Bumped - Completed Novel

Bumped - Chapter Six

My eyes flickered open. For a brief moment, with the gray haze of morning softening the shadows in my room, I didn't remember. The deep coma of sleep had wiped away the events of the day before...and then my cell phone rang. A flood of memories rushed through like high tide. I slid my finger across the touch screen to answer and pulled the covers over my head and groaned when I realized it wasn't Diego.

"Hey girl, sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday. What's going on?" Justine said in her usual machine gun, rapid fire way.

I slumped down in bed even more. "It's 6:30 in the morning," I said as I stifled a yawn.

"I would have called you last night but Lena's driving me crazy with all this Sweet 16 nonsense and I have these last minute reports due, so work is nuts. Are you alright? You sounded stressed in your message."

I gave her the short and dirty version of events, too tired to put a spin on it.

"You should come back home until you figure things out. Especially since you're going to be a mama."

Justine was the typical, I'm-a-mom-come-over-to-the-dark-side-with-me type of mom. The type that felt everyone should procreate, to not do so was selfish. I knew her and she was probably already planning the baby shower.

"Go back to Mariner's Pike? Are you kidding me?"

"Geeze Ellie, you act like we're some sort of hick town using mail carrier pigeons. You grew up here remember?"

"How could I forget? Listen, I have to go. Breathe a word of this to anyone, especially Déjà, and I'll hunt you down and force you to learn how to Krump."

I really hoped things would be resolved today. The authorities would realize they were looking at the wrong guy, his clients would miraculously find their money and the banks would discover it was all just a mix-up and everything would go back to normal. My visit to Dr. Madison never happened. My little fainting spell could be attributed to...hell, change in air pressure sounded good.

If I didn't speak the words again, didn't give weight to their possibility, maybe the situation would evaporate. Wishful thinking, I knew, but if I had one belated birthday wish, it would be that yesterday (and part of Monday) never happened. Any of it.

Somehow I made it out of the house. I don't remember showering or getting dressed and for once, I wasn't on the phone. Wrestling with my thoughts and fighting traffic was all I could multitask.

After yesterday's Krave debacle, I couldn't afford another screw up. Especially if I wanted to jump over to Triad. Fuck-ups traveled faster than the speed of light in this town and only men were able to recover and get promoted to bigger and better jobs. Mistakes, no matter how old, stuck to women like lead stilettos and put a drag on our careers.

* * * *

I had developed the brittle skin of the jaded after my fiancé gave me an impossible ultimatum and after him was an ex-who-shall-not-be-named that dumped me. I began to think falling in love would be akin to setting up a business deal. I would interview the applicants, weed out the deadbeats and losers, put the potentials on probation and cull a finalist. We would level-set our expectations, develop an action plan and then conquer the world together. Unfortunately, qualified applicants had been at an all time low - maybe it was a geographical thing. Forget the Bridge to Nowhere; LA was the "land of dates that led to nowhere." Until I met Diego. Some days he made me forget how to think. Sent the pheromones racing through me. Made me forget everything but how to wear his name on my lips.

I fell so hard for him I swear I was walking around with a concussion for the first few months. It helped that he was the perfect accessory that looked right at every event. When we went to parties, and he loved to party just as much as I did, I didn't have to worry about him being the territorial wallflower stressing me while I worked the room. We worked the room together. Big dreams. He wanted to build up his cadre of clients to include the Hollywood A-list. With my contacts and his business acumen as a hotshot financial advisor, we were going to run this town.