Page 25 of P.S. It’s Always Been You
“We were only together for—”
“Half a year. I remember.”
“Keeping a record of all my past women?”
“Yeah, it’s about a football field long.”
“That was a good football game,” I joke, then make my way down the court with the ball and swivel to answer him, grateful that I can play easily. For a few weeks there after the chute malfunction, my knee complained through every pickup game. Now it’s pain-free. “Look. It’ll be fine. So what if we were once together? She presumably moved on; so did I. We’re simply reuniting for a job.”
That’s mostly true.
It’s the not quite true part that’s bugging me.
It’s been nagging at me for three months, starting with a routine jump that didn’t go my way.
Ninety-two days ago, my parachute didn’t deploy until I was a few hundred feet from the ground. The whole time as I was careening like a bullet train to earth, I should have been thinking about seeing my father again, since I was surely heading to the same end. I should have been prepping to meet my Maker or sending last words, so to speak, to my mom, my family, my friends.
Instead, my only thought was of her. An out-of-nowhere image of Presley slammed into the windshield of my mind as I raced toward the end of my life.
When the chute miraculously opened, impact was a son of a bitch, full of searing pain. My knee screamed at the sheer concrete force of the near-death collision with the ground.
My brain wasn’t quiet either, saying Presley, Presley, Presley over and over again.
But what am I supposed to do with these thoughts of her?
“So you’re telling me she’s not the reason at all that you said yes? Because it doesn’t seem like a typical job for you,” Josh points out as I position myself for a shot.
“Why not?” I shoot. I score.
“Because you’re Mr. On the Go. You don’t work locally. You’re barely even in Los Angeles, so I hardly see you here or there. When was the last time you were in New York? Two, three years ago?”
I scratch my jaw as he retrieves the ball. “Maybe. Wait. I was here for the Emmys.”
Josh shoots me a steely gaze. “The Emmys are in LA. You can’t fool me. But nice work, dropping in that you attended the awards ceremony.”
I wiggle my brows. “I was nominated too. Have I mentioned that?”
He flips me the bird, then he shoots. “Have I mentioned I swept the championships last year, repping clients who won the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, and the NBA Championship?”
I snap my fingers. “Wait. I remember the last time I was here. It was for a book event when my latest number-one best seller hit the shelves.”
“Glad to see you haven’t changed a bit. You’re still the same cocky bastard you always were.”
“Naturally.” I flash a grin. “And so are you. But to answer your question, I have been back plenty. You know my mom gets worked up if she doesn’t see me.”
“So what’s the story? Did she lure you back here?”
I shrug. “Kind of. She worries about me. I get it.”
“I bet she worries more since the parachute incident.” He gives me a pointed look. Josh knows what went wrong with the chute, knows what it did to my knee, knows the joint is all better, but he doesn’t know how it rattled me.
“She does worry. Her solution is—get this—to set me up with a nice local woman so I’ll settle down.” I scoff for good measure.
“She’s such a matchmaker. If only she knew about Presley.”
I bring my finger to my lips. “Shh. She was working on the other side of the country when I dated Presley, so I dodged that matchmaking bullet.”
“Though that raises the question—is Presley one of the reasons you took the job?” he asks, persistent bastard that he is. “Are you hoping to get back together with her?”
I shake my head. “That’s not it.” Sure, I’m still attracted to her. Yes, I’m damn curious about her. But I didn’t know that till the other night, so it can’t be why I said yes.
I said yes before I saw her because I want to understand why she has invaded my thoughts since that messy jump. I want to know what I’m supposed to do with her reentry into my head.
“Then what is it? Because working with a woman you slept with is not easy, man. Trust me, I should know. The baggage can trip you up.”
Tripped up is precisely how I feel. It’s how I’ve felt the last few months. Unsteady, uncertain . . . And uncertainty is deadly in my line of work. Put that way, maybe I should let Josh in on the situation and hope he can help me make sense of it.
