There was a bottle of water on her nightstand and a note. “Hey, Jules. I’m crashed on your couch if you need me.” Signed with a little heart face and capital ‘S’. A wave of sweet relief washed over her. Praise the heavens. SueAnn was in her kitchen right now. Julia lifted the plastic to her lips and took a long drink to moisten her parched throat.
Padding down the hallway, the smell of the bacon and coffee just got better and better. She didn’t think she had ever smelled anything so wonderful in her life.
“Jules!” exclaimed SueAnn when she saw her bleary-eyed friend appear around the corner into the kitchen. “You’ve returned to the living.”
Julia winced at the light and from the high voice she loved so much. “Quieter and darker, please. What time is it?”
SueAnn was looking at her funny. Like she’d sprouted another head. “Almost noon. How are you feeling?” She asked as she came over and wrapped her up in a comforting hug.
Noon? She hadn’t slept that late since a bout with the flu.
“Like I have a hangover on top of a hangover,” Julia said, hugging her back. Hanging on for dear life. She knew something was wrong just by SueAnn’s mere presence in her kitchen.
“Yeah, we’ll talk about that.” SueAnn pulled away and gave her a warm smile. “Over coffee, scrambled eggs and bacon. I’m so glad I found some good grub in your fridge. Since you just returned home from the hotel, I was worried my choices might be bleak.”
She turned and walked over to the coffee pot, topped off her own mug and poured one for Julia. Julia took a seat at one of her bar stools by the counter.
“Please tell me I didn’t do anything stupid.” Julia felt the desperation in her tone. “I don’t even remember getting home. I just don’t do this.” She put her head in her hands and closed her eyes. Man, she felt like crap. And embarrassed.
Her friend set the mug of hot cream and sugar filled coffee in front of her, just how she liked it. SueAnn took Julia’s hands and held them. “No, Jules. Not by a long shot.”
Slowly, she began to tell Julia what happened. Tears brimmed Julia’s eyes, and a chill washed over her. Fear about what could have happened and relief that she’d had a savior.
“Now don’t you start with the waterworks. I’ll start balling too and that will ruin breakfast,” SueAnn said, her own eyes already glassy.
Julia let out a little laugh but then groaned from her splitting head. “So Adam? He really decked that guy, Carter?”
“I’m telling you, Jules, from what I heard, if those two other guys hadn’t jumped in, Carter would still be flat on that pavement beaten to a bloody pulp. Jill St. John happened to be waiting behind the velvet ropes and she called me this morning. It’s all over town how Adam was like some kind of Mixed Martial Arts bad-ass. Jill called it swoon worthy. His already lofty stock is going to skyrocket with the locals.”
Julia felt her heart flutter. She wished she could remember. But maybe it was a blessing that she couldn’t. She felt infuriated and indignant toward Carter and honestly wanted to take a few shots at him herself, but mostly she enjoyed the idea of Adam coming to her rescue. Like a real man.
She wanted to see him … to thank him. But first, she wanted Tylenol, food, and a nap. In that order. Somehow she knew that her actual knight in shining armor would be waiting for her when she felt more like herself.
***
Julia spent most of the day in bed. Later that afternoon, she must have stood in the shower for a good twenty minutes just letting the hot water bathe over her and rinse away the last of her aches and fatigue. And her anger. If she wasn’t so damn tired, she’d be shaking with it. How could she have let herself become so vulnerable? She wasn’t the kind of woman who put herself in the position to need rescuing.
Just after six, she’d decided to microwave some leftover Chinese food when the ding of the doorbell snapped her head forward. She glanced at the screen of her iPhone and it was blank.
Julia looked down at her white cotton robe and pink fuzzy slippers. God, she hoped it wasn’t Adam.
She walked over to the door and peeped through the tiny hole. Seriously? What in the hell could she possibly want? Julia opened the door and the woman smiled wide in greeting, but Julia stayed wary. She really had no idea what to expect because this one had been a snotty loose cannon since high school.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” She stuck out her slender porcelain hand. She was dressed in an expensive black outfit that accentuated her perfect skin, to go with her perfect hair and make-up.
Heather McNeal. You’ve been a boil on my ass since you submitted my photo to Clinton Kelly to try to get me featured on What Not To Wear. Not everyone can afford designer labels in high school.
As if on cue, her cerulean eyes scanned Julia from head to toe and halted on the fuzzy slippers. Then, her lips turned up in a smirk
“Um … yes, I know who you are,” Julia said.
“Listen, I know this might be a strange request, but I was wondering if we could have a little girl talk.” She smiled warmly at Julia. But something was off.
Julia wished SueAnn had stayed the entire day. She could just refuse the request and tell her to leave. But if she were rude to miss fancy pants, that would make the rounds around town and could negatively affect her business. She glanced at Heather’s hand and noticed the absence of Adam’s engagement ring.
Julia opened the door wider and stood aside. Heather bounced in, her glorious blonde hair falling around her slim shoulders.
“Ooh,” she cooed. “I love your place. So small and quaint. Almost … rustic. I know you renovate old barns. What a charming profession. Seems that decorating style has seeped into your home too.”
Heather’s high-pitched lilt sounded like she’d be headed back to her old sorority house after this conversation. Like time had stood still and she hadn’t grown at all. What had Adam ever seen in this woman? After a few minutes in her presence, it just didn’t compute.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Julia asked as she walked into the living room and offered Heather a seat in the re-upholstered wingback.
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I won’t be staying long.”
Julia sank down in the chair opposite her and waited.
“Listen,” Heather began as her dismissive gaze swept the eclectic collection of antiques in Julia’s living room that most considered charming. “I heard that you had quite the night last night. As a friend, Julia, you could do better than Carter.”
“Carter? What are you talking about?” Julia’s heart raced and she clenched her palms into fists.
“Oh, everyone’s talking about it. Everyone always talks about everything when it comes to Adam.”
“I really don’t know what you’re doing here, but—”
“He did the same thing with me,” Heather said as she stared Julia down. As if she’d done something wrong. As if she were stupid.
“What?”
“Adam.”
Julia stood. “Whatever you think you heard is wrong, Heather. Adam—”
“Saved you from a sexual assault,” finished Heather, interrupting her again. “An assault that no one really knows if you had coming. After all, you’ve been a tease since high school. Drawing men in with your curvy body and sassy personality. But none of them were ever good enough, were they?”
Julia closed her mouth and stared. She shook her head. “Heather. You’re a guest in my home. You came here. It’s my understanding that your affections have strayed in a different direction.”
“You don’t understand. But then, you attended one of those state schools and majored in design. Who knows what kind of education a person receives at a cheap college. You’re so silly. This is exactly how Adam got me to date him. He knew I was seriously out of his league as a poor farm kid. I don’t slum. But since he was probably going to get drafted into the NHL, I made an exception.”
Julia’s head hurt from trying to understand what Heather was getting
at. “You’re going to have to give me more information. Everyone knows that you’re rich and Adam was poor. I don’t see what that has to do with any of this now.”
Heather sighed and pressed her fingers to her temple. “Julia, I shouldn’t be surprised that I have to spell it out. Remember that kegger back in my junior year the night of homecoming? You were younger, but your brother was there. Adam paid Trip McWilliams his entire week’s pay from the feed lot to slip a Xanax into my beer. Just when I hobbled out to get lost in the corn field, he came swooping in to save me. Sound familiar?”
Julia’s stomach rolled over and she sat back down so she didn’t pass out. Her mind raced. No way. Not Adam. But … it sounded exactly how SueAnn told her the events of last night occurred. Heather viewed her stricken expression as an invitation to drive the knife in even further.
“I know, right? I couldn’t believe it either when Mark finally confessed the truth. We’d shared a couple of bottles of wine at Rinaldi’s over lasagna and he told me everything. In that moment, I knew I’d picked the wrong brother. Adam’s sick, Julia. Selfish and cold. His hands are like ice and he never really wanted to touch me. I almost wonder if he’s gay. At first, I laughed and shrugged it off, but then he showed me a photo of the ground up pills Adam keeps in a bottle in his bathroom. He told Mark they were for his knee.”
Julia stood on shaky legs and pointed a finger at Heather, no longer able to contain the raging emotion she’d been feeling since this morning. The anger moved through her like hot knives slicing butter. “Get the hell out of my house.”
“What?” Heather remained motionless and seated, her elegant face wrinkled with confusion. As if no other woman had ever dared to talk to her with rancor. And piss.
“I said that you and your disgusting lies need to get the hell out of my ‘charming’ house.” Julia used everything in her power to keep her voice calm but it quaked anyway. Gritty, low and full of venom.
Heather squinted at Julia, her blue eyes deepening like an incoming ocean storm. “Did you just throw me out of your home?”
Julia stood her ground, hands on her hips and nodded. Afraid to open her mouth again. Because if she did, words would tumble out that might be more appropriate for a dockside wharf or a truck stop.
“The Chamber of Commerce is going to hear about this, Julia Wales,” she spat as she stood and smoothed the wrinkles from her designer outfit. “My father will make you wish you were never born. You and your little barn business. It’s more than likely you were born in one.”
With a flip of her glorious, shiny hair, she stomped through the living room and into the foyer. Heather opened the door, slid through it and slammed it hard. The sound of the oak door hitting the frame with such force caused the huge breath Julia’d been holding to escape from her lungs on a hiss. Rather like a rattlesnake. God. She didn’t like behaving like a bitch. Sometimes, as a young woman in business, she’d had to but it wasn’t her normal modus operandi. Seems Heather McNeal brought out the worst in everyone. Adam. Mark.
Now Julia too.
She tromped into the kitchen to brew a cup of chamomile and lavender tea in her cast iron teapot. The loose leaf concoction might be the only thing capable of ironing out the kinks in her ravaged nerve endings. And once she had the steaming mug in hand, she’d take another dip in her antique, claw-foot tub while listening to Adele.
Julia breathed in deeply and felt some blessed relief spread through her tight limbs at the thought of the stress relief routine. Maybe a yoga class this week at TRX Fitness. Yeah. Heaven. It was time to start taking more breaks during the week and stopping to smell the roses.
The buzzing of her iPhone broke through her current fantasy of downward dog. She glanced down and saw SueAnn’s name. In bold letters.
SueAnn: SOS
Not wanting to text after that greeting, Julia hit the green button for SueAnn in her contacts.
“Hey, girlfriend,” SueAnn’s voice floated over her. Calming her. Except — SueAnn sounded frantic. “Feeling better?”
“I was starting to,” Julia replied. “I was just grabbing a cup of tea so I could soak in the tub and declare this day over. Tomorrow is a new one.”
“Yeah, about that.” The pause on the other end of the line became long. And meaningful. SueAnn knew something. Something she didn’t want to divulge.
“Sue?” Julia prompted. “What is it?”
The sound of cars whizzing by Sue’s phone, horns and people screaming became so loud Julia could barely make out her actual words. “I’m standing … corner … Elm … Boulevard.”
“Sue, you need to speak up,” Julia talked louder. “I can’t make out half of what you’re saying.
“There, is that better?” Julia could finally make out Sue’s words but her friend still sounded tinny and far away.
“A little,” Julia replied. “You said something about being out on the street?”
“Yeah, I’m standing on the corner of Elm and Flagship where a crowd has gathered.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask. If only because the past twenty-four hours couldn’t get any worse.”
“Julia?” SueAnn asked. “Do you have any enemies that I don’t know about?”
Her mind raced. Until a half hour ago, she wouldn’t have counted Heather as an enemy but that probably just changed when she threw the gorgeous woman out on her perfectly sculpted ass. Having Carter arrested last night would also put him on the short list. Other than that, she really didn’t. Julia Wales prided herself on her pleasing personality. Hell, she’d been voted Miss Congeniality back in the Miss Duluth pageant in 2011.
“SueAnn, you’re scaring me,” Julia pressed as she grabbed the whistling tea kettle and poured hot water over the leaves to steep. “Why does the streetcorner have anything to do with whether or not I have any enemies?”
“You know that digital billboard they just installed there?” SueAnn sounded out of breath again. Like she was walking. Or running. “The one that changes advertisements every few minutes?”
“Of course,” Julia answered. “It’s the first one of it’s kind in Duluth so I read about it in the paper. Bellisio’s used it to feature their famous lasagna.”
“I’m going to hang up now so I can send you a picture,” SueAnn panted. “Promise you’ll call me back as soon as you get it.”
“Of course.”
It didn’t take more than ten seconds until a brilliant color photograph came through her incoming text messages. Before she could open it to look, the Facebook feed and Twitter feed for Julia Wales Designs exploded.
Julia tapped on the thumbnail size photo and enlarged it so she could see the entire photo of the billboard.
“Holy mother of God.”
TO BE CONTINUED
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The Slot by Colleen Charles ©2016 All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Colleen Charles loves reading and writing stories that entertain and sweep the reader away from their everyday life.
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