Page 42 of Falling

“Birthday card?” Seth asked, leaning over the bar to get a look at the thick, folded cotton paper with silver-gilt edges that I’d ripped out of the envelope in a panic.

I swallowed my heart back down, where it sank into the floorboards under my feet as I looked at the paper in my hand.

“No,” I murmured after a moment, wondering if it was too early to have a whiskey for the shock. “Alex is getting married.”

17

MILES

Miles:

can I call you?

Joel:

always

I chewed my lip while I looked at Joel’s response, hesitating over the call button. Ryder’s advice had gotten me this far, and he was right. At least, he was right that I needed to try.

The bed creaked under me as I sat down on the edge of it, staring out the bedroom window at the trees beyond. It was a nice view, if you liked that kind of thing. Calming. All it needed was rain rolling down the window and it could’ve been a sleep ambience video in real life.

My phone lit up with a spam email notification, dragging my attention back to it.

I needed someone else to talk to, and it couldn’t be Evie. Well, it probably could have been, but… I didn’t want it to be Evie. I needed someone who was a step removed.

I hit call.

I’d planned to take a few deep breaths while the phone rang, but Joel picked up before the second ring had even finished.

“Hey,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “What do you need?”

You have a type, I thought. I knew someone else who would’ve answered the phone exactly the same way if I called him right now.

“Nothing,” I said. “I mean… nothing except to catch up with you?”

A brief silence on the other end of the line suggested Joel didn’t entirely believe that.

“Sure,” he said. “I hear you’re running your own library?”

“I am,” I said with a sigh. This wasn’t as hard as I’d expected it to be. Okay, we were still in awkward small talk territory, but it’d been eight months since we last spoke. That was to be expected. It was good to hear his voice, and no resentment in it. “It’s… so much harder than you could imagine.”

“So you need me to come rescue you?” Joel asked.

He would have. Because he was my friend. Even if he’d been Evie’s friend first.

I laughed. “I’m too scared of the guy who hired me to run away,” I joked. Well, sort of joked. I didn’t like the idea of disappointing Seth, but I wasn’t scared of him, exactly. Just of letting him down.

What I was scared of was…

“How’s things on your end?” I asked instead of following that train of thought just yet. “How’s Malibu?”

“Hot,” Joel said. “But I’m into it. No one ever yells at me to put a shirt on.”

“You mean Evie doesn’t yell at you to put a shirt on,” I said, grinning at the memory of Evie doing exactly that and flinging one at Joel’s head.

“No one,” Joel said diplomatically.

“Especially not your new boyfriend?” I asked.