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Chapter 1
Aubrey
I prop my butt against the front door to my building to lug my last two bags outside. The door always sticks. I think it’s the hinges, tweaked from my neighbors forcing too-wide furniture in on moving days. It used to stay open automatically at a certain degree, an auto prop like an invisible gentleman or imaginary doorman.
Now, though, if I don’t hustle my ass to keep it open while I stretch inside the foyer to get my other bag, it’ll slam back on my ankle.
Too late. It does.
“Ow!” Curses stay trapped in my mouth as the metal panel swings and hits me. I didn’t leave my suitcase as close as I thought I did, and reaching too far back, I couldn’t be an elastic woman and hold the door open at the same time.
Of course, I didn’t. Nothing about this morning is going right.
The duffel in my left hand smacks the floor at an angle that sends my water bottle popping out of its spot on the side. It rolls along the hallway, stopping against the wall none too quietly. It’s a promo one from the school. I scratched off the logo when I got it, but it’s one of those stainless insulated containers that sounds like a damn bomb bursting when they hit the floor.
The tenant nearest the lobby opens his door to glower at me, a tired dad with a perky baby in his arms.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Between the water bottle and the door slamming shut—not to mention my shout of pain—he’s got to be annoyed.
“Keep it down,” he deadpans before he shuts his door again.
He doesn’t need to worry about me keeping anything down because I’m leaving. This is the last time I’ll exit this door. The last time I’ll make a single peep in the building I moved into since I became a miserable family of one.
All I need to keep doing is resisting the tears that gather behind my lids.
I sigh heavily and reach down to grab my water bottle and duffel again. I sling the strap over my shoulder, shift both of my suitcases to double up one in front of the other, then waddle the best I can to the door again. Getting these secondhand suitcases to move feels like a wretched math problem.
If one rolling suitcase travels at the speed of one inch per mile on three wheels instead of four, and another rolling suitcase travels with two cracked wheels and a tendency to pivot at a forty-five degree angle to the west, when will they move at the same rate in the same direction?
It’s not any easier walking behind two suitcases and wearing an over-stuffed bag, but I cram myself and the luggage out.
Never. The answer is never. I shove the things onto the sidewalk, huffing with the exertion of the exercise. Pausing to catch my breath, I reach back to stop the door from slamming loudly again.
Bang.
Whoops.
I wince, turning to check the distance to my car. I was lucky to have snagged a prime spot at the curb. This isn’t a fancy area of LA. Not slummy, but nothing awesome. Parking isn’t guaranteed, but after I scoped the curb for an hour and the teenager who lives across the hall from me accepted five bucks to “hold” a spot for me, I managed to squeeze my old car close to the apartment complex I am saying goodbye to.
For good.
Tears threaten again, but I blink quickly and hold them back. This shabby little neighborhood was never the place I wanted to call my forever home, but since my parents died when I was eighteen, it’s been a home.
Through the blur of tears, I finish the walk. I drag, roll, and shove the suitcases and bags until I’ve got them crammed into the back of my car that I hope will make this drive.
I stand and wipe my face, losing the battle of not crying. If there is ever a time to cry, it’s in a farewell. I glance back at the brick building where I learned how to adapt to being an orphan. I wasn’t. My parents passed away a week before I started college, a week after my eighteenth birthday, and since I wasn’t a minor, I technically wasn’t an orphan. I’d only just become an adult, but I felt orphaned. I’d been left alone, and it was in this building where I’d tried to say goodbye to my parents as I learned to live without them.
This first apartment would always hold such significance for that reason. This was where I took a crash course of adulting. How to cook. How to take care of a house. Grocery shopping. Budgeting. Everything. This apartment was where it had all happened. It held so many memories.
And now, they’ve ended.
After I helped my best friend, Lauren, escape her wedding—twice—her ex-fiancé retaliated. Jeremy Freaking Klein. I hate his name. It sounds pompous and dweeby, just like the man it was given to. As a teacher, I’ve picked up a habit of reacting to names. I see so many every year. I meet so many students, and sometimes, certain names stand out after sampling the person it’s attached to.
The name Jeremy will forever be on my bad list now because he got me blacklisted at work. Because I helped Lauren get out of marrying him, he came after me and got me fired from my teaching job at a prestigious LA elementary school. He never should’ve had the power to pull off such a move, but with money or influence, anything is possible. Jeremy had connections, and when he was mad, he didn’t sit down and shut up to get over the fact he couldn’t always get what he wanted. Lauren screwed him out of his master plans of being a lazy rich man, living off her trust fund. It was his only motivation to marry her. For her money and to enjoy her influential parents’ reach in California.
Good riddance. Lauren is better off without him, but it sucks that I was impacted in the aftermath. I haven’t told her yet. She doesn’t need to know that he got me fired. She deserves a chance to be happy with her new man. Caleb seems like he’ll be her only man, not just a new one, and I’m glad she’s found a restart on life with him over at the Goldfinch Ridge B&B outside Breckenridge, Colorado.
That’s where I’m headed now. Once I can tear my gaze from my first adult “home,” I’ll hit the road to join her out there. It’s all I’ve got going for me now. I loosely mentioned visiting her there when she called me to say she’d run away to safety the first time. Tossing the idea of a trip around turned into planning for it though. I prepared to hang out with her there for the last few weeks of summer before the school year started, but now, since Jeremy got me canned, I don’t have a job to return to.
