The Soulmate Equation (26 page)

“I saw the
Today
show.” Jamie had the nerve to appear wounded when she looked back over at her daughter. “The guy who started that company that's going to be such a big deal?”

Jess had to push the words up her throat. “I don't know if he and I are—”

“You weren't even going to tell me. Probably because you assumed I'd just come to you looking for money.”

She gaped at the black asphalt ahead, at the mile marker she passed, the speed limit sign. “Isn't that what you're doing?”

“Not for a handout! Jesus Christ, Jessica, I'm talking about paying it back within a month! I only need it now because fucking
Trish has me backed into a corner! Hasn't she ever been late on a bill? Haven't you?”

Glancing into the back seat, Jess was relieved to find that Juno had fallen asleep. She turned and stared straight ahead, blinking back tears. Jess had the money. She'd been holding it for braces and insurance and a rainy day, but she still had it.

Why can't you just be my mom?

“It's fine,” Jamie said. “I'll figure something out or I'll go to prison, but either way it's not your problem.”

Jess blinked up to the mirror again. Juno's mouth was softly open, her head bobbing gently with the tiny bumps in the road. Jess couldn't keep doing this anymore.

“I'll give you the money.”

Jamie's face whipped to Jess. “You will? I'll pay you back with my first check. I'm telling you, Jessie, before all this happened Trish said she'd never seen anyone sell like me.”

She pulled into the apartment complex that made her own look like a palace and parked in the first empty spot she found. “Don't pay me back,” Jess said flatly. “I'm giving this to you. But after I do, I don't want you to call me anymore, and I don't want you to come by.”

“What? Why—”

“I'll transfer the money, but that's the end. I don't want to ever see you again.”

The car idled, and the silence stretched between them. Jess had no idea what else to say. Would Jamie even pay her debts, or would she take the money and run?

It honestly didn't matter. Jess was done.

Jamie looked at her granddaughter in the back seat, and her gaze seemed to sober as it moved over Juno's sleeping face.

Resolved, she turned back around. “You still have my account number?”

Sadness and relief braided hot and painful through Jess's limbs. “Yes.”

Her mother nodded and slowly faced forward again. “Okay.” Her fingers wrapped around the door handle. “Okay.” She pushed it open and stepped out into the darkness.

S
URPRISINGLY, THE WORLD
didn't stop turning when Jess cut off her mother.

Juno and Jess got up the next morning, and got ready in a sweet, easy rhythm. Juno seemed to know to be tender with her mom, and didn't need to be reminded to get dressed or bring her dishes to the kitchen or brush her teeth.

She held Jess's hand all the way to school.

“I was thinking we could go out to dinner tonight,” Jess said, “just me and you. Somewhere special.”

With an enthusiastic nod, Juno stretched, kissing Jess's cheek, and then ran off to meet up with her friends.

Jess watched her until the bell rang and Juno disappeared into her classroom. After transferring the money, Jess had to remind herself that she was still better off than she'd been before all this craziness began. She had new clients, new visibility. She could rebuild.

She was much better off than she could have been, she knew. Plus, she had a pretty fucking awesome kid.

SIX DAYS LATER,
Fizzy whined plaintively into her fancy headset: “This setup doesn't feel the same.”

Jess looked at Fizzy's glowering image over Zoom on her iPad. “Well, it's the best you get. You said you didn't want to go back.”

“I know, but… don't you miss Daniel?”

“And good coffee and reliable Wi-Fi?” Jess replied. “Yes, of course I do.”

Other things Jess missed:

Her boyfriend.

Her good mood.

The ten thousand dollars that had been in her checking account a few days ago.

The possibility that her mother would change.

Fizzy growled again and disappeared from view as, Jess presumed, she left to make herself another cup of mediocre coffee.

Three things Fizzy reminded her of constantly now that they'd stopped going to Twiggs:

1. She hated drip coffee but was too lazy to get even a basic Nespresso.
   
2. Her Wi-Fi sucked.
   
3. The lack of people-watching killed her meet-cute mojo.
   

But even though Jess's coffee was also less satisfying than a Twiggs flat white, and she had a hard time focusing on work at her dining table, she couldn't find it in herself to go back to Twiggs and pretend like there weren't a million memories imprinted on every scuffed surface. Twiggs was where she met River, where she first got the notification from DNADuo, where she saw him last, and—most importantly—where she absolutely did not want to risk running into him at 8:24 on a weekday morning.

Though to be totally frank, it might be harder if Jess found out that he wasn't going to Twiggs at all anymore, either. That he'd erased every bit of their shared history completely.

And it wasn't like Fizzy was genuinely pushing to go back. Rob had spread his gross cheater vibes all over their table before Fizzy doused him with ice water. God, Twiggs had been tainted by the ghosts of their carefree former selves. The ones who, two months before, happily ogled Americano, gossiped with impunity, hadn't had their hearts broken. Jess missed those women.

But working from home wasn't all bad. Jess was saving money and might even lose a few pounds without her daily intake of blueberry muffins. She could work at home with her screen door open, wearing a T-shirt and no pants because it was warm outside and no pants beat pants every time. She could be at Nana Jo's side in twenty seconds (after putting on pants) if needed.

Jess and Fizzy pretended they were sitting at the table together; they'd tried to actually work together in person, but they'd ended up on the couch watching Netflix after about a half hour. Zoom was better for deadlines.

Her phone dinged on the table, and she glanced down at the Wells Fargo notification just as Fizzy returned.

Fizzy settled in her seat and adjusted her screen. “What's that expression?”

“Probably my mom's bank accepting the—” Jess paused, and bent to look closer. A chill ran through her. “Um, no. This is me reacting to ten thousand dollars being
deposited
into my account.”

“Tax refund?” Fizzy screwed her face up, not understanding.

Had Jamie refused the money? Jess tapped open the app and felt her heart drop. “Oh. It's a GeneticAlly payment.”

Fizzy went quiet on the other side of the screen, eyes wide. “
Yikes
.” And then her brow cleared. “But… convenient timing?”

Looking up at her, Jess winced. “I can't keep this.”

“The hell you can't,” Fizzy responded. “You kept up your end of the deal.”

Jess knew Fizzy was right, but she wasn't sure it mattered. At least to her. “I wonder if River knows that the company is still paying me?”

“Maybe that detail got lost in the scandal,” Fizzy mumbled, blowing on her hot coffee.

“How awkward would that conversation be?” she asked. “ ‘I realize you're ghosting me but I just wanted to send one more note to thank you for continuing to pay me to be your girlfriend. It's nice to be just heartbroken, instead of heartbroken
and
broke.' ”

What could her best friend say to that? So, the heartbroken to the heartbroken said only, “I'm sorry, honey.”

Jess nearly startled out of her chair when a sharp knock rapped
on the screen door, jarringly loud, followed by a deep, smoke-scraped voice. “Hey-ho, Jess.”

“Oh my God,” she hissed. “UPS is here for a pickup, and I don't have any pants on.”

Fizzy reached for her notebook, quietly whispering as she jotted down: “UPS guy… no… pants.” Jess yanked her shirt as far down her thighs as it would go, grabbed the shipping envelope from the table, and shuffled to the door.

Pat—midfifties now, kind eyes, and deep wrinkles from years of sun exposure—was the same delivery guy they'd had for nearly a decade. He averted his gaze as soon as he registered the way Jess was hiding her lower half behind the door, and Jess handed him the envelope with signed contracts for Kenneth Marshall. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Let's pretend this never happened.”

“Deal.” He turned and made his way down the path to the gate.

“Maybe being away from Twiggs isn't so bad for my writing mojo,” Fizzy said when Jess returned to the table. “That might be the best start to a story I've had in a couple weeks. Maybe I'll finally be able to write something other than sex scenes that transition into aggressive and intentional penile injury.”

“Please don't write a romance starring me and UPS Pat.”

“Do you know that penises can be fractured and strangled?” Fizzy paused. “But don't Google it.”

“Fizzy, I swear to Go—”

If possible, Jess startled even harder when the second knock came.
Did I forget to tape the label on?
Defeated, she called out, “Pat, hold on, I need to go put on pants.”

A low, quiet voice resonated down her spine. “Who's Pat?”

Jess's eyes went wide, and she turned to gape at Fizzy on the screen.

“What?” Fizz whispered, angling as if she could see through her screen to the door, moving so close that her nose and mouth loomed. “Who is it?”

“River!” Jess whisper-yelled.

Fizzy leaned back and made a shooing motion with her hand, whispering, “Go!”

“What do I say?” Jess hissed.

“Make him do the talking!” She shadowboxed in her chair and forgot to whisper the rest: “Fuck him! Tell him I said so!”

River cleared his throat and offered a dry “Hi, Fizzy” through the screen door.

“Oh,
great
.” Growling at her, Jess stood, stomped over to the door, and jerked it open.

River stared at her face and then dropped his eyes before immediately looking back up. A hot blush crawled up his neck. Right. Pants. And as they stood facing each other, River made a valiant effort to not let his eyes drop below her shoulders again.

Or… maybe it wasn't valiant. Maybe it wasn't hard at all. Maybe for him, turning off feelings was like flicking the switch off at the end of an experiment.

Score over ninety: interest on.

Score unknown: interest off.

“Hi,” Jess said. Well, even if he could shut off his feelings, the same was certainly not true for her. If anything, her love for River had somehow solidified into a brick in her chest: If she wasn't truly in love with him, then why did she cry herself to sleep every night?
Why was he the first person she'd wanted to hold when she finally got home from dropping Jamie off the other night?

But at the sight of him—how Jess could immediately tell he'd gotten a haircut recently, how he was still the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen, even with the dark circles under his eyes, and how being this close to him still made a cord of longing pull tight from her throat to her stomach—the sadness melted away and she was angry. More than angry, Jess was livid. It had been eight days. Eight days of complete silence from someone who'd told her he hadn't felt like he'd been home in forever until he met her. Who'd kissed her like he needed her to breathe. Who said “I love you” out of the blue and didn't try to take it back. And then he left.

“What are you doing here?”

His jaw clenched and he closed his eyes, swallowing with effort. “Do you… want to go put on pants?”

Jess stared at him, mute with shock. This was the first thing he said to her? Go get dressed? Honestly, being confronted with the uppity, asshole version of River made it so much easier to dial down the love and crank up the hate.

“No.” Jess waited for him to look at her face again and then put a hand on her hip, deliberately ignoring when her shirt rose up. “What are you doing here?”

River exhaled shakily, blinking to the side and then looking back to her. “Do you mind if I come in?”

Her first instinct was to tell him that she did mind. She minded very much, in fact, because having him in her space would remind her that he'd started treating it like
his
space, too. She'd thrown out the deodorant he'd left in her bathroom, the socks she'd fished out
of the laundry basket, the oat milk he'd kept in her fridge. But she knew they needed to have this conversation. They had to break up, officially.

Stepping to the side, Jess let him in and then turned and stalked down the hall, calling out, “Stay there.”

When she returned, she had pants on, but her mood, if anything, had darkened. Walking past Juno's room was like pouring lemon juice on a cut. River hadn't just vanished from Jess's life; he'd vanished from her kid's, too. Her little girl who'd never been left before had lost two people in a week. Would it be hitting below the belt to tell him that Juno had asked to see River no fewer than four times? Jess berated herself for telling Juno about their relationship at all.

Jess found him perched on the edge of the couch cushion, hands pinned between his knees. He looked up at her and seemed to relax the smallest bit, shoulders slumping.

“Why are you here, River?”

“I was hoping we could talk.” He said it like it was obvious, but was he kidding?

Her jaw dropped. “What do you think I was trying to do when I called you last week? When I texted? You never replied.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I wasn't ready.”

“Oh?” she said in quiet shock. “I was here totally losing my mind thinking we were over. I was heartsick, River. Am I supposed to feel better hearing that you didn't call because you weren't ready to have a relatively simple conversation?”

“Jess, come on. You said it was a lot to digest, too. I was neck-deep in data. And when you didn't call again, I—I wasn't sure whether you needed space.”

“Do not make me the bad guy here.” She immediately pointed her finger at him. “I get that this threw you—”

His eyes flashed as he cut in. “Do you?”

“Of course I do. It threw me, too!”

“It isn't the same,” he said, voice sharp.

“Maybe not, but you had no right to dump me the way you did.”

“What?” His eyes went wide. “I didn't dump you.”

“Reality check: When someone goes completely silent for eight days, it isn't because they're off planning an elaborate grand gesture.” Crossing her arms, Jess leaned against the wall. “And you know that, River. I realize that I'm easy to leave, but I was hoping you were better than that.”

He looked like he'd been punched. “You aren't ‘
easy to leave
.' None of this has been about my feelings for
you
. I was a total fucking wreck about work, worrying we would have to disclose the tampering, worrying my entire company would go under.”

Jess looked away, clenching her jaw while she struggled not to cry. Was she being unfair? His entire world had come apart, but she could only focus on all the shrapnel he left in her. “I understand that, but it doesn't make my feelings any less valid,” she said, careful to keep her voice from trembling, “I had a really shitty week. I needed you. Even if you were going through it, too, I needed you. And you don't get to do that, you know? Just vanish? Remember this for the next time, with the next woman. If you say feelings like ‘love,' you owe her more than what you gave me this week.”