Page 19 of Unless It's You
A wave of sympathy rushes over me. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Stella looks up and finally meets my gaze, as if assessing if I’m being sincere. “Thank you.”
“It’s kind of, um, unique, that she left you a bucket list.” I try to picture my mum leaving me one. There’s no way. She would never think of doing something that thoughtful. Not in life, and certainly not in death.
“Unique?” Stella lets out an annoyed breath. “She’s completely unhinged.Was,anyway.”
“Why?” I wish I would shut up and stop pushing Stella to talk to me. But I’ve not been able to get her out of my mind. I thoughtabout her too much while I was in Newcastle, and even on Saturday, when I met up with my rugby mates to throw a ball in Regent’s Park and go to the pub.
“My aunt Evelyn left me a personalized bucket list that she wrote just for me.” She emphasizes each of the last three words. “And one for each of my sisters. And if we don’t check everything off within a month, the whole estate goes to charity.”
“Wow. That’s savage.” I can’t stop the grin that crosses my face, and for a second, I think it’ll piss Stella off, but she half-chuckles and smiles back.
“Yeah, she was.” She takes a deep breath and rolls her shoulders back, then her neck, exposing the smooth skin of her throat.
Fuck. She has the same effect on me as she did the first night we met. I hate it. I can’t be around her. It’s... unsettling.
But I also want more of it.
“It might be fun to do something like that with your sisters. Maybe it’ll help you, you know, feel better.”
Another thing Mum had never given me—siblings. I’m thankful for that in some ways. It saved another kid from going through what I did. But I always wonder if it would have made my life easier to have someone else to suffer with. Someone who really understood.
Stella tilts her head and gives me a funny look. “We can’t even talk about it with each other. She’s got all these rules we have to follow. Or else, you know?”
Mum had no living siblings, either, and her parents had died young. There was never a great-aunt to give two shites about me. No one else to care. Only Ben and his parents.
She rolls her eyes to the ceiling, as if searching for strength from her late great-aunt. “And I need to find an advisor to, like, coach me through the list.”
“What? Why?” Ah, that’s what she was talking about to Gemma. I remind myself that I’m supposed to be acting like I hateher. But her voice is kind of hypnotic and sweet, and I want her to keep talking to me.Ugh, sod off,I order my inner voice.
Stella shakes her head, and it looks as if tears are in her eyes. There’s definitely more to this story.
“Sorry for the overshare.” She checks the time on her mobile. “Ready to head to the conference room?”
We grab our laptops and I follow her down the hallway toward the same room we met in last week.
While we’re walking, before we join the rest of the team, I want to say more. Ask more. Share that I lost someone recently, too, someone who would never, ever have left me a bucket list.
Mum never left me anything at all.
I’m finding it hard to keep up the front that I hate Stella Hart, even though long ago, she proved that she’s just like everyone else, choosing me second, preferring my best friend, knowing I’m broken and damaged and not worth her time.
Hating her is the best protection I have.
“I thinkthat storyboard does a great job of communicating the merger and the donation drive.”
“I’m happy you like it.” Graham nods, clicking through the hand-drawn sequence of the winning idea. There’s a rugby scene with a group of boys throwing a ball to an adult—their mentor—and then the same kids, plus several more, going on a hike together.
The Pepper Me creative team did an impressive job churning out three different commercial concepts in only a few days for me to review. This one is simple, but clearly shows the merger of Sporting London and Mentor Me to create Sporting UK Foundation, the new combined charity.
“Unless you think there’s not enough about rugby in the spot?” Tessa says, looking at me intently. “It’s just the one frame,probably only two or three seconds out of the fifteen-second commercial.”
Unless.
The familiar word jars me. How many times have I thought about playing Stella’s Unless Game? A lot. But it meant nothing to her, and I’m a total freak for even making that connection here in a meeting.
My traitorous eyes dart over to Stella. She’s staring at me, sucking in her top lip, and I swear I can feel the connection between us buzzing.
