“You think I don’t recognize breakup misery when I see it?” Milo tilted his head in sympathy. “I’ve never seen you that gone for a woman before. What happened, man? Did you dump her? Did she dump you? Did you propose and she said no? Oh God, is she pregnant?”
“What? No!” Why was Milo talking about marriage and babies, and why did the thought of that fill Jake not with panic but with yearning? “No, we… we decided the long-distance thing wouldn’t work.”
“So don’t do long distance.”
Jake laughed humorlessly at Milo’s overly simple suggestion. “Yeah? How?”
“Um, it’s pretty simple.” Milo set down his mug and held his hand out toward Jake, jabbing a finger to the base of his palm where it met his wrist. “You.” Then he slid his finger to the tip of his fingers. “Move here to be with the most important person in your life.”
Like it was that simple. “Sure. I just walk away from this place after I finally got my—”
“I swear to fucking God, if you saypartnershipright now.”
The disgust in Milo’s tone caught Jake by surprise, and he shot back, “I’m sorry, have we not both been working our asses off for years for exactly this kind of promotion?”
“Sure,” Milo said easily, pouring another splash of whiskey into his mug. “But I turned down an offer from New York last year because I want to stay close to my folks, and I never would’ve made that choice when I was straight out of college. Ask yourself this: Have you let your goals change over the years? And if not, why not?”
“My goals are fine. Why would they need to ch—” Jake’s voice died in his throat as his brain finally caught up with the things his heart and his gut had been screaming at him.
His prioritieshadchanged. They’d started shifting months ago when Mabel walked into his office and asked for help with the station van. They’d kept shifting as he’d fallen in love with her, as he’d started valuing time with her over checking another box on his work to-do list. But when the time came to choose between her and the job, he’d been too scared to admit that he wanted something different after so long.
“Oh fuck.” He looked at Milo in horror, realizing everything he’d said and done wrong. His mom and Finn were fine. They didn’t need him to take this partnership for the money; all they needed was for him to be happy. “I think I screwed it all up.”
Milo nodded sagely. “I have no doubt you did. You don’t have much practice using your brain as anything other than a calculator.”
Jake lurched to his feet. “I have to fix this. I have to get her back. I can still get her back, right?”
Milo reached for the bottle of Suntory. “Hope so. Here, you’re going to need some more of this while we plan.”
Thirty-Nine
Saturday. Three days in paradise. Three days of Mabel shuffling around the island, wrapped in her own personal gray cloud.
This should’ve been an amazing week. The first night of the trip, Dave had announced at dinner that she’d be back on the morning show with him when they got back, and everyone in their group had cheered and raised their glasses. She’d stood in the center of a group full of warmth and enthusiasm and thanked them all for their support, but inside she felt as steady as the crumbly sand under their feet.
The following day, she established a system that allowed herself three minutes to cry in a bathroom stall before emerging to hide her puffy eyes behind big sunglasses for her next on-air segment. Thank God for the relentless Jamaican sun that made them a necessity. Turned out her closest companions in Jamaica were her mirrored sunglasses and her thoughts. Her bitter, heartbroken thoughts.
At least she didn’t have to force her plastic cheerfulness on Ana and Thea, who were stretched out next to her under the early-afternoon sun. They knew she was a shambling wreck and didn’t expect anything other than gloominess from her.
“If you sigh one more time, I’m going to make you eat my sunglasses,” Ana said. “My baby bump and I are absorbing all the UV rays we can, and you’re bumming us out.”
“Sorry.” And then she sighed again. She couldn’t help it.
Ana propped herself up on her elbows and looked at her over the rim of the enormous tortoiseshell frames that Mabel really didn’t want to have forcibly shoved down her throat. “I’m on day three of this beautiful beach vacation. My children, whom I love dearly, are in Iowa with Dave’s parents. I have the finest, fruitiest alcohol-free drink in my hand and eye candy from one side of the beach to the other. Quit raining on my parade.”
“Seriously.” Thea lifted the edge of her floppy hat to squint at the part of the beach where Aiden and Dave were emerging from the ocean. She’d been letting her pixie cut grow out, and she impatiently brushed the dark strands out of her eyes. “Jake’s the idiot who’s missing out.”
“I doubt Jake’s sobbing in his beer over not witnessing a bunch of pasty midwesterners in swimsuits.” There, saying his name didn’t make her cry that time. Progress. Trying to keep it light, she pointed to the two men racing up the beach like puppies. “I mean, there’s exhibit A and B. Nobody’s missing anything with those two.”
“Mmm. If you say so,” Thea said, her eyes pinned on Aiden as he jogged across the sand. And yeah, true, his chest was nice, but it wasn’t the chest Mabel was missing.
Once the guys joined them on the towels, they shook water over everyone to get them all moving toward a restaurant for a late lunch. Ana and Thea both accepted, but Mabel refused to budge.
“Not hungry. I’ll stay in the sun a little longer. I’ve got a book.” She gestured at the paperback on her lap even though she hadn’t been able to focus on a single paragraph for long enough to understand it.
“Suit yourself,” Dave said with a shrug. “Don’t cry to us when you turn into beef jerky.”
She lazily kicked sand in his direction as the four of them gathered their belongings and headed toward the hotel.
