The Last Whistle by Jamie Bennett

Author:Jamie Bennett [Bennett, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

And then he was gone.

It wasn’t really like he disapparated or entered the Witness Protection Program. After a while of hugging on the couch that night, he disengaged himself from my clinging arms and draping body and said goodbye. And then I didn’t see him for what felt like forever. He didn’t attend the real estate closing for the bookstore as I’d thought he would; instead, his attorney represented him, briskly flipping to pages and pursing her lips with dissatisfaction when I swallowed hard every time I put Gaby’s pen to the paper to sign my name. Ainsley Evette wasn’t just efficient and thorough, she was also beautiful—like, rivaling Gaby with her hair and face and figure, and I felt even worse because Gunnar’s attorney was so perfect. It didn’t really mean anything, or made any difference, except at the moment that I was signing away my store, it did to me.

Ainsley made a definite noise of disgust at the end of the meeting as we gathered up our papers, because I was fully crying by that point. “It’s less than two-thousand feet of commercial real estate, located…in this town,” she said, looking around Sterling Standard Realty’s conference room like it smelled bad, but Gaby couldn’t help it if the windows opened out onto the dumpster, and our town was great. “If you were my client and I cared enough to offer personal advice, I’d tell you to move on,” Ainsley added, shaking her head slightly, and that made Gaby speak up.

“She’s my client, and you can move your own self right through the door!” she told Ainsley, and when the lawyer was gone, Gaby hugged me. It was very different from hugging Gunnar but also very comforting that she was my friend. Then she insisted on taking me out for a long lunch, which included wine since it was Marley’s week off and I wouldn’t be tutoring later. The afternoon ended with me more than a little tipsy and sleeping off the tears and the alcohol in my small bed, not hugging anyone at all.

But I did get extremely good news the next morning after that low-level debauchery, in the form of a call from Linda at the learning center: “She passed summer school! Marley passed with a C, a C plus, and even a B minus. I’m over the moon!” She sounded like she really might be. My job was safe there, and more than that, I felt a glow of pride. Marley had done it, and I had helped her. She was moving up a grade.

So Marley started the year as a sophomore, and the Woodsmen continued their regular season with two away games, and I knew from all the books I’d read that Gunnar was busy with practices, meetings, walk-throughs, visits with the trainers, and everything else they did to win. I thought he was also probably trying to enjoy every moment of his final season. Those things, along with the fact that his house still wasn’t exactly livable, meant that he never was around, as hard as I looked for him.

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