The credit card company explains that Mr. Penner canceled the card and closed the account. I’m shaking by the time I get off the phone with them. It’s a mixture of rage and humiliation that causes the tremors. I know, without even checking, that he’s shut down all our joint accounts. Why is he doing this to me?
I have one credit card in just my name, but the limit isn’t all that high. Luckily, it’s got nothing on it, so I can probably pay the entire bill I’ve accumulated so far, but I’ll have to check out today. I head back to the desk and smile at the concierge, whose name tag says Ryan. But I know the smile is wobbly and my eyes are starting to water. “What’s the total?”
Ryan slides a discreetly folded bill across the polished wood of the counter. I unfold it with shaky fingers. Okay. I will be able to pay it off and still have $107 of available credit. That’s it. It makes my stomach roll with panic, but there’s nothing I can do right now, so I hand him my Visa, and in the strongest voice I can muster I say, “Please use this for my charges, and I’ll be checking out now.”
“Thank you and…we hope to see you again.” He looks so sympathetic it makes me feel worse. When he’s done and hands me back my credit card, I swear it feels like it’s hot, like there should be smoke coming off of it. I just annihilated my entire available credit in one blow. How is this my life? Ugh.
“I’ll just head up and pack my things.”
“Take as long as you need. We’re not in a rush to turn over the room,” Ryan says. I nod and beeline toward the elevator. I start to scroll through my contacts to find Adam’s number, but I’m still shaking, and I end up dropping my phone.
It falls screen down on the marble floor, and I know the screen cracked. I don’t even have to pick it up. I just know it. One big fat tear starts to hover on the edge of my lower eyelid, and I raise my hand and catch it before it can fall. If I let it fall, it will bring its friends and then I’ll be crying in public. I’m not ready to cry in public. I’m not ready to admit my life is that far off track.
Before I can bend to pick up my phone, someone else is doing it for me. That damn tear hovering in my vision makes the person just a blur of blond hair and dark shirt, but then there’s a hand pressed to my back, and it feels so warm and comforting that I instantly start to take deeper breaths. He’s gently moving me forward with that warm, strong hand on my lower back. We reach the bank of elevators. “Punch the up button.”
I do what Jude tells me. The doors swing open, and we step inside. He punches the close button before anyone can join us, and his blurry face is turned to mine as he commands, “Hit your floor.”
I hit seventeen.
His hand is still on my lower back, pressed flat and firm, as we ascend.
The elevator rises quickly, and before I can get the liquid in my eyes to stop multiplying we’re at my floor. I have to pack everything. I have a lot of stuff, and it’s everywhere. I hadn’t planned on leaving. And I have nowhere to go. And Jude is going to see this—see me in this disastrous state—and suddenly that is the most horrifying aspect of this entire thing. Jude knew wild, fearless, confident and powerful Zoey Quinlin. That girl doesn’t exist right now. I hope to resuscitate her, but that hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t want him to know this woman. Dependent, weak, confused and abandoned Zoey Penner.
Oh crap. My urge to cry is getting stronger, not subsiding. As we walk down the hall I concentrate on the warm, reassuring feel of his palm against me. I try to absorb that feeling, let it seep into me and spread through me. It helps, a little. So do his words.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I know you’ll be okay,” he says as I slow in front of my door. I take the key card and will my hand to stop shaking, which it doesn’t, as I swipe it and the lock flashes green. Jude puts his hand on top of mine and twists the doorknob with me. We walk into the room almost as one, our feet beside each other.
The door closes behind us with a quietwhoosh. The curtains are still closed, since I didn’t open them before I left this morning, and the room is oddly dark. It gives this whole moment a dreamlike quality. His hand on my back slides around to my hip, and he turns me so I’m facing him again.
He lifts his other hand, the one holding my phone. The screen is facing him, and he winces and then tosses it on the bed. “You’re going to need a new phone.”
“I need a lot of new things,” I whisper back and fight to keep the tears from falling.
“Anything I can help with?”
“No.” My answer is firm and swift. “I can handle it.”
“I know you can.” His response is just as firm and filled with a lot more confidence than mine. I look up, and our eyes lock, and I feel the power of his stare. Jude’s always held this inexplicable intensity behind eyes that are so light and faultless. Even when his lips are pulled into a teasing smirk and his eyebrows are quirked in a playful arch, his eyes crush you with a deep, penetrating stare. It creates that deliciously off-balance feeling I haven’t felt since I was eighteen. “You don’t look like you believe that, though, so I just wanted to be sure you didn’t need a reminder.”
“A reminder?”
He nods and moves closer, just an inch or two, but it feels like he’s right on top of me now. It creates a feeling of excitement that eats away at my melancholy. “I don’t care what your last name is now, you’re Zoey Quinlin. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known with the best smile and the biggest attitude. You could do anything, get anything, be anything and make any man into your personal lap dog.”
I almost laugh at that. Air escapes my lungs in a puff, and I feel the corners of my mouth lift. He grins back, big, bold and confident. “So whatever is happening in your life right now, it might have knocked you down, but it didn’t knock you out. Zoey Quinlin doesn’t get knocked out; she does the knocking out.”
“Okay.”
“You bet your sweet ass okay.” He smiles. “And it’s still a very sweet ass.”
I laugh, full and complete this time.
“I’m going to go, unless you need me for anything,” Jude says, his hand dropping from my waist. I instantly feel its absence. “And I mean anything. I will help you with anything, whether it requires clothes or not, so I should go because, Mrs. Penner, I might get myself into trouble.”
He turns toward the door, and I take a deep breath that is, surprisingly, not shaky. “Jude,” I say, and he stops, door pulled open, one foot already in the hall. “Thank you.”
“I’ll see you soon, Zoey,” he promises, and then he leaves.
I have a fleeting but overwhelming urge to follow him into the hall and drag him back in here and rip his clothes off and finish what we started eleven years ago. I know he’ll let me, Mrs. Penner or no Mrs. Penner. But my life already feels like a meteor barreling out of control through the atmosphere. Sleeping with Jude right now would only create an even more obliterating impact when my life finally lands somewhere. No matter how fantastic it would feel to finally get naked with him.
