“Not a chance. I’m done with you,” I told her and meant it.
I launched myself from the pool and headed straight for the campsite.
“Where’s Cricket?” Ethan asked me.
“Back there,” I told him. With my heart.
Chapter Thirty
The next morning, Jonah “knocked” on my tent. I sat up and unzipped it for him.
“What!” I howled.
“Dang!” Jonah laughed. “What crawled into your sleeping bag?”
“Your cousin did.”
“What?”
I laughed. “No, I just meant that I officially have decided to get over Cricket Hunt.”
Jonah sat on his haunches. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said, yanking my hair at the sides.
“I can see that.”
“Bite me.”
“Yowza. Sounds like she did a number on you. Is that where you were gone to last night?”
“Yeah, I was off getting tortured by your cousin.”
“Now, wait a minute, did she, uh, tell you anything?”
“No! And I swear, I’m recommending you all for the CIA.”
Jonah laughed. “All right, well, I’m taking Ethan hunting with Eugie for breakfast. You want to come?”
“Hell no! I want as far away from him as well.”
“Fine, grumpy.”
He zipped my tent shut and I fell into my pillow, pissed beyond belief. I don’t know how it happened, I was so amped up, but I fell back to sleep.
o;Whatever happened to her?”
“She got caught with drugs and was sentenced to work in an orphanage in Uganda for six months.”
“Sounds like she got what she deserved,” Finley bit.
I thought about the Sophie that came back and how extraordinary she truly became. “She definitely got what she deserved,” I concurred.
The night carried on. Put on fast forward, people got in and out, ate, drank and left. I found a kindred spirit in Finley and thought she was a genuinely nice girl. We were the last two left that night at close to two in the morning when she excused herself. I walked her back to the campsite but decided to turn back and spend a little while longer in the springs while I had the peace and quiet.
The water was beyond warm in the chilly air, and I sank deeply into it down to my neck. I’d felt so lost lately when just months before I had such a definite course set ahead of me. My deadline to invest in my friend’s stock came and went and I had to watch it take off exponentially, making my friend rich beyond his wildest dreams. I wasn’t as jealous or angry about it as I thought I would have been, but it did help that I had millions stashed away for a rainy day just in case another investment came my way.
I felt sick without Cricket’s rocky friendship and thought very seriously about just buying a little house nearby to visit in my future years of life. Just knowing she was nearby would have to be enough for me and I needed to come to terms with that.