He walked out and slammed the door behind him, leaving me to collapse in a heap on my kitchen floor—with only confusion and pastrami to help get me through until tomorrow.
10
Tomorrow
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
The sound of Will’s pencil bouncing repeatedly against his desk was never-ending. He’d been in his new office for two days, and it was a good thing. The cluster of cubicles in which he had worked for four years had been in the middle of an otherwise-open passageway on The Field, and five minutes would rarely pass without someone cutting through to take a shortcut. If Will had still been sitting at his old desk, tap-tap-tapping away, he probably would have quickly driven every single one of his co-workers insane.
As it was, he was occupying the new office he had demanded. The new office he had earned. No one was subject to his neurotic tendencies now except for the one person whose office was directly across the hall from his.
Unfortunately for all involved, that one person was Ellis Haywood.
“Will, man, if you don’t stop it with that pencil, I’m going to lose my ever-lovin’ mind.”
“Sorry,” Will called out as he set the pencil down on his desk and raised his hands to show Ellis they were empty—not unlike a blackjack dealer going on break.
“What is your deal today, anyway?” Ellis asked, leaning back in his desk chair.
Will was momentarily distracted by his appreciation for any chair that could fully support a reclining Ellis Haywood. All 335 pounds of him.
“Just trying to get used to the new office,” he responded, excusing away his annoying behavior. It wasn’t completely untrue, but there was also very little truth in it.
Ellis sighed as he laced his fingers behind his head. “You gotta get your head in the game. You know Swoosh went out on a limb for you—”
“It wasn’t that much of a limb,” Will huffed. “Was it?”
The giant man grumbled as he returned his chair to its natural, unburdened position and stood. He walked around the desk, crossed the hallway, and entered Will’s office. Ellis helped himself to the wooden chair across from Will and softly said, “You know his office is next door, right? There’s you, there’s me, and then this corridor ends with Kevin. The big office. The one with the big window and the view of the Statue of Liberty. Do you get that?”
“I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. If you think he heard me I can go apologize—”
“You’re missing the point, man. I’m a pretty big deal around here.”
“I know you are . . .”
“I have the office next to the boss. I’ve been here eight years, and I’ve turned down five different offers to go back to the NFL—to play, to coach—not to mention tons of offers from other networks.” He stood from the chair, rested his hands on the desk, and leaned across it, toward Will. “I’m a really big deal.”
Despite his imposing stature, and the fact that during his football career he had regularly flattened men twice Will’s size, everyone knew that Ellis was the biggest teddy bear at ASN, and maybe in all of sports. His friends—and Will did consider himself one of that group—knew that he would do absolutely anything for them, and his co-workers felt free to go to him for advice, a venting session, or a hug, whenever it was needed.
Yet in that moment, Will felt as if he had a pretty good idea what it must have felt like to be running down the field with a football clamped under your arm—nothing but Astroturf and end zone in sight—only to see Ellis Haywood step in front of you. He had to assume that all of those running backs through the years had seen their lives flash before their eyes.
“I know you’re a big deal, Ellis.” Will chuckled nervously. “Trust me, I know that. You’re the best in the business.”
Ellis kept his eyes locked with Will’s, and no other part of him moved either, just long enough for Will to begin feeling sweat beading up on his lip. Then the tough façade cracked in one fell swoop as Ellis burst into laughter and settled himself back into the chair.
“Don’t butter me up, man,” he said through his laughter. His entire face was overtaken by hilarity and his shoulders bounced up and down. “I don’t need you to tell me I’m the best. I am fully aware.”
Will let out the breath he had been holding. “Okay . . .”
“I’m just saying I’m the best, and Swoosh is the best—like, for real the best. On the other side of us, who’ve we got? Enzo Bateman, who may be a slime wad but who also happens to be, you guessed it . . . the best. The point is, in about six seconds you went from the cubicle to this office.”
“I’ve actually been here four years, Ellis. And—”
“Hey, you don’t have to sell you to me any more than you have to sell me to me. You’re still missing the point. You’re in this office ’cause you’re the best. I know it, Swoosh for sure knows it. All of us . . . The Daily Dribble team . . . we know it. But the ones upstairs in the suits, sitting in that boardroom? They don’t know you, man. The best thing you’ve got going for you is that Swoosh should technically be in one of those upstairs offices too, running things from a distance, but instead he stays down here and works in the trenches with us so he can personally see to it that this show is the best. He sees things, and he saw you. But now you need to get used to this office, real quick. You gotta rise to this. We’re talking once in a lifetime. And it won’t just look bad for you if it doesn’t work out. This isn’t just on you. You read me?”
“It’s on Kevin. I know,” Will muttered quietly.
Ellis stood and began walking back toward his own office. “You know I believe in you. We all do. You’ve got this. Just put your nose to the grindstone and make the most of this opportunity. Don’t let yourself get distracted by life or love, or anything that’s happening outside of—”
“Cadie broke up with me.”
It was the first time he’d said the words aloud, and he hadn’t been prepared for how bitter they’d taste.
Ellis sank back down in the chair, seemingly disregarding his motivational speech about work ethic from two seconds prior. “Why in the world? I thought you guys were solid.”
“So did I,” Will replied with a shrug.
“Did you fool around on her?”
“Of course not! I really don’t know what happened.” He caught himself looking away sheepishly but quickly recovered so that Ellis didn’t suspect he was keeping something from him. He knew exactly what had happened, but it sure wasn’t for him to share intimate details of Cadie’s life with her male co-workers.
“So how’d you respond? Are you letting it be, or—”
“I asked her to marry me.”
Ellis slapped himself on the forehead and then rubbed his big, bald head. “Tell me you didn’t.”
Well, that certainly wasn’t the way Will had expected him to respond. “I did. What’s wrong with that? I thought you’d tell me it was about time.”
With a sigh, Ellis shook his head. “Oh, you know that I think it was well past time, but that was not the time. Can I safely assume, since you led this conversation with a breakup rather than an engagement, that she said no?”
“I agree that it may not have been the best timing,” Will acknowledged as his pride tried to hold its own against the pity in Ellis’s voice. “But it will work out.”
“My friend,” Ellis began as he stood from the chair and crossed to place a compassionate hand on Will’s shoulder. “If she doesn’t want to marry you . . .”
Will stepped away from the contact and began pacing. No. He wasn’t willing to accept that. “She has high standards. She had a pretty strict upbringing and certain values were instilled in her.” He was impressed with the restraint he was showing. He hadn’t once referred to Cadie’s parents as infuriating uptight snobs who had raised their daughter to have unrealistic expectations and impossibly lofty ideals. “It may take a little work, but I don’t believe that she doesn’t want to marry me.”
He felt the anger rise
up inside of him, but none of it was directed toward Cadie. No, the anger was reserved for Oliver and Nessa McCaffrey. It had been nearly a week since his last conversation with them, and after seeing how they’d seemingly gotten in Cadie’s head, his emotions regarding his interaction with them had gone from frustration and confusion to fury.
“Will?” a voice suddenly called into the room via the phone on the desk, startling them both.
Will quickly scrambled to push the appropriate button and respond. “Yeah? Is she here?”
“Just stepped into her office.”
“Thanks, Anna. I owe you one.”
He released the button and ran over to close the office door so he could look in the mirror on the back of it. He straightened his shirt, ran his fingers through his hair, and checked that his teeth were free of coffee stains and bagel crumbs.
“What are you doing?” Ellis asked.
“I told Cadie I was going to ask her again today.” He opened the door and turned around to face Ellis with a smile. “Wish me luck.”
“Oh no.” Ellis’s words were long and drawn out. “Don’t do it, man.”
“This is Cadie and me we’re talking about, Ellis.” Will chuckled, his confidence surging. “We went through a little rough patch, but it’s all going to work out.”
He whistled his way to The Bench, doing all he could to resist his confidence being overtaken by his nerves. He believed what he’d said to Ellis. It was all going to work out. But he understood that there was a decent chance he was moving too quickly. She would still be processing. Nevertheless, he’d promised her he was going to propose again the next day, and he’d already let her down enough for one lifetime.
“Is she still in there?” he asked Anna as he entered the accounting suite.
Anna nodded. “She is. But if there’s anything I can help you with, Will, I’m happy to—”
“What are you doing here?” Cadie called out from the doorway to her office, her coldness toward him seemingly unhampered by the presence of her entire staff.
As Will watched her, he couldn’t help but realize how his perception of her had changed. No, not changed. Grown. Developed. Matured. He had always seen her as sweet and kind, funny and just a little bit dorky. Beautiful, of course, and undeniably sexy, but innocent in so many ways.
Now she was also a woman he had made love to, and the only woman he wanted to make love to for the rest of his life. And despite the fact that it shouldn’t have happened, and regardless of how much distance there seemed to be between them, all he knew was that he was more in love with her than he had ever been.
“I work here,” he said with a confident smile—confident, because he knew that at the end of the day, there was no scenario in which the two of them didn’t spend their lives together. “And I need to talk to you for a minute.”
She seemed to suddenly sense that all eyes were on them, and with a sigh she approached him. Quietly she responded, “We have nothing to talk about. I’ve said everything I have to say. Now I need to get back to work.”
She spun on her heel and made her way back toward her office, but his voice cut her off.
“Marry me, Cadie.”
She froze, and the entire office gasped. Silence overtook everyone and everything as he began walking slowly toward her. She turned around to face him, but her face didn’t convey the joy he’d been hoping to see.
“So what do you say?” he asked, struggling to keep his smile and confidence in place. “Will you?”
Her eyes stayed locked with his until the tears welling up lost the ability to stay put. She looked down at her fingers, tightly intertwined in front of her, and then whispered, “Don’t do this, Will.” He opened his mouth to speak, not really sure what he was going to say, but she looked up at him again and repeated, “Don’t do this. Not here.”
She turned back toward her office, and he understood that he was allowed to follow. He also understood that she was imploring him to avoid the public spectacle for his sake, not hers. He glanced around the room—friends, co-workers, a few strangers. All of them eyeing him with unmistakable pity. He caught Darby’s eyes, and she smiled at him. Sadly. Compassionately.
Cadie really was saying no.
Will hustled into her office behind her and slammed the door. “I don’t understand you. How can you act like we’re just some casual thing? How can you act like we’re over?”
“Because we are, Will.” She remained calm as she settled into her chair—presumably to place the desk between them. How was she calm? He just didn’t understand.
“No. No! That’s . . . that’s . . . crazy, Cadie. Since when? Since when are we over? You’re going to have to walk me through it, because I don’t remember our relationship ending . . .”
She bolted up from the chair, and Will could very nearly hear the wall of calm shatter into a million angry pieces. “Are you kidding me right now, Will? Seriously? Do you have no memory of yesterday? You know . . . yesterday? When I told you it was over?”
“Oh, trust me. I remember that,” he growled. “But all that we have between us, all that we are to each other . . . that doesn’t just end. Like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“You’re right. It doesn’t. It’s been happening for a year! You have basically been acting like . . . I don’t know . . . like my best friend—”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“I already have a best friend! How do you not get it? You’ve totally friend-zoned me! How’s that supposed to make me feel? What am I supposed to think? I used to feel like you couldn’t get enough of me. Like I was the best part of your day. But now? Have you seriously not realized how much we’ve drifted apart? We don’t go out nearly as much as we used to, and when we do, you’re late.” Her comments had begun with as much anger in her voice as he had ever heard and then slowly grown quieter. She spoke in a hoarse whisper by the time she said, “You barely even kiss me anymore, Will. At least you didn’t, until . . .” Her cheeks, already burning red as a result of their shouting match, somehow took on an additional shade of bright pink as she diverted her eyes away from his. “I’ve clearly slipped down the priority list—”
“That’s not true!” he shouted, unable to disarm his frustration and bewilderment enough to match her quieter tone. Will filled his lungs as much as he could, and then he released the air slowly. “That’s absolutely not true, Cadie. You have not slipped down the priority list. I’ve just been working a lot—”
“Exactly.”
“For you! Don’t you know that?”
“All I know is that a year ago, on my birthday, I felt like I finally made it clear to you that I wanted more for us. And for about two seconds, that seemed to bring us closer together. But then it was like you—the you I had been with for three years—suddenly vanished. That . . . that was instant. Like that.” She copied his symbolic snap. “If it had happened slowly over time, I mean . . . maybe that happens. Maybe that’s just what happens to a couple when they’ve been together a long time. But it was instant. It didn’t leave any room for doubt as to what had caused you to step back.”
He’d never forget the sight of her, sobbing on the floor of her apartment. Nor the realizations he’d made.
And that had been the night, after he left her apartment, as he walked the streets of Manhattan for hours, that he had decided he needed to speed up his plan to become a man worthy of marrying her—according to her guidelines, her parents’, and his own. Not just because it was so difficult to resist her, but because it was so difficult to leave her. He’d wanted to hold her all night long and never have to let her go.
“Of course I stepped back, Cadie,” he acknowledged softly. He was still lacking all of the confidence that he had felt early in the conversation, but at least he was pretty sure he was beginning to understand. At least he was pretty sure he could offer up a defense in his favor. “I was trying to make it easier on you.”
She laughed. Coldly. Bitterly. “Oh, I see. By makin
g me not want you as much? Were you trying to make it easier on me by making sure I wasn’t really so bothered by being stuck in a vast nothingness for the rest of my life, with no reason to believe we would ever become unstuck? Were you trying to make it easier on me by making sure I fell out of love with you?” Tears welled in her eyes and her chin trembled with emotion and determination as she softly added, “Because it worked, Will.”
It was as if an invisible hand had slapped him across the face, and the sting raced down his throat, into his heart and lungs, and all the way down to his toes.
“Cadie . . .” he whimpered.
“You’re off the hook, Will.” She sniffed, but there were no tears in her eyes as they met his. “You’re off the hook. This doesn’t have to be complicated. I’m not holding you to that guilt-induced proposal, and I’m not blaming you for what happened. I can certainly think of a million things I could have done differently. It’s just . . . time.”
It was as if he’d never seen her before. After four years of loving her every single day, they were strangers.
“What are you even talking about?”
She sighed. “Don’t make me go through it again, Will. Please.”
The room was spinning around him as the thought registered as reality for the very first time.
“You’re saying we’re through?” For the first time, he realized she actually meant it. He ran his hands through his hair, certain there had to be something he could say that would cause them both to wake up from this ridiculous nightmare they were stuck in. “It wasn’t a guilt-induced proposal, Cadie! I was planning to ask you anyway.”
She laughed bitterly. “Oh really?”
“Yes, and whether or not you believe that, I need you to believe this: what we’ve got and who we are is bigger than anything we’re going through. We’ll sort it out.”
Wooing Cadie McCaffrey Page 11
