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“Bye, Sage,” Knox said, his smile dropping.
“Bye,” she said, allowing her superficial friend to yank her away. “You can let go now,” she told Brit.
“You can thank me for pulling you away,” Brit said. “He’s kind of a pain, isn’t he?”
“He’s harmless,” she said.
“He’s a dork,” Steph said. “He’s always trying to come up and talk to you. He looks like he should still be in elementary school.”
She giggled. That thought had crossed her mind at times too. “That’s not his fault,” she said. “That would be genetics.”
“I heard his mother is fooling around with some guy and the baby she’s carrying isn’t her husband's,” Maddie said.
Sage hadn’t even known Knox’s mother was pregnant. Why would she know those things? And how did Maddie know? Maddie was always the one in the group full of gossip.
“Who cares about those things,” she said.
Her father was an NYPD detective and more than once had told her to keep her nose clean by staying out of other people’s problems.
Her mother was a hairdresser and listened to her client’s problems all day long and agreed with her father. It was better to ignore things that didn’t affect her.
It was just so hard at this age it seemed. Someone was always trying to bring another person down.
Maddie shrugged. “I’m only saying.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “It’s not like I’m going to date the kid. We were talking about our English test.”
“My mother says it always starts with English and then the next thing you know, he’s stalking you until you give in and say you’ll go to the prom with him,” Brit said. “Put your foot down. Say he’s a nerd and you’d never lower yourself to dating him. He’ll leave you alone after that.”
Sage was going to say she’d never be that mean, but when she turned, her eyes landed on Knox’s and she’d seen he’d heard that statement and walked away.
Her group of “friends” burst out laughing and she wondered if she’d just been set up for that.
It seemed to be the story of her life. Wrong place at the wrong time and she was the one coming out smelling like turds rather than the rose.
1
A NEW LIFE
Twenty Years Later
“Sage,” Poppy Bloom-McGill said, coming into her office. “Sorry to bother you, but the condo association just reached out to me. There are some condos having work done in the building and the men will be in your place tomorrow morning. They need someone there. I guess they have to check to make sure it won’t affect you or something. Not sure of the details, but hopefully someone will explain it then.”
“Oh,” she said.
Sage had been living in Mystic for six months since she’d been hired as the Marketing Director for Blossoms.
She knew she most likely got the job because her new sister-in-law, Violet, was the manager of the flower shop below her office.
Just another thing that felt like she couldn’t do for herself, but she tried not to complain since she loved her job so much.
Not only that, she had a beautiful condo she rented that all but fell into her lap when two other employees, Heather and Daisy, both moved out to live with their fiancés. It was Poppy’s condo that she’d kept and rented out when she moved in with her now husband.
A new job, a new place to live, and a new life that she so desperately needed.
Did she run away from her past life? Yes, she sure the hell did and wasn’t even going to argue it.
“You can work from home tomorrow,” Poppy said. “Not a big deal.”
