Page 198 of The Exit Strategy

I HAVE FEELINGS

COLE

Six Months Later

It’s still darkwhen I come downstairs.

February in the Lowcountry is not winter the way it is in New England—there’s no snow on the porch, no breath visible in the kitchen—but at five forty-five, the ocean has a low silver fog over it that hasn’t been lifted by the sun yet.

It’s the calm after the storm of us, and I remind myself to be grateful for everything we have now.

After making two cups of coffee, I walk down the hall to the office.

Our office.

Not our forever one, but the one for now.

The first thing we did when she agreed to move in with me, exactly two weeks to the day after I sat on Papa’s dock and asked her to try, was tear down a wall and build this office.

The kitchen door flies open, and Junie starts tossing suitcases in.

“Ah, what’s up?” I ask.

“Don’t be smug.”

I stand from the table and watch as she marches over to the garage and lifts one of the boxes Fenway sent from the Brookline house.

“Are you moving in with me?”

“Ugh, like the Boston boys haven’t already placed bets. Listen.” She drops a box at my feet, then reaches into her back pocket, where she pulls out a wad of papers.

Closer inspection reveals color-coded spreadsheets.

“There’s a matrix. It calculated our success rate, and I decided it was worth the risk.”

I had flipped through the pages. All sixteen of them. To this day, I can’t figure out how the mathmathed, I’m just thankful it did. That was the longest two weeks of my life.

Since then, she’s Junified this entire home. Our temporary one. The place we sleep until our forever home is finished at Papa’s fishing hole.

The entire first month she lived here, she tested everything.

She spent an entire week in Charleston long before it was necessary for her new business because she was worried the distance would be what caused us to fracture.

I showed up for dinner two of the six nights.

We built our office, and she spent an entire month falling in and out of her Spite-Berry ways to test if we could truly be around each other all the time and not want to kill each other.

I’ve had more sex on my desk than I ever thought possible.

Fen has since demoted Spite-Berry to Petty-Betty, but the reality is, for the most part, she keeps her petty private these days.

Except for with me.

I hear about every time she runs into Lola at the grocerystore. Every time Marley questions a new scorecard. Every time Nana Mae describes the shit Paula Van Holten has pulled over the years. Every time Hudson spams her inbox with messages that all end with: Needed by EOD.

I’m pretty sure when Junie hears “end of day” now, her fingernails turn into weapons.

Placing Junie’s coffee on her desk, I smile at the three open folders she has on it for her new clients—two of whom she gained after her farewell social media video went viral. But the spot I linger on is a small corkboard that has a printout of a women’s small business advocacy article from December where Junie is quoted by name.