I pick up my beer and take another long drink. He’s giving me some food for thought. I had a natural camaraderie with my Renegade teammates. I missed them immediately upon leaving. But when Janelle came to live with me, everything changed, and I didn’t keep up with them, despite their attempts.
Baden is right. I’ve closed myself off completely, and I never used to be that guy.
But even before I was that guy who loved the friendships with my teammates, I was a very different person, one that if they knew the things I’d done, they might not want to be friends with me at all.
CHAPTER 5
Veronica
Clarke is probably in the most enviable position an independent bookstore owner could be. She doesn’t have to keep her store open crazy hours just to make money. While she may have started that way, it’s certainly not how things are now.
Much of it has to do with her brilliance and ingenuity—tailoring her retail space and services to heighten customer satisfaction. While she has no control over whether a book she sells is any good and will satisfy a reader, she makes the entire experience of buying that book something customers want to come back for, regardless if they liked what they chose. She obviously buys and sells what she believes will appeal, but that doesn’t always hit the mark.
Instead, she makes the shopping experience inspiring, joyful, and seamless. She goes above and beyond what her customers expect. It might be setting up book readings, signings, or special merchandise, and even sometimes reaching out directly to a famous author to get an autographed book for one of her customers. No doubt, Clarke has built her business based around exceptional customer service.
It didn’t hurt when she started dating Aaron Wylde of the Arizona Vengeance. Through Aaron, she met Legend’s wife, Pepper, a famous children’s book author. It took only one visit from Pepper to do a signing, and Clarke’s customer base almost quadrupled. Since then, she’s dedicated about a quarter of the store to children’s books.
The benefit to Clarke’s success over the past year is that she can set her own hours. She opens from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. She closes the doors Sunday and on any other day she feels like it, though mostly when she has the opportunity to travel to an away game with Aaron. She’ll simply put a closed sign on the door with an apology that she’s gone to see him play in Toronto or San Diego or Florida or elsewhere, and her customers think it’s pretty freaking cool, so they forgive her.
Still, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t work her ass off. As a sole proprietor, everything falls on her shoulders. She has me and one other girl working part time. Clarke handles everything else, which is why it’s going to cause some turmoil when I leave. Or rather, when I start taking classes so I can finish my undergraduate degree. I’ll still be around when time allows.
Of course, it was Clarke’s idea that I finish my degree. “You’re floundering around like… well, a piece of flounder.”
She’s not wrong. Ever since the divorce, I’ve been wandering through life aimlessly and without purpose. It’s sad that my entire existence focuses around helping Clarke in the bookstore twenty hours a week. It would be forty, but she doesn’t need someone that amount of time with her other part-time worker, Marie, who’s been here longer, and she doesn’t pay me, anyway, since I don’t need the money. If I had my way, I’d come and hang out with her all day, every day, but she won’t let me. She says I need to get out in the world and expand my horizons.
Clarke is making me go figure out my shit, so to speak.
Sighing, I scribble notes on the pad before me. I do this several times a week, searching for clarity. I’m currently sitting in Clarke’s office while she teaches Janelle how to work the cash register. It’s almost closing time, so she’s giving her a general overview, and tomorrow she’ll handle actual customers—with me by her side, of course.
Looking up, I glance through the open door at Clarke. Her head is tipped in close to Janelle’s, listening to a question from the girl and pointing something out in response on the register keypad.
I smile. This is the end of only Janelle’s third day here, and she’s been an absolute joy to have around. Today she seemed vibrantly happy, and no matter what we threw at her, she took it and completed tasks with pride and efficiency. She even lamented that when school started back, she’d only be able to work a few hours a day.
She further lamented, which cracked me up, that the shop was going to be closed tomorrow for Christmas Eve and then for Christmas Day. Clarke assured her we’d be back up and running on the twenty-sixth, and she’d be glad to put her to work all day if that’s what she wanted.
Janelle responded, “Awesome.”
I glance back down at my pad. Across the top I’ve written “Short-Term Goals.” Halfway down the page, I’ve written “Long-Term Goals.”
I have nothing listed under the short term, but number one on long-term’s list is the same as it ever was.
Become financially independent.
That might sound funny given that I got a five-million-dollar payoff when the divorce was finalized. I also receive fifty thousand a month in alimony from my ex-husband, along with my penthouse condo here in downtown Phoenix, a vacation home in Telluride, and another one in Tampa. I also get a brand-new car every three years, make and model of my choice and without issue to cost. All this keeps coming to me until I remarry. If I choose not to get remarried, it’s mine until I die.
Some might say, “Wow, what a generous and loving husband you had to give you that. He must have still cared greatly for you when you divorced.”
To which I’d say, “He was an asshole. He made my life a living hell and attempted to control, intimidate, and threaten me at every turn of our divorce, trying to get me to stay with him.”
Luckily, I had a great prenup. It wasn’t something I’d intentionally aimed at having but rather the Livingston lawyers knew my settlement was a mere pittance compared to the family’s billions. It was easier to give me loads of money that would do nothing to diminish their fortune, pat me on my head, and send me on my way where I’d keep quiet and never bother them again.
If I had my choice, I’d have rather rewound time and forgot I ever met Jace Livingston than have all this wealth I didn’t earn.
I don’t want his money, which is why it’s number one on my list to become financially independent of my divorce settlement. At first, I took everything that came to me because it gave me security until I could get settled on my own. I’d been married since I was twenty—having dropped out of college to wed Jace—and I’d never had to work after joining the Livingston family. Luxury shopping, charity work, international travel, and hosting dinner parties was all I knew.
So I took the money, not because I thought I deserved it, but because I was shell-shocked over the trauma of the last year of our marriage and the turbulent divorce, and I didn’t know how to support myself.
When someone sees me, they make assumptions. Yes, I dress nicely in high-end, expensive fashion, but I accumulated these clothes during my marriage. It’s there and I use it. But I haven’t used the vacation homes once, the car barely moves except to drive it to and from work at Clarke’s store, and after paying for basics like utilities and groceries, the rest of the money sits untouched, outside of multiple charitable donations I make each year.