Blast From The Past 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

at a later time.
    But when it came time for us all to go our separate ways, no one seemed to be going anywhere. Obviously, since we were in my apartment, I wasn’t going anywhere—and, from the looks of things, neither were J.R. or Julie. They both just sat there, each waiting for the other to leave.
    The situation was a little awkward for me—kinda like a Sophie’s Choice kind of thing, even if the choice I had to make wasn’t as drastic. Who should go, and who should stay with me? I had good reasons to answer that question either way.
    Part of me wanted to dismiss J.R. so that Julie and I could have some time for girl talk. I wanted to tell her about things with J.R. and get her opinion on what it all meant. But another part of me wanted to dismiss Julie, so that I could fall into his arms again, take him back to my bed, and finish what we’d started before Julie got there.
    I couldn’t tell if either J.R. or Julie could sense the position they’d put me in, and I felt as if they were challenging and battling each other, seeing who’d cave first, inadvertently surrendering and admitting the other’s connection to me was stronger. This stalemate was just as bad, if not worse, than the one we’d just reached in our investigation—so I decided to make my choice, and I chose the option that poor Sophie had never been given. I chose to sacrifice my own interests for both of their sakes.
    “I’m still not feeling very well and am really tired,” I told the both of them. “Being drugged really messed with my system, I guess… I just want to lie down and take a nap.”
    J.R. and Julie both looked at me as if they were disappointed, and I’m sure they both were—but they each were understanding, which made me hate how much I was lying to them both, both as far as this particular lie, and others, were concerned.
    J.R. and Julie stood up at approximately the same time. I stood up, too, and walked with them to the door, where I hugged them each, in turn, and told them I’d talk to them later.
    “What about your phone?” J.R. asked. “Do you think it’s still safe to call it?”
    “No,” I said. “Thanks for reminding me.”
    I quickly explained to Julie how I thought my phone could have been compromised and made arrangements to call her later, from a new phone. I had her give J.R. her number, and had him agree to call her the next day to get my new number. Just to keep up appearances, I also instructed Julie to keep texting my existing line—that way, if Tommy had tapped it, there’d be no cause for suspicion (think about how strange it’d look if Julie was frequently texting me, then stopped completely!). Julie agreed with me, though she did bitch a bit about the added burden of texting two phones.
    Once we were done with all that rigmarole, the two of them finally left, and I did go and lie down, like I’d said I was going to do, even though I wasn’t actually tired or feeling ill. Perhaps I was trying to bring a grain of truth to my lie, or perhaps I was just trying to settle my nerves a bit. Whatever the case, I lay there and thought more about the plan I’d come up with. It wasn’t going to be easy to orchestrate and execute, but I knew I had to do it anyway, and I knew I had to do it without J.R. or Julie.
    I was the one trying to clear my name, and even though that inevitably involved J.R., he, like Julie, didn’t need to get as deeply involved in the process as I did. J.R. had the resources to investigate what was going on as far as destruction to his business, but he didn’t use them for my sake, so that we could crack the cover up and save me , not just his company.
    Despite my racing mind, I somehow managed to drift off to sleep. I’m sure the drugs really had messed with my system, and my system very easily shut down. I slept a dead sleep for about three hours, and only awoke when I heard a firetruck traveling the street on the other side of my bedroom window.
    No, my house was not on