“I threw up when I got home. All those years of marriage and that’s all it takes for me to want to throw it all away? Four glasses of scotch?” She cries harder.
I let her catch her breath before responding. “I get that you came close to making a big mistake—you’re human. But you chose to leave the situation. You could have stayed and picked things back up the second you were alone again, yet you didn’t. That counts for something.”
“Maybe,” she says as she wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “I felt terrible.”
“Okay. But then why almost do it again last night?” I ask gently, afraid that if I push too hard she’ll shatter into a million pieces.
She sits quietly for a moment before answering, her chest heaving up and down. “As much as I felt disgusted with myself for almost cheating on Ben, for how much I had wanted to kiss my boss, there was a part of me that loved the rush of it all—the way it felt to not be Evan’s or Ellie’s mom, to not be Ben’s college sweetheart. To be desired like that again—I can’t explain the feeling, but it’s overpowering. It’s almost like the whole world slips away for those moments. I don’t expect you to get it. I’m not sure I even understand it myself. All I know is last night, I wanted to feel that way again—no matter the consequences.”
I put my hand over hers but say nothing. It was true, I didn’t understand. I’d give anything to have what she and Ben have, problems and all. But what I did know was that whatever she was feeling, it was real. “So what happens now?” I ask slowly, still trying to sift through my own conflicted feelings—that Jules was on the brink of throwing everything away and I wasn’t sure how to stop her. Even though she was like a sister to me, I had no clue about the one thing that was eating her up inside. Was it because she knew I didn’t want to see that her relationship could be flawed—that I couldn’t accept that people’s lives were far more complicated than they let on, even my closest friend’s?
“I don’t know,” she says as she takes a small sip of water. “I need to think.”
“Where do things stand with your boss?”
“He pulled me into the freezer the next day and we both agreed that it was the scotch talking. But to be honest, there’s still something there, an undercurrent that keeps drawing me to him. And I’m pretty sure he feels it too.”
“So what are you saying? That it’s going to happen again? Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want anymore,” she spits out.
“You dodged a major bullet, Jules. I say to stop while you’re ahead.” I walk over to the bay window and lean my head against it, the sidewalks below not yet cluttered by the tourists—the people, many of them just like Jules, who are hoping to fill a void in their own lives in this City of Sin. Where the allure of the slot machines and the lights and the alcohol help people escape their own realities. “Both times, there’s been something that’s stopped you right before—maybe the universe is trying to tell you something?” I add, trying not to think about the messages the universe had been sending me about my own life.
“Maybe.” Jules materializes beside me, the blanket from the night before still wrapped tightly around her. “I know what the right answer is here. And I really want to assure you that I’ll never put myself in that position again. But you’re the one person I can be honest with—and the truth is I can’t make that promise. Not right now.”
“Okay,” I murmur without meeting her gaze.
“I’m sorry. All you want is to get married to the man you love, while I’m throwing my own marriage away. You must hate me,” she says, apprehension dancing in the backs of her eyes when I finally look up to meet them.
There was a part of me that wanted to shake her—to convince her that sex is just sex. To make her realize how rare it is to have a man like Ben, who not only loves her, but is also completely devoted to their children, even if his job was pulling him away from them at the moment. But I knew I was watching her marriage from the cheap seats, and despite what I thought I knew, she was the one living it every day. And by the way she viscerally described her pain, I knew it was slowly ripping her apart—that I needed to be there for her the way she’d been for me. She’d literally kept me standing after Max left; she’d believed me when I told her my incredible story about traveling through time; and she’d never once judged me for my own mistakes or treated my problems as trivial, even when we both knew they were.
“I could never hate you,” I say as I grab her hand, the heat from the early morning Las Vegas sun already beginning to scorch the window. “It’s all going to be okay,” I promise, gripping her palm tighter, hoping I’m right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO