I huffed out a laugh. “Mom?” I called through my open door. I hated that we left our last interaction in such a state. It was a small apartment so she’d hear me. “You here still?” Clearly she’d gone.
Checking my makeup one last time, I knew I needed to get going. As I stepped over the crate to get back through my sliding door, another text came in.
Jay Bird: Okay. This is ridiculous. Coming to get you.
But as I read Joey’s words, something caught my eye amongst the mail. A legal letter. A law firm in New York. Addressed to the mother or guardian of, Jessica Fraser.
I stilled.
REACHING DOWN, I fingered the textured linen envelope. The contents clearly concerned me, but it wasn’t addressed to me. My conscience capitulated in less than thirty seconds, and I slid my finger under the flap of the envelope and slid a letter out.
I started to read, and the blood drained from my head. My ears buzzed and my skin prickled. Words seemed to bleed over each other but certain ones like missing, and last known communication, and last will and testament leapt out at me. My heart labored to keep pumping and the contents of my stomach lurched violently. Panicking, I realized I didn’t understand what I was reading. I sat on the end of my bed, miscalculating, and slid down to the floor.
My hands were shaking as I tried to reread and understand. My father, David Fraser, hadn’t been heard from in a long time. It had come to the attention of the law firm who held all his documentation. They had been instructed that in an event such as this they were to notify my mother and commence an investigation into whether he was still alive before passing his estate on to his only daughter, Jessica.
I became aware of my rapid breathing. The sound was loud and panicked. I was hyperventilating. Closing my mouth, I attempted to calm myself and folded the letter back up. I needed to call these people. But tomorrow was Saturday, which meant I would have to wait through the entire weekend including Monday, since it was a holiday.
Shit.
I dropped my head back on the bed.
The idea of meeting everyone down at the beach held little appeal. All I wanted to do was go out to my dad’s boat, crawl into the berth, play some Ella Fitzgerald, and read every single one of the letters and postcards he’d ever sent me. I picked up the Cape Town postcard again and ran my shaking fingers over the ink, caressing the edges where he might have held it. Flipping it over, I stared at the picture. Table Mountain. I wondered if the law firm even knew where to look. If they knew where he’d been last. It had taken months and months to get to me, with nothing in the interim. South Africa was most likely the last place he’d been.
How crazy was it that I’d received the postcard today, and he’d written about this day, my graduation and turning eighteen. Celebrate, he wrote.
I’d thought he was going to be here. Now I might never see him again. I almost couldn’t process it.
Fuck it. I wouldn’t know anything more for days. I needed to focus on good stuff. Silly stuff. Fun stuff. Kissing stuff. Joey had mentioned kissing me kept his mind off things. I already knew it did the same for me.
I stood up, swiped a little more Cotton Candy Clouds lip gloss on, and slipped out my sliding door, closing it behind me. My face hit something solid. Joseph’s chest.
“Oof!”
So much for more lip gloss. I reared back. “Sorry.” I looked up to see a smiling Joey. “Jay—”
“Hi. What took you so long?” His eyebrows immediately snapped together. “Are you okay?”
“I just got caught up with … family stuff.” I forced a smile, wondering how to distract him. “I just smeared cotton candy lip gloss on your shirt.”
He looked down at his white t-shirt and the pale pink smear. He lifted it up and inhaled.
“What are you doing?” I laughed.
“That’s good shit,” he said. “Does it taste as good?” Leaning in before I could react, his lips covered mine. It was brief, too brief. “Mmmm,” he murmured, standing back up, leaving my mouth tingling and heat sluicing through my body. He grabbed my hand and walked us down the path. “Yep. As if it weren’t hard enough to keep my mouth off you.”
My heart wouldn’t be able to take much more tonight. “That’s twice tonight you’ve admitted you are kinda addicted to me,” I said, going for a breezy tone.
He shrugged. “There’s no kinda about it.”
I stopped dead still, yanking on his hand. Lust or whatever this weird fizzy feeling was swirled through me and left me hot and achy between my legs. Annoyingly, it also did a dance in my chest.
He turned around. His blue eyes were sincere. He rubbed his free hand across his chin.
“So, are we really like kissing buddies now?” I asked. Because he’d been loud and clear about not wanting a girlfriend.
“I guess.”
“Exclusive kissing buddies?”
He arched an eyebrow.