoughts, and the real ordeal began.
Upstairs alone in my childhood room, I had nothing to do but stare up at the ceiling and play the past few hours over again and again in my head. My family had been so obsessed with finding out just how Dale’s family had treated me in the past that they forgot about nagging me about my need for physical release after my run-in with Julius.
I also never got around to telling them just how I had facilitated the affair that brought about the end of my relationship with Dale, but at least that nitwit Denise would live another day, and no one on my end was going to jail. All in all, things ended much better than I expected, and I’m glad that it was all out of the way.
I tried to feel anything about the breakup, but all I could think about was Julius, how hot he still looks, and how my heart still trips when in his presence, even when I want to hate him with every fiber of my being. That asshole had quelled my anger at Dale, and my thirst for vengeance had trickled down to something less fiery.
That shit doesn’t even make any sense. I had a whole plan laid out. All the ways I was going to make him and his little side piece pay for betraying me, but for some reason, all I can think about is the fact that I am free to… Free to what?
I shook my head in the dark and rolled over to bury my face in the pillow, warning myself over and over again that I would not make an ass of myself over Julius Blair again in this lifetime. He’d burned me once, so bad that I had promised myself I wouldn’t spit on his ass if he was on fire on a lonely road in the desert with no one else around.
I’ve hated him for years, or so I thought. At least I had convinced myself that I did. I’d savagely crushed every wayward thought of that jackass, even the ones that popped up out of nowhere at the most inopportune times, and I’ll be damned if I was going to fall back into old habits just because I was a single woman once again.
It never mattered to him before that I was available. In fact, he couldn’t have made his disinterest more plain back when I was young and stupid enough to wear my heart on my sleeve and make the first move. The first time he turned me down, I could excuse him; he was right. I was too young then. But that night, when I was twenty-one, he decimated my young, innocent heart with his harsh words of rejection.
That should be enough for me to be done with him, something I had told myself that I was a thousand times. But it only took seeing him this once for all the old feelings to come back in full force; All the anger and hate I held for him just seemed to have dissipated, and I know why. It’s because I can never erase from memory the want I had seen in his eyes that one time.
JESSICA
The phone rang sometime in the midst of my mind trip, and I looked over at the bedside clock. Three in the morning, where had the time gone? I picked up the phone and saw that it was Dale calling. As if! From the looks of it, it wasn’t the first time that night, but since my phone had been tucked away, I’d missed all the others.
I turned the phone off and rolled over in bed, ready to pick up where my mind had left off. I know that piece of shit like the back of my hand, and my ignoring him would do more harm than having it out with him would.
I was tempted to answer just to ask why he hadn’t made good on his threat and ended himself, thereby making the world a better place, but the last words I said to him were the last bit of me he was going to get, the bastard, and I know that is going to torment him for the rest of his miserable life.