Page 72 of Packed Up In Vegas

“Glad I get to be the first problem for a lot of things lately,” I said bitterly.

“I’ll look into it,” he promised. “Let me contact the accounting department.”

“Please do.” My bottom lip wobbled and I was trying very hard not to start crying. I didn’t know if the company was scamming me or if I had a problem with my account, but what mattered was that I had gone through all that, turned everyone’s lives upside down, all to end up in the same financial situation.

Couldn’t the universe cut me a fucking break?

I didn’t want to wait there and start crying in front of Miles, so I turned on my heel and zipped back to the workstation they had set up for me, forcing myself to get things accomplished while tears slipped down my cheeks. Maybe it would be a quick fix, something that only took a phone call to resolve. I was still way too raw from the first time being fucked over, and my brain kept screaming that it was happening again.

Soft tenderness flowed down the bond toward me from Kai, and a moment later a text popped up.

Kai:

Need me to come home?

Callie:

I’ll be fine <3

But thank you

I wasn’t going to make him cancel his plans to babysit me. Realistically there were a bunch of things I still needed to do to protect myself. I needed to get myself off the apartment lease so my credit score wouldn’t get fucked if Jerry didn’t pay. I needed to cancel everything we’d booked for the wedding. I needed to decide if I really was going to stay here with the pack, and if the answer was yes, I needed to update my documents, find a handful of professionals in the city like a new doctor, dentist, and who the hell knew what else. I would probably have to set up mail forwarding because if Jerry was willing to throw out all of my things, I could basically guarantee any mail that showed up with my name on it would go straight into the trash.

Why wasn’t there someone I could hire to think of every single thing I needed to do and they could do it for me? Not that it would matter since I had no money to pay anyone to do anything.

I hadn’t been financially insecure growing up, at least not in a way that I had noticed when I was young. Facing it as an adult had been a steep learning curve. I probably should’ve chosen a more practical degree, but I hadn’t and I’d had to compete with everyone else in LA who wanted to make it as a cinematographer. I had plenty of other skills I could put to use to make money if I wanted to work myself to the bone. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d had to do so in the past few years, but for now I would focus on getting the two jobs ahead of me finished as quickly as I could.

I took a break for a couple of hours and worked down my list. Mail forwarding was blessedly easy to set up. After that I contacted my old landlord and told him what went down. He agreed to take me off the lease and would speak to Jerry about adding the other people he had moved in without permission.

Next up was canceling all the wedding things. I didn’t have a lot to worry about since we couldn’t afford a big wedding. We lost the deposits, but that couldn’t be helped. The worst was telling the guests, not that we’d intended to have many. I opted for a mass email, dreading any responses that might come through.

My phone rang not two minutes later. Mom’s name and number floated across the screen.

Great.

With a sigh, I answered. “Hello?”

“What did you do?”

I flinched at the immediate accusation. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Callie,” she sighed, “don’t be obtuse. What happened?”

I didn’t want to give her details, but I knew if I didn’t, she’d be up my ass about it until I caved. “He married someone else.”

Another sigh. More dramatic this time. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!”

“Darling, people don’t throw away that many years of a relationship for no reason. Were you not servicing him?”

“Mom!”

“It’s a reasonable question.”

Reasonable to whom? “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“How else can you avoid failure in your next relationship if you don’t examine your flaws?”

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