Page 59 of Win Some Love Some
“Then that’s amazing! Nick finally has help!” Jolie cried out.
The clapping started again and I wanted to kill them all. This is why I didn’t tell people my business.
“Can we get back to the game? Fiona, it’s your bet.”
“Raise.”
Again the entire table groaned.
The gameover and the food cleaned up, I was stuffing my well-earned twenty-three dollars into my back pocket as I made my way to my truck. The moon was high, reflecting off the water. The lighthouse light was spinning in its slow arc across the ocean, a warning and a welcome all at once.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine what the cove would have looked like a hundred years ago.
Just the same. Which is exactly what I loved about this place.
“Hold up,” Roy shouted from the front steps of Mal’s house. I looked around but I was the only one left in the parking lot. I’d stuck around doing my part to finish off those sliders.
I waited beside my truck for him to catch up, assuming he was going to have some words of warning about hiring Nora. If things didn’t work out at the garage and I did have to fire her, I tried to imagine what that would do to my relationship with Roy.
Two weeks of no morning coffee chats? I could survive two weeks. After that, though, it might get hard.
“What’s up?” I asked him as soon as he came around the truck. “Are you mad about that last hand? You know lying is part of the game.”
“Don’t care about the hand. I want something from you. Two things, actually.”
This was interesting. It wasn’t like Roy to ask for help outside fixing his truck for him.
“Anything.”
I meant that. I would do anything for this man and he knew it. Just like I would do anything for Antony and Birdie and my brothers and sisters.
What about Wyatt and Liam? Would I do anything for them? Was it time to put them in that mix?
I didn’t have an answer for that yet. I wasn’t even sure why I was thinking about them.
“I want you to see if you can get Nora back on social media.”
No way I heard that right. “You want her to getbackon social media? Roy, why would you want that?”
“She was good at it. It made her happy. She likes to reach people and that was her platform. That asshole took that joy away from her, and I want her to have it back.”
“They destroyed her after it all went down. They trolled every video she made trying to explain what happened like…like…she was a fucking terrorist or something. I didn’t know mean like that existed in the world, and you want her to go back to it?”
My heart started thumping in my chest just thinking about it. She’d been in Paris, by herself, standing against what felt like an ocean of vicious menacing threats.
U R 2 stupid to live.
Hey dumb ass, buy me a watch and I’ll fuck you good too.
She asked for it.
In my life I’d never felt so helpless, so useless.
“You saw the videos?” Roy asked me.
“Some,” I lied. “They were kind of hard to avoid.”
“Yeah, there was a lot of gross stuff said. Nora told me not to read the comments, so I didn’t. But her videos used to be great. I could watch my baby spend a day eating her way through Paris and it would make me happy. Because she was happy. I want that for her again.”
