by Amy Brent
“Right,” she nodded, pulling a face that told me she at least thought she knew where I was coming from. “Shame. We would have liked to have you back.”
Suddenly, I heard the elevator ding – even though the sound was distant my ears pricked up at once, hyper-sensitized to even the vaguest little bit of noise. I snapped my head around and saw – wait, I recognized her. I frowned, taking a moment to place her. That was Nate’s secretary, right? She caught my eye, waved, and made her way towards me and my heart sank. Oh. Oh.
She came through the door and I realized that my mouth had almost comically turned down at the corners. I quickly straightened my back and glanced around to make sure that Freda wasn’t here. I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to hide my disappointment from her if this was going to go the way I thought.
“Hey,” The secretary greeted me, and I groped around for her name in the back of her head. Tanya? Tana?
“Hi,” I nodded to her.
“Nate sent me,” She explained. “He wanted to wish you the best in your future endeavors.”
“Oh,” I blinked at her for a moment, wondering if that was it. She raised her eyebrows at me, waiting for me to react.
“Well, tell him thank you,” I burbled. “And…uh, yeah. Thanks. Thank you for…everything.”
“No problem, I’ll pass that on,” she nodded, and I could tell from the look in her eyes that she didn’t know thing about what had happened between Nate and I.
“Thank you,” I mumbled again, averting my gaze to the floor. My heart was pulsing in my chest as I took a deep breath and tried to figure out what had just happened. Was that it?
I went to pack up the last few bits in from my desk, in kind of a haze. He wasn’t even going to come down to say goodbye? Not even going to drop me a message? I pulled out my phone and refreshed it, checking my email and my texts to make sure that I hadn’t missed a message from him. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Maybe this was part of some game of his, where he would call me up to his office to sneak off for one last hook-up?
My heart was clenched tight, and I realized that I was near to tears as I threw the last few pens and notebooks back into my bag. It was over between us. But things had been going so well between us, up until a couple of days ago. Had it been that kiss? He had kissed me back, his hand on my back, drawing me closer – and now he wasn’t even going to speak to me. I hated the way I felt right then, the polar opposite of how I had felt at that end of the night we had spent together. The anticipation, the wonder, the what-if that had seemed to consume me over the course of those few hours was gone, leaving an ugly hollow in its wake that reminded me that he didn’t even care enough to come down and see me off. He could have put his head in. He called have called me up. He could have invited me over to this place for last night together, something to remember him by. But he hadn’t. He had sent down his secretary to do it for him. His fucking secretary. It was enough to make me wonder if he had ever really give a damn about me in the first place. Had I just been some naïve little thing he’d been using to fulfil his fantasies?
But that night, at the restaurant. That wasn’t something you pulled off with someone you barely knew. You didn’t take them out to the most exclusive place in town and spend the whole evening talking to them, touching on the stuff you loved and the stuff you hated, with someone you had no intention of keeping in your life.
But maybe that was just him, I conceded as I picked up the box of my stuff and headed for the door. There was a reason he had been so successful as a businessman, and perhaps that reason was because he was so adept at getting people to feel special, to feel adored and important. Maybe I had just been the focus of that for a few weeks. While I was still fresh and interesting and new to me. I remembered that handshake in his office, and wondered if I’d been anything more than a business deal to him. An acquisition. And now that he had had me, he was bored. He was done.
I scooped my bag over my shoulder and headed for the door. I had said goodbye to everyone I had worked with over the past month or so already, and I was ready to get out of here. Every step I took, everything I saw, was a reminder of what I had shared with Nate up until only a few days before; I even passed his secretary on the stairs. She avoided my gaze, probably awkward at the thought of saying goodbye all over again, but in my head it was because she felt sorry for me, because she knew. I lowered my gaze. I felt humiliated. Hadn’t this been a bit of fun when we’d started, a way for me to get my mojo back after everything that had happened with Matt? And now here I was, feeling as though I’d been kicked in the teeth and forced to accept the fact that I would likely never see this man again. I mean, I could go to his house or blow up his phone with calls, but I was determined not to be that crazy girl who couldn’t let go of a guy she barely knew in the first place. I would just have to forget everything I felt for him, everything I’d clung to, and mark this one down as a loss on my part.
I made it out of the building and on to the street and the cold air immediately burned in my lungs. I realized the lump in my throat was starting to pinch, threatening to send me to tears right her in the middle of the street. I tipped my head back and looked at the grey afternoon sky, more reflective of my mood than I would have liked to admit. I wasn’t going to cry here in the middle of the street. I wasn’t going to be that girl. I wasn’t.
Patricia’s words curdled in my head. She’d warned me about this. She’d told me that this was how it would go, that I would pour all that stray love and affection into him and that I would end up down and out like this while he went on, probably with barely another thought for me. And she had been right. But for a second there – just a moment, just as long as our lips touched on that busy street – I had convinced myself that this thing went both ways. That we could make a go of it. I couldn’t get that feeling out of my head, my brain replaying the moment over and over again, searching for a crack in the armour, something that would admit to the fact that this had all been my imagination. But it wasn’t there. It simply wasn’t. For that second, I had fallen for him, and that had been all it took to throw me straight back down this pit into wanting him more than I ever should have.
I arrived back home, dropped the box of my things at my feet with a clatter, and headed straight for the bedroom. I needed to sleep for a day and a half and hope that when I woke up, this would all be over for me.
Chapter Seven
I looked around the apartment one last time and let out a long sigh. Yeah, there was no reason for me to stay here a second longer. I just wished that I could come up with one.
It had been about three weeks since I had finished up my internship with Nate’s company, and I had long since returned to college to finish up the last of my exams and assignments and enjoy a few days worth of drinking my worries away and sharing my excitement at finally being done with everything once and for all. But the whole time I had been trying to enjoy myself, I had found that my mind was somewhere else entirely. Specifically, with a certain Nate Richards, the very same man who hadn’t bothered to say a word to me since I had finished up at his place once and for all.
“Are you alright?” Patricia had asked me at one of those nights out, when a handful of us who had been in the same dorm when we’d started at college decided to get together for one last hurrah. I guess I had been a little quieter than normal as several people across the course of the night has demanded to know what was up with me. I could brush off everyone else but I knew Patricia would need an honest answer if I was going to get rid of her.
“Just a little…bittersweet,” I waved my hand around the people sitting about the table. “All of this.”
“Yeah, it is,” she agreed with a sigh, that tipsy little haze that always came after she’d had a few drinks fuzzing up her sight a little. She suddenly leaned in and gave me a hug, which I returned. “We’re going to stay in touch though, right? Even after we’re done with all of this?”
“Of course we are,” I assure
d her. “Don’t…don’t worry about it. I’m done with losing people from my life. I’m not going to let it happen again.”
“I don’t think losing Matt was that much of a big deal,” she teased. I grinned. She was right about that, at least.
“Yeah, damn straight,” I agreed. “You want another drink? I could use one.”
“For sure,” she nodded, and I headed over to the bar to top us up once more. But it seemed that no amount of alcohol was going to get Nate out of my head.
In the weeks that followed the end of term, everyone seemed to be drifting around in some kind of stasis, not quite sure what to do with themselves. I had applied for a few jobs here and there and was trying to let myself get a bit loose and enjoy my free time, but I was a type-A workaholic even when I was in grade school and having nothing to do was starting to get under my skin in a big way. I scrubbed that apartment top to bottom, till I could see my face in practically every reflective surface in the house and until my knees were red-raw, and I still found myself grouchy around the edges knowing that I didn’t have anything I needed to do. If I hadn’t been so caught up in what happened with Matt and then with Nate I might have been better prepared to handle all this stuff, but stupidly I had let myself get distracted with boys and now I was stuck at an uncomfortable lose end. It didn’t suit me. It didn’t feel right.
And so, after a few weeks, I decided it was time to head down and spend a bit of time with my family. I hadn’t seen them properly since the holidays and even then I had one foot back in the city as I tried to keep on top of my assignments. It would be good to unwind for a while, to force myself out of the mindset of being in this place. And to put enough space between Nate and I that I would have no choice but to think about something else. I knew that as soon as I was through the door my mom would have thrust a dozen questions and tasks on me that all needed answering and taking care of right that second. The guerrilla method to getting over someone you liked: going home and offering to help out around the house a little.
I booked my tickets and called my parents and promised to stay for at least a couple of weeks, and as soon as I was all ready to go I felt a lot better. He was still there – Nate, at the back of my mind, where had had taken up residence for the time being – but I could at least pretend for a while that I wasn’t still crazy hung up on him. As long as I kept pretending that was true, it would eventually become my reality, right? I hadn’t told anyone about him, not even Patricia, as though speaking his name and admitting what happened between us would render all of it real, and I had every intention of just letting him fade to the back of my mind. Even though his touch, his kiss, his smile were all fresh in my memory.
As I packed a bag and prepared to leave my apartment, I found myself checking my messages and re-checking, as though by some cosmic twist of fate Nate would realize I was about to leave town and would have this passionate desire to see me again, to beg me stay. If I was flying back, I would half-expected him to be there at the airport, running through security, begging me to take him back. Maybe that was nothing but a fantasy. Maybe he’d been thinking about me all this time and would be heartbroken to know that I was going. But if it was the latter, he had done a damn good job of hiding that from me all this time. I hadn’t heard a whisper from him, not a message, not an email, not a bunch of flowers from a mysterious-but-not-so-mysterious sender. He was done with me, for better or for worse, and I had to move on.
I hooked my bag over my shoulder, checked I had my keys for the last time, and headed out the door. It felt odd, to be leaving this place after so long. I had lived here for the last couple of years and it was firmly and totally my home, even if I had had to share it with an asshole who was playing me for a fool for longer than I would have cared to admit to. Nate had never even seen it. I had never thought to invite him back here, not when I had seen how amazingly gorgeous his apartment was. I would have spent the whole time he was here wondering if he thought this place was some kind of hovel in comparison.
I stepped on to the train an hour or so later and left the city, feeling a pang of sadness as I pulled away from the station. Patricia knew I was going for a while, but then she was off visiting some other friends outside the city too. There wasn’t anyone else who I had to tell, and something about that made me feel…lonely. For so long I had had someone in my life who cared about where I was and what I was doing, who would ask how my day had been when I came in through the door. Even if it had been just to keep up appearances, it was still something. I missed that, more than I would have cared to admit. I didn’t want it with Matt again, not for a million bucks, but I thought, for a second there, that Nate and I might be able to share something not too far from it. I leaned my head back against the train seat and let out a long sigh, attracting a hard stare from the older man sitting across from me. I met his gaze steadily, daring him to say something, and he glanced away eventually. Yeah, I wasn’t in the mood to be told how I should or shouldn’t act.
I closed my eyes and tried to think about anything but the state of my love life. And maybe it was the movement of the train, maybe it was a low-level fear over what was to come in my life, or maybe it was something else entirely, but I realized I was starting to feel more than a little ill. I reached for my water, grimaced, and took a sip. The last thing I needed now was to be struck down with an illness just as I felt like I was finally leaving the worst of this year behind. Pressing my head to the window, just like I had done back in that cab as I drove away from the best date of my life, I tried to clear my thoughts and focus not on what was behind me, but what lay ahead. And for the first time in a while, I started to feel a little optimistic.
Chapter Eight
“Look, Mom, I’m just not sure that I feel like it-”
“Come on, Nia, you know you should get out there,” Mom chided me as she made her way around my bedroom, pulling open the curtains and tidying up clothes that I had laid out for that day. I got out of bed and eased them out of her hands, hugging them to my chest defensively.
“I’m just not sure I’m in the mood for some big…work thing,” I waved my hand vaguely. “What’s this in aid of again?”
“Your father’s new business partner,” she sighed, rolling her eyes at me. “You must remember? He told you all about it last night over dinner-”
“Yeah, I was still a little tired from the flight,” I admitted. “Sorry. I guess it must have just washed straight over me.”
“Must have,” Mom muttered, and I could tell she was irritated. I felt a wave of guilt wash over me, a common emotion when I returned to the house I’d grown up in – Mom had a way of pulling it out of me, even when she was trying to cheer me up, as she was doing now.
“You’ve been lazing around in here feeling sorry for yourself,” she pointed out. “It’ll do you good to get some fresh air and see some new people. I know some of the guys at the office have been asking after you…”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes right back at her, but I knew I would get myself a scolding if I dared and had no interest in explaining to Mom why I was so uninterested in meeting anyone new. No boys, not for a long time. But Mom had always been keen to hook me up with some of the people that Dad worked with, her beady eyes scoping out who would be the best father and the best prospect from a business perspective and then splitting the difference. Ever since she’d heard that Matt and I were done for (I had spared her the details, but she got the idea that getting back together was firmly off the table), she had been dropping hints about what was clearly a long list of guys that she had been curating enthusiastically since I left home all those years ago. And I was already starting to get a little tired by it. But I knew she meant well and that I would gain nothing by acting like an immature little baby about this, so I put a smile on and tried to keep my reactions as neutral as possible.
“Are they,” I replied mildly, and she sensed that I wasn’t completely closed off to this and pounced at once.
“Yeah, there are
a few who – well, let’s just say they spotted your picture on your father’s desk and they’ve been asking after you ever since,” she beamed at me. I fought the urge to stick my tongue out in disgust. I didn’t want to be an ass, but that had to be the grossest fucking way I’d ever heard of a guy trying to pick up a chick. Just by eyeing the photo of me Dad had at work? How old was I in that thing, eighteen? If that?
“That’s sweet,” I lied through my teeth. “But I think I’m alright for the time being. Really.”
“You shouldn’t spend all your time moping around after Matt,” she perched on the end of the bed and reached out to squeeze my knee. “You know you have to move on sometime…”
“Yeah, I know,” I smiled at her. Little did she know that Matt wasn’t the one I was having so much trouble moving on from. No, he was nothing but a distant memory now – it was Nate, still fresh in my head, who was driving me so up the damn wall. I let my head fall back against the pillow, feeling like the consumptive lead in a tragic romance from the nineteenth century. Right down to being dragged out to a social event I didn’t want anything to do with. Yeah, I would just have to suck it the hell up and get on with it, because I knew that if I turned down this one then it wouldn’t take my mother long to come up with something else for me to go to. I ignored the churning in my stomach, which had been present since I’d woken up this evening, and held a hand up to her.
“I’ll go,” I agreed finally, with a long, dramatic sigh that I could sense her rolling her eyes at without looking. She paused for a moment, and I could imagine the way she was pursing her lips at my perceived lack of gratefulness at her so kindly dragging me out of the house.
