But now, staring at her account balance, a coil of dread knotted in her stomach as she wondered just how long she could keep it up.
It didn’t make any sense. She’d cashed out her trust fund when she’d turned eighteen and put almost all the money therein toward college-related expenses. Sure, she’d stashed a bit in savings, and some of it she’d used to buy clothes and a few nice dinners, and the rest had gone into renting an apartment with her boyfriend, Jude Wilkinson. Her parents had absolutely hated him in high school, which was why she couldn’t rely on them to finance her education—once she’d made it clear she was moving out to be with him, they’d cut her off.
Or, more accurately, her mother had. Her stepfather had been much more sympathetic to her situation and less explosive in his disappointment. That was why they still spoke at least once a week while she and her mother remained largely estranged.
Nicole was beginning to regret that now, mostly because she had a terrible feeling about the discrepancy in her account. Something seemed very, very wrong.
She ducked out of line and quickly headed across campus to her car parked in the student lot. She hopped in and fastened her seatbelt, cold sweat beading on her palms as she shifted into reverse and backed out of the tight space. She didn’t want to think about the countless possibilities just yet, not when she couldn’t do a damn thing about them, and she certainly didn’t want to entertain the sneaking suspicion she had about what had really happened to all the money.
A single word rose to the surface of her thoughts anyway: Jude.
They’d been having some troubles lately. She supposed that was putting it mildly, but she couldn’t admit to herself just how frequent and intense their fighting had become. It wasn’t always like that between them, but in recent months, Jude’s attitude and lack of ambition had really begun to grate on her, and Nicole wasn’t the kind of girl who could sit there silently while she was being wronged.
She tried to be sympathetic. She tried to give him time to figure out what, exactly, he wanted to do with his life. But after three years of waiting for him to figure himself out—and in the meantime, having to endure his self-pitying horseshit and disregard for their mutual finances—Nicole was just about at the end of her rope.
I should’ve never given him access to that account, she thought, her heart racing as she made her way to the bank only a few streets down. That was so stupid. Christ, what was I thinking?
The answer, of course, was that she wasn’t thinking. She’d acted out of love, out of desperation to make things between her and Jude work. After all, the alternative would be to admit that her mother was right and coming crawling back with her tail between her legs, and frankly, she wasn’t sure she could handle that.
But could she handle being bankrupt? Was that was her stupid pride had wrought?
She pulled hastily into the bank’s parking lot, almost missing the turn in her doom and gloom reverie, and rushed through the doors into the quiet lobby. It was so silent she was sure that everyone could hear her heart hammering in her chest, and she felt lightheaded as she approached the teller, her hands trembling.
“Can I help you?” the older woman said, her straw-colored hair pulled into a tight bun at her nape. She regarded Nicole coolly, and she swore she almost saw a small sneer forming at the corner of the woman’s thin, pale lips. Maybe she shouldn’t have rushed past the line without being called for, even if there had been no one standing in front of her to object.
“I-I don’t know,” she stammered, shakily pulling her ID from her wallet and thrusting it under the glass. “I’m Nicole Perkins. Account number four-two-seven-three-three. I think there’s some kind of problem…”
The teller—whose name, as indicated by the tag on her blouse, was Margery—eyed Nicole a moment before inputting her data into the computer. She moved through a few screens before one of her ashen eyebrows raised.
“Twenty dollars and seventy-eight cents,” she intoned, much to Nicole’s dismay. “My, that’s a low balance.”
“I know,” she answered, chewing the dead skin off her lower lip. She’d been hoping that there was some kind of system error, some other reason why so much of her money was missing, but judging by the nearly vacant lobby and the calm indifference with which Margery was treating her, that was not the case.
Margery was silent until Nicole spoke again. “When was the last withdrawal made?” she asked her.
“This morning,” the teller answered. “Around nine thirteen, by Jude…”
“Wilkinson,” Nicole said breathlessly. She closed her eyes. “I know.”
Jude had waited for her to leave that morning before going to the bank and withdrawing almost all of her available cash. The row they’d had the night before had been unusually heated, but never in a million years had she considered that he’d do something like this to her in retribution.
What would she find when she returned to the apartment? Would he even be there? Or would she walk through the door to find all his things missing—and possibly some of hers—and their home trashed in his vindictive wake?
“Son of a bitch,” she murmured, tears welling in her eyes. She turned her attention back to the teller. “Can you, um, put a hold on the account? His name, only. I still want access to it, if that’s possible.”
“You wish to remove his name from the account?”
“Yes,” Nicole told her. “This… wasn’t an authorized withdrawal.”
Margery sniffed. “Well, if his name was on the account, then it most certainly was authorized by you at one point, Miss Perkins,” she said. “It’s not the bank’s fault.”
Nicole clenched her fists. Her whole world was spiraling out of control. She was in no mood for some bank teller trying to cover her own ass right now.
“Whatever,” she snapped. “Just make sure Mr. Wilkinson’s name is taken off the account.” Hot, angry tears were beginning to slip down her face, leaving long, iridescent streaks across her fair, freckled skin. “I have to go.”
She turned away from the snooty bitch manning the counter and wiped her eyes on her sleeve, leaving dark streaks of mascara on her sweater. Great. Just great. And now she couldn’t even afford dry cleaning.
She crossed over the threshold to the outside world again and fished her cell phone out of her purse. She tried calling Jude, hoping she could somehow change his mind, but his phone number had already been disconnected. He must have been planning this for a long time, she realized. If he’d only left because of what they’d said to one another last night, she doubted it would have been this well executed. Jude didn’t do well on the fly. This had to have been a long time coming. He’d just gone to great lengths to ensure she was blindsided by it.
But could she really say she hadn’t known, hadn’t at least sensed that what they had was coming to a bitter, messy end? Could Nicole truly claim that she’d had not even the tiniest, most infinitesimal inkling that she and Jude were as good as over?
Maybe, she admitted, the single thought drawing another painful fracture across her heart. Maybe I did. But not like this.
She sighed, her breath quavering as she scrolled through her contacts, searching for salvation. She didn’t have a lot of friends at the university—Jude’s shitty behavior always made sure of that—and the ones she’d had back home had probably forgotten about her by now. She knew from Facebook that most of them had moved out of state looking for opportunities elsewhere. Lots of them were film students or actors, which took them either to New York City, LA, or Atlanta.
She felt another wave of despair hit her. It was all she could do to keep from sinking to her knees.
Where the hell do I go now?
She didn’t want to go back to the apartment, that was for sure. She didn’t want to know what Jude had done to it, if he’d made a point to destroy any material evidence of their lives together as fully as he’d destroyed any emotional connection between them. With a little over twenty dollars to her name, she didn’t want
to think about losing their security deposit or having to pay damages on whatever he’d chosen to demolish when he’d left. Sure, there was a chance that everything was fine, but at the moment, she didn’t have it in her to go and find out.
Besides, there were too many memories there, most of them bad. If she had to deal with one more bastion of negativity today, she was sure she would crumble entirely.
She slunk to her car and leaned back the driver’s seat, sighing as she took a moment to collect her thoughts. Her head was spinning. Her options seemed painfully limited. And above all else, she could hear her mother’s cold voice ringing in her ears: I told you so…