Page 12 of Forever & Always You
“Goodbye, other loser,” I reply, and the corner of his mouth twitches. I’d appreciate it if he didn’t do this whole hot and cold thing with me, because just when I feel ready to abandon the idea of fighting for his forgiveness, he pulls me back in again. Not this time. I spin on my heels and take a step in the direction of my car, but my stomach sinks. “No,” I whisper. “Noooo.”
“That’s your car?” Austin asks. “Gabrielle McKinley, the girl who got a soft-top BMW for her birthday, now drives—” he mock gasps “—a Prius? What in the parallel universe is this? I thought you were supposed to be wealthy.”
“Iamwealthy. I’m just not materialistic likeyou,” I fire back, then groan again as I dash across the street to examine my car.
There’s a yellow parking boot on my rear wheel. The same rear wheel I just replaced in the middle of the night. Now I’mtrappedoutside of Austin’s office. Why is the world so cruel to me?
Austin, most likely out of pure joy at my misfortune, joins me by my car. Over my shoulder, he asks, “You didn’t realize you parked in the fire lane?”
“Clearly fucking not, Austin.”
I snatch the note stuck to my windshield and skim through the legal garble. I have a set time limit to pay this parking fine and have the clamp removed before my whole ass car gets towed to the impound lot. It’s yet another headache I really don’t need right now.
“Sucks to be you,” Austin says, and I could smack the smugness from his face.
“Yes, it does suck to be me,” I snap, twisting around at lightning speed and glowering fiercely. Now I’m triggered. “First I get fired from my job, then when I get home, guess what? My shitty apartment’s pipes had burst!” I step forward. “When I admit defeat and decide to come home to my mom’s, I then had a flat tire to contend with.Thattire. The one with the clamp.” Another step closer, my anger so palpable I’m convinced I have steam coming from my ears. “I put up with my mother’s judgment for approximately five minutes before deciding maybe there was a sliver of truth in her words, so I made the very overdue decision to finally try to fix my life, and I decided to start withyou.” I close the remaining gap between us, tilting my chin up. Austin’s gaze is challenging, our eyes locked firm. “And then what happens? I come here to apologize for my wrongdoings, and you don’t want to hear it, and then I ballerina twirl into your glass table. Now my scalp is stitched together and my car is clamped.”
“Hmm.”
My eyes are so narrowed, I’m glaring at him through slits. “Hmm?”
Austin’s lips curve into a smile and he lowers his head, drawing his face even closer to mine. I can almost taste the mint of his breath when he says, “Look how the tables have turned, Gabby.”
Ugh.I flatten my hand on his chest and shove him back. “You know what? Maybe I don’twantyou to forgive me, anyway.”
Austin nonchalantly shrugs. “Cool. So how are you getting that boot off?”
“Go back to work.”
“Do you require help?”
“Go back to work,” I repeat more forcefully, because now I’m under immense pressure with him watching. I sink down onto the hot sidewalk in defeat and pull out my phone, dialing the number on the ticket.
Austin, annoyingly, doesn’t head back to work like I demanded. He stares down at me seated on the curb, his tall frame shielding me from the blazing sun. “Do you really only have eight hundred bucks and some change in your checking account?”
“Yes, and what about it?” I bite, my phone pressed to my ear as the dial tone continues on and on.
“Weren’t you a trust fund kid? Did you blow through all of it already?”
How was I ever best friends with this annoying man? I sigh and look away from him, feigning disinterest in his presence and staring across the street at his office building instead. My trust fund is a sensitive topic. “Haven’t spent a penny of it, but thanks for being so patronizing.”
Austin holds out his hand, palm up. He nods to my phone as it continues to ring in my ear. “Give me that.”
“No.”
“Gabrielle.”
“No. I don’t need your help.”
“I know you don’tneedit, but Iwantto help,” he says, then tilts his head to the side with a gentle expression, like he’s trying to reassure me he’s offering an olive branch and not a smack in the face. “Every time the ice cream truck came around, you bought me those fudge pops I loved so much. Let me pay this fine for you.”
He remembers so many of the little details.
Numbly, I drop my phone into his waiting palm. As he presses it to his ear, he murmurs, “I owe you a lot of fudge pops.”
I remain on the curb as he paces back and forth in front of me, eventually getting through to the parking enforcement agency and settling my debt to society on my behalf. It’s only thirty bucks and a drop in the ocean to him, but I appreciate it regardless. It’s abundantly clear he has an everlasting grudge against me, but maybe he doesn’t totally despise me to the ends of the earth and back. We first met sixteen years ago, and were best friends for nearly ten of those.Surely that counts for something.
“Boot will be removed within a half-hour,” Austin informs me, passing my phone back. “You can’t sit outside in this heat. Come wait inside.”
