by Amy Baker
Chapter 7
“So why did you run?” Hugh asked this question out of the blue while he pushed his medallions of beef around his plate. Since we had been discussing how the merger was going to affect both of our jobs and we were making small talk in the middle of a fabulous dinner at one of the trendiest restaurants in town, my head snapped up from my Chilean Sea Bass to stare at him intently. I wasn’t sure if I heard him correctly. But since he wouldn’t look up from his dish I was guessing that I had.
“Well,” I paused because I wasn’t sure how to respond. If I went the honest route then I would be laying all of my cards out on the white linen tablecloth. I wasn’t sure if that was the best idea. If I lied I knew it would just haunt me later. So I tried to think of a way to tell him why I left without drawing the bull’s eye around my own heart and making myself an easy target. “An opportunity presented itself and I took it,” I shrugged.
“There were opportunities in Virginia,” he countered. He stabbed a morsel of filet and pushed it in a half circle collecting the red wine reduction to assemble the perfect bite. He spoke before bringing his fork to his lips. “I know for a fact you were offered a job at a PR firm out of Richmond.”
“I suppose there were.” I took the napkin from my lap to dab at the corners of my mouth.
He finished chewing and forced himself to swallow. It seemed he had something important that he wanted to share. “No supposing. There were,” he stated emphatically. “I made sure of it.”
I watched as Hugh leaned back, tore his gaze from mine, maneuvered his tongue inside his mouth possibly to loosen food and rested one hand way up on his thigh, almost on his hip and exhaled heavily. His expression looked frustrated or disappointed or maybe even confrontational. Then it occurred to me that maybe the tongue action was more out of irritation than dental discomfort. My eyebrows pinched in question.
I wasn’t sure what was running through his mind but I could tell his entire demeanor was changing right before my eyes. Mainly I could tell that he seemed to be getting…angry? I just wasn’t sure if it was with himself for revealing something he hadn’t wanted to share or if he was enlightening me about my career choices in an austere way for another reason entirely.
“What do you mean you made sure of it?” I queried a little confused. As soon as the question crossed the threshold of my lips our waiter came over to ask how we were enjoying our meal. So Hugh and I turned toward him in unison with our most pleased expressions plastered on our faces and fawned verbally over the delicious food simultaneously. Thank goodness the waiter didn’t stay long because things were about to get heated. As soon as he left, Hugh immediately started in.
He leaned forward and his posture seemed to stiffen at the same time. “I made sure of it,” he said sternly. “How else can I say that?” He looked directly into my eyes and at that point there was no question that he was irritated. And I could tell without looking that his knee started bouncing under the table since the ice in my water glass started clanking from side to side.
My chin tucked back as soon as his overall posture registered to me as contentious. Where the hell was this coming from and why would Hugh be angry with me for taking a job offer in New York? His inquiry, which was coming across more like an interrogation prompted me to go on the defensive. I grew a set of hairy ones so fast that Barnum and Bailey would have hired me on the spot as the highlight for their freak show.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you can say it in a way that explains what exactly you mean?” I grumbled with a hint of sarcasm simultaneously cutting into my fish aggressively with a knife. Who cuts Sea Bass with a knife? It’s a flaky fish that falls apart if you look at it cross-eyed.
Obviously Hugh thought my question was of a rhetorical nature anyway because he leaned back, grabbed the napkin from his lap, and took his turn to aggressively dab at the corners of his mouth. Then he sighed heavily instead of explaining further. So I determined that it was a good opportunity to throw some more fuel on the fire. I dropped my utensils with a loud clank and apparently the boxing gloves I didn’t know I was wearing came flying off as well.
“Anyway, what would make me think that it would have mattered to you if I’d returned to Virginia?” I asked way too confrontationally raising my eyebrows to accentuate my point.
Then I proceeded to machine gun my supportive evidence.
“You never called to check on me after the wedding or to ask if I was being ostracized at school or if I was totally humiliated since I essentially bowled my tits down the aisle in the middle of a wedding ceremony! Look ma! No hands!”
I was yelling wasn’t I?
My face couldn’t have flushed faster. I don’t know what the fuck I was doing. I totally obliterated his wedding and I was reading him the riot act on how he should have behaved after? Well it seemed that as fast as I had grown a set of balls my tongue had also grown a mind of it’s own. I had no control over what was coming out of my mouth, whatsoever. When I finally looked at Hugh, really looked at him, I saw that he was stunned speechless. I became even more flustered and it actually started to feel like my head was a pressure cooker and it could blow at any given moment. Since shoving my napkin in my own mouth wasn’t an option, I brought it to my lips hoping it would deter me from blurting out any other latent anger that I wasn’t aware I was harboring.
Hugh leaned over his plate and took a bite while he seemingly contemplated an appropriate response to my tirade. Either that or he was embarrassed by my outburst and noticed that the people around us were trying to get a better look at my boobs, which apparently also doubled as bowling equipment. I was just too focused awaiting Hugh’s response to notice either way.
The longer it took for him to respond the more I felt the desire to start fanning myself but I knew that would be a dead give away as to what a pussy I actually was so I refrained. Then as luck would have it, just when it looked like Hugh was about to share the response he had formulated so carefully in his mind, one of the waiters came by to refill our water glasses. I looked up at the poor soul who was only doing his job and gave him a glare that screamed ‘take a hike.’ Hugh sat back and waited for him to finish and then gave him a cursory ‘thanks’ as he turned to go interrupt someone else’s critical conversation.
Hugh cleared his throat before he began. Honestly, if I were him I wouldn’t have even known where to start. “Well, I think your staying in Virginia would have mattered a great deal,” he somewhat whispered. “At least it would have mattered to me.”
I stared into Hugh’s eyes trying to ascertain if his words and their meaning were the same. Then when I finally decided what he shared was genuine, I let his answer settle somewhere deep inside of me. I felt my heart begin to thump an entirely different way and the color in my cheeks begin to turn from an infuriated red to an embarrassed pink. “Really?” I asked with surprise in my tone.
“Really.” He stared back at his plate.
Then I felt the need to try to explain away my bout of momentary insanity. “I’m sorry, Hugh,” I rushed. “I..I didn’t…If I was on your mind, well… you never led on that you cared what happened to me at all. So, I just assumed…”
But Hugh interjected with a response that was so unexpected I wasn’t sure if I heard him correctly. He leaned his torso back and kept his voice low. “Yeah, well, at the time I was keeping my distance in an effort to avoid jail time.” I watched as his eyes strolled from my face down to my torso, which was as far as his eyes could travel on my body and back up. Then he took a deep breath and continued on. “You were on my mind quite a lot, Delilah. Like, all the time. But you were under age and I...wasn’t.” He slid his hand palm down across the table until it reached mine. “But I never stopped thinking about you. For years I admired you from afar. Waiting. Then you left for college and I waited some more counting the days till you would return.” His eyes rested on our joined hands and then he continued. “I had a friend who owned a PR firm in Richmond so I asked if he would do me a fav
or and offer you a job when you graduated. It was a way for me to keep you around. Local. Within reach. Accessible. But you never returned home. Then I heard through the grapevine, and by the grapevine I mean Julia, that you moved to New York. Apparently,” he paused to make eye contact, “there wasn’t anything in our… I think she used the word hellhole, worth returning to.” He pulled his hand from mine and stared back down at his dish licking his lips and pressing them together. “So,” he whispered lamely and gave a shrug.
I bit my lip in response. I had said those exact words to Julia. At the time, the last place I wanted to be was back in my hometown. That was where my life had fallen apart…my personal hell, socially anyway. I wanted to go someplace where no one knew me. Where no one covered their mouth and talked out of the side to share a comment with their eyes trained on me. But it never occurred to me that Hugh would care one way or the other if I returned or not.
“Gosh, it sounds pretty awful when I hear you say it. I’m surprised you stopped by to see me at all.” If I were he I wouldn’t have come looking for me. Hearing him recount the circumstances around which he received the news of my relocation, even I thought I sounded like quite the consummate bitch.
“Well, I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for Griff,” he revealed.
This information shocked me. I barely knew Griff. Why would he suggest that Hugh stop by to see me? “Why would Griff tell you to stop to see me?” I queried still not understanding the connection.
“He’s marrying Tiff,” he explained.
Uh oh. Not this again. “I’m not following, Hugh.” I was fairly certain my eyebrows couldn’t knit any closer together as I tried to unravel the tangled line of communication that led to Hugh looking me up in New York.
“Tiff is friends with Julia.”
Holy shit.
Julia? The Julia who fucking crossed her heart with her friendship ring finger thereby promising to keep my love for Hugh Rowen a secret until her ass was buried six feet under? That Julia?
My heart began to pound rapidly in my chest. “And?” I drew out the one word hoping he would continue.
“And she told Tiff that you…well, you know…” He pointed to himself and then shrugged unsure if he should continue given the unreadable look on my face.
“Um. No. I don’t know. Could you maybe elaborate a little more?” I wasn’t sure how much of my secret Julia shared. I mean, did Julia tell Tiff in passing that at one point in time I liked Hugh or did she give Tiff the complete ‘Delilah Welling is madly in love with Hugh Rowen and has been for her entire life’ version? One way or the other, I was definitely planning on having a little conversation to reiterate the meaning of the friendship ring finger swear with my best friend, Julia.
“She said you had a…um…thing for me.”
A thing.
My face began to flush with embarrassment. If Julia were in arms length I probably would have involuntarily wrapped the fingers of my one hand around her neck and then started digging a hole for her final resting place with the other. Maybe, all this time, I had misunderstood the purpose of calling upon the friendship ring finger swear. Because the way I had interpreted it, you called upon it when you wanted someone to keep their fucking mouth shut until they were dead. Naturally, thereby taking the secret with them to the grave. At least that was the way I remembered it. And last I checked, Julia was alive and well. Thank goodness, of course.
Suddenly, Hugh’s voice cut through my murderous thoughts. “Junior, given the disturbed look on your face, I’m thinking Griff was, um, misinformed. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.” He stared at me for a few beats waiting for me to confirm or deny the information Griff was given but when I didn’t respond quickly enough he dropped his gaze, picked up his fork and stabbed a roasted potato. It looked like he shoved it in his mouth solely to silence himself.
As I emerged from the haze of anger from learning that Julia shared my secret, the look on Hugh’s face finally registered. He looked disappointed, upset, embarrassed even. There was a narrowing window of opportunity for me to quickly explain my reaction to Hugh or I would lose him forever. “Hugh,” I began. But if there is one thing we all know…timing is everything.
“Dessert?” The waiter interrupted exuberantly handing out menus the size of business cards. The wait staff in this restaurant quite possibly had the worst timing I had ever witnessed in my entire life not to mention the smallest dessert menu I had ever seen.
Hugh just stared at me expressionless as my mouth bobbed up and down. When it didn’t look like I was going to be able to respond to him or the dessert query, Hugh swallowed his last bite, wiped his mouth with his napkin and sent the waiter away, “Just the check.” Clearly Hugh had had his fill. Enough Filet Mignon, enough of the disruptive wait staff and enough of wasting his time on Delilah Welling.
Not a single word had passed between Hugh and me as we walked from the restaurant to my apartment. He did hold my hand as we made our way through the streets, which was surprising, but he kept his pace a little quicker than mine so I was always putting in an effort to keep up. No easy task in heels while trying to match Hugh’s long strides. I was still processing everything that Hugh had told me at dinner but I had yet to formulate a response. I needed to say something. I just wasn’t sure where to start. Hugh didn’t know it – couldn’t know it. But everything he said at dinner, apart from my best friend throwing me under the bus, had essentially answered every prayer I had ever made from the time I was a teen to present. But I had spent a lifetime perfecting how to hide my feelings for Hugh. I was an expert. Now, suddenly, I had been given the green light to share the truth? At what point had the dream of Hugh Rowen become my reality? Before I could make any headway in sorting out all of my thoughts and fears, we had reached my apartment and Hugh was preparing for his farewell.
“Welp,” he exhaled loudly, “it was nice to see you again, Delilah.” He guided my body with his hand so I was facing him. He stared into my eyes looking for something. But clearly he didn’t find it because when he bent his head, instead of placing his luscious lips on mine, he momentarily lingered and then veered to the right lightly placing a peck on my cheek. Damn. I realized in that moment I had been hanging onto the hope that his lips would press against mine telling me that everything was going to be all right and my silence hadn’t screwed up everything. But my hope quickly faded when he whispered his goodbye, not goodnight, closer to my ear. I actually felt my heart skip a beat. Then it fell to the soles of my shoes. I watched in slow motion as he took a step backward and then another before he slowly turned. As he gradually distanced himself I snapped from my trance desperate not to let him go without sharing my feelings in some way.
“Hugh!” I blurted urgently.
I watched as he slowed his pace and then seemingly chose to turn back around. “Hmm?” his head tilted to the side in question while his hands slid into the pockets of his slacks.
I stammered because I didn’t know how to say what I so desperately needed him to know. “I’m…I…uh…Griff…wasn’t…misinformed.” I swallowed the lump in my throat and I could hear my heart begin to thud loudly in my ears.
I watched as one beautiful side of his mouth tipped up before he answered. “Good to know. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” Then he turned and walked down my street quickening his pace.
Tomorrow night. My client’s merger party. Business. Not pleasure. I ran my hand over my face in frustration. It would seem that I was just as large a fucking idiot as Darcy Strong.
Chapter 8
Psht. “Stacey.” Psht. “Two O’clock. Over.” Psht. Logan, who chose to ignore his walking papers again, had also chosen something else. That was to stick with me rather than stay with Stacey. At first his loyalty supported my resolve that I was right in distancing myself from Stacey because she was a back stabbing bitch. But only hours after we had severed ties, Logan’s loyalty was becoming a liability. From the moment I stepped into the office that morning I hadn’t underst
ood a word he said. And since Stacey had always been the translator, I realized that I hadn’t ever had to worry about understanding him before. She would always beat the explanation out of him verbally, physically if need be. But now, with Stacey and me estranged, I had no one to explain what the heck he was trying to say. So I pressed my intercom button and asked for more information with the hope of figuring out what the hell he was talking about.
“Logan, what does that mean exactly? Do I have a meeting with Stacey at two? Because if you are saying two o’clock like she is coming from that direction in the office I can’t see her. I am in my office with the door closed and you are outside of my office in a separate cubicle. There is a wall between us remember?” I threw my head back and prayed at the ceiling hoping that it would help me in some way, shape or form get through my day. As I exhaled, I dropped my forehead on my desk chastising myself for praying to a ceiling. As I momentarily contemplated my stupidity I heard Logan’s voice again.
Psht. “Dive. Dive. Dive,” he somewhat whispered into the intercom. “Watch my six, watch my six!”
His hand must have been cupping the speaker while he spoke because it sounded like he was in a dank, moist tunnel. I could almost feel his spit spritzing me through the phone. Dive? What the hell did he mean by that? And why in the world would I have to watch his six?
