Friction(75)

By the next day, we were back to normal. I had no more tears left in me, but what I did have was anger. At the person who forwarded the photo to the media—and it didn't take very much effort to figure that one out. Considering the jackass I was once married to carried a grudge against me for not returning to San Francisco and was now ignoring my calls to directly confront him.

Most importantly, though, I felt anger at myself.

This was a disaster of my own doing, and there was no one I could blame but me.

For the first few days, I tried to call Jace, just so I could apologize again, but each call was sent directly to voicemail. And each text was read and not replied to. Not that I blame him. I couldn't blame him, and as I got his voicemail for the millionth time just yesterday, I realized something that shattered me to pieces:

At some, while Jace and I were carrying on our casual relationship, I had fallen for him. I had fallen for the sardonic way he said my name and the wicked look he gave me when he called me buttoned-up. I had fallen for the boy who gave me so much grief in high school, the boy with a beautiful accent, the man who wouldn't return my calls.

And that burns worse than I ever imagined. Worse than it did when things went south with my husband months ago.

Shifting my focus back to my mother, I lift my shoulders and reach for my laptop. She slaps my hand sharply, and I wince. “Dammit, Mom. I'm just trying to see if everything is going to work out. What’s it hurting for me to just … look?”

Her lips tighten into a frown. “He still hasn’t called you back to tell you for himself?”

“No,” I say and massage the bridge of my nose. I have a killer headache forming from staring at the computer screen for far too long. “He hasn't and he's not going to. I talked to Daisy and she doesn’t know much, just that he’s still really angry.”

Mom is silent, the look on her face unreadable as she studies my features, which are an equal blend of her and my dad.

At last, she reaches out and slides a strand of black hair behind my ear. “Stop checking the Internet,” she orders. “Stop checking the Internet, stop searching for this man, and move on with your life.”

“Mom,” I groan. “I’ve potentially ruined him. How can you tell me that?”

“Don’t mom me, Lucinda Jane. If you did ruin him, you’ll know because then he will call you to tell you what he thinks of you. I know it hurts, and it's going to hurt for a while because you were stupid—” I huff loudly, but she narrows her eyes and continues. “Now you're paying the price for being stupid. But if you sit around and let this eat away at you, it’s just going to hurt worse. Call Jamie. Go out. Have fun. I’m tired of seeing you around here so much.”

I give her a sideways look, releasing a laugh, my first genuine one in a week. “I'm sorry what did you do to my mother because my mom would never tell me to go out with Jamie because I lose my phone and come home without my shoes.”

She rolls her brown eyes. “If it will get you off this couch and make you take a shower, you can lose your phone every week and I’ll replace it for you.”



“I want you to come with me to see Bailon,” I tell Jamie a couple of nights later as we down drinks at her place. At my statement, she arches her dark brows.

“Thought you said you ate before you came over, but that pi?a colada seems to be going to your head a little fast.” Because I don’t crack a smile at her joke, she sighs then turns her shot up to her lips. “Alright, Luce, I’ll bite. When are you suggesting we do this?”

“Tomorrow. Hell, we can go tonight.” I had spent most of the day stressing over ways to do my part in fixing my mistake, and the only solution that makes sense is to talk to B directly. I know I won’t be able to speak to Victoria—the other woman in the photo—but at least I can implore Bailon not to sue Jace and EXtreme. “If you don’t want to go, it’s fine and I’ll—”

“Luce,” my best friend exhales, “don’t even give me that bullshit. You want to talk to the man; we’ll go talk to him tomorrow before my shift starts.”

And Jamie keeps her word. She meets me at Bailon’s swanky building at 2:00, dressed for work in a set of Hello Kitty scrubs. “Don’t look at me that way.” But the corners of her mouth tug upward as we take the elevator to the fourth floor. “I happened to like these scrubs.”

“That song is in my head, you know,” I say, trying to find something to focus on to calm my nerves. I’m scared to death of visiting the man, but I know it’s unavoidable. If it helps Jace at all, begging and pleading with B will be worth the embarrassment.

“Major rager OMFG,” she says dryly, repeating a phrase from the song I’m referring to. It had played the night we went out when I first returned to Massachusetts, and she’d rolled her eyes and said that she wanted Avril Lavigne to go back to being complicated.

The elevator doors open, and I let out a breath that scorches my lungs because we’re so close now.

“It’ll be fine, Luce. And if he’s a dick—”

“Nice to see you again, Ms. Williams,” a voice greets me from the U-shaped receptionist’s desk, and the fear in my chest expands when I take in the sight of Sonora. shit. I tentatively approach, Jamie close on my heels. Instead of the derisive expression I expect to encounter, the redhead turns sympathetic blue eyes up to mine.