Dirty Dancing: The Happy Endings Resort Series, Book 14
Page 10
My four-hour shift flies by and before I know it, it’s already time to call it a day and head home. After clocking out, I stay a little while longer and just hang out with Jordan to keep him company because the store is a ghost town today and he’ll be here alone until closing time at seven.
He asks me about school and my aunt, and all the normal stuff. After a while I check the time and tell him I need to head home to my aunt. Giving him a quick hug, I head out.
I walk through the door and smell the amazing aroma of bacon. Toeing my shoes off by the door, I pad across the cool, hardwood floors into the kitchen to find my aunt standing by the stove, cooking.
Slipping my headphones off my head, I rest them around my neck, leaving the music to play. I can faintly hear “Polarize” by Twenty One Pilots coming through them and as I approach my aunt, who hears it too. Turning around with a wide, warm smile spread across her face she reaches out with her free arm and pulls me in for a half hug, while the other works on flipping the bacon.
“Hi, sweetie. How was work?” she asks, turning off the stove and piling the last of the bacon onto a plate.
“It was okay. Slow, but I kept myself busy so my shift went by pretty fast,” I reply, returning her warm smile before walking over to the fridge and pulling out a bottle of water.
“I thought you weren’t going to be home from work until seven-thirty?” My aunt is a charge nurse at the nursing home here in town. She’s was supposed to be working from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. today, but it’s only 6:30 p.m. and she’s home.
“They let me go early. I was battling another one of those awful migraines, so they had my relief come in an hour early. On my way home I stopped to get some more headache medicine, and decided to swing by the pet store since it was nearby. I picked up a small bag of cat food, some crickets and mealworms for Niko and Lisa,” she tells me, pointing toward a clear plastic bag sitting on the floor beside the table.
“Thank you. Yell when dinner’s ready. If you need help with anything, since you’re not feeling well, just let me know.
Scooping the bag up off the floor, I swing it back and forth beside me as I make my way down the narrow hallway to my bedroom.
Pushing my bedroom door open, I head straight over to my hedgehogs’ cage and grab their food dishes. I fill both with little bits of cat food and some mealworms, before sliding them back into their cage.
I rub the tops of their heads to say hello, before relocking their cage and heading over to my desk to check my emails and get some school work done.
Dropping my messenger bag onto the floor, I plop down into my computer chair and fire up my laptop. Logging into my email, I scroll through checking the tiny box beside almost every single one of them to delete. I feel like ninety percent of emails are nothing but junk. A familiar email address catches my attention; it’s from my old foster family, the Browns. I haven’t spoken to them since I moved to South Carolina. I feel a smile form on my face as I open the message.
Dear Hartley,
Mr. Brown and I just wanted to check up on you and make sure you were doing okay. We moved to Endings, South Carolina about two months ago and are staying at a resort. The harsh Minnesota winters were getting to be too hard with my arthritis. We felt like retiring to Florida was too cliché as you young people would say. So instead we bought a cozy little two-bedroom cabin on a quaint little lake. I know you’re probably busy with your new life and college—which we hope is going well. We know you’re going to do great things with your life, but we were hoping since it’s only a short drive from where you’re living with your aunt that you’d be interested in coming for a visit. We miss you dearly. I’d love nothing more than to get to see you, catch up face to face rather than over an email or phone call. If you don’t want to, or are too busy, we completely understand. We know that you have a new life there and are trying to move forward, but we thought we would at least send you an email and see if it was something you’d consider.
Love, Mr. and Mrs. Brown
I jump up out of my chair, causing it to fall back onto the floor with a loud bang, scoop my laptop up off the desk, and run into the kitchen. The loud thud of my chair must’ve startled aunt August, because she was running out of the kitchen as I came running in almost causing us to collide into each other.
Her hands fly up to her chest, holding them against her heart, as she stares at me with a startled expression, as her eyes blink down at me. “Dear Lord, Hartley, you just about gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry.” I laugh as I try to calm my racing heart. “But I had to show you this!” I set my laptop down on the table pointing to the open email filling the screen. Peering over my shoulder, she reads the email out loud.
Finishing the last sentence of the email, she turns to me, propping herself against the back of the kitchen chair. “So do you want to go see them?” By the face-splitting smile spreading across my face, I don’t even have to bother saying a single word. She already knows my answer. But I scream enthusiastically anyways. “Yes! Oh my, God. I can’t wait to see them again. I haven’t talked to them in so long. I never really got a chance to thank them for everything that they did for me.”
Pulling the chair out, she sits down and I do the same, as the sudden feeling to sit overwhelms me. My head spins from the excitement filling it.
“Well, I’ll have to look at my schedule, but I’m sure that I’ll be able to get next week off if you want to go. Your finals are all this week, right? And then you start summer break?” she asks, unfolding herself from the chair, and walking back over to the stove to stir the scrambled eggs.
Nodding, I tell her, “Yup, I have a final tomorrow that I’m studying for tonight and then two more on Friday. Then I’m finished until we go back in August.”
“All right, well I’ll talk to my boss about getting my vacation put through for next week tomorrow. It shouldn’t be an issue, so if you want to email them back and let them know we’d love to come visit. We’ll get back to them with an exact date tomorrow.”
Jumping to my feet, I run across the kitchen, hugging her from behind as she sprinkles shredded cheese onto the eggs. “Thank you. Thank you! Thank you! I’m so excited. Ahhh…this is going to be the perfect way to celebrate the start of summer.” I shriek with excitement before releasing my aunt and retrieving my laptop from the kitchen table.
“Go email them back, then cleanup for dinner. It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
Not wasting a single moment, I rush back to my room, scoop my chair up off the floor, and get to work replying to their email.
Mrs. Brown emails me back an hour later to tell me that they are so glad we’re going to visit them. My heart flutters in my chest at the thought of seeing them. I never had grandparents growing up, so the Browns are the closest thing I have to family besides Aunt August. I can’t wait for them to finally get to meet her. I know they’ll love her as much as I do. They were so worried when I told them I was moving to South Carolina. I think this trip will help set their worries at ease.
I send a quick text to Jordan to ask him for the next week off for the trip. Thankfully I have the world’s best boss, who texted me back right away to let me know it’s totally fine. He’ll just tell his sister to come down and help him out for the week.
After dinner I spend two hours studying for my finals this week. Once my eyes start to go cross from studying so hard, I climb into bed, turn on my favorite movie, Twilight, which I’ve probably watched well over a gazillion times, while looking up this Happy Ending’s Resort Mrs. Brown linked me to in her last email. Not long after starting the movie, my eyes flutter shut as I lose the battle with staying awake any longer, and drift off to sleep where I dream of cute sparkly vampires and cozy cabins on the lake.
The Art of Letting Go by M.C. Brightly available on Amazon March 1st, 2017!
The Happy Endings Resort Series
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Goodreads
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The Inheritance (The Happy Endings Resort Book 1) by Jennifer Benson
Anywhere With You: A Novella (The Happy Endings Resort Book #2) by Danielle Jamie
Drunk on You (The Happy Endings Resort Book 3) by Glenna Maynard
Finding Us (The Happy Endings Resort Book 4) by T.H. Snyder
Summer Maintenance (The Happy Endings Resort Book 5) by Jennifer Foor
Elastic Heart: (The Happy Endings Resort Book 6) by Evelyne Stone
Luring Shadows (The Happy Endings Resort Book 7) by Kristina Rienzi
A Soldier's Dawning (The Happy Endings Resort Series Book 8) by Lisa Survillas
The Thinnest Veil (The Happy Endings Resort Series Book 9) by M. Stratton
Flowers for Marta: (The Happy Endings Resort Series Book 10) by Jenn Braddock
Until You (The Happy Endings Resort Series Book 11) by Heather Dahlgren
Hold Me Close (Happy Endings Resort Series Book 13) by Alisha Cole