by Hazel Kelly
“Call me if you need anything,” he said to no one in particular.
Then he closed the door behind us.
Chapter 14: Will
My eye wasn’t nearly as bruised as my ego.
Not only had Ella stood me up, but she’d seen how much trouble I’d gone through to impress her, and she didn’t even care. She was just drunk and angry, more angry than I’d ever seen any woman before.
Ben was right. I must’ve really hurt her, and I was too late to make things right. I leaned back against the door and looked at the mess of flowers before me. They were even sadder in the daylight.
But I couldn’t stop thinking that it wasn’t supposed to be that way.
She was supposed to come over last night, unwind with a few drinks, and fawn over my five star meal. Then I was going to tell her how I felt about her. I was going to tell her that she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever met inside and out and that I was prepared to do whatever it took to make her as happy as she made me. No bullshit. No games. Just me doing right by her. Like she deserved.
Then, after I charmed her with all the words and promises she could stand, I was going to make love to her. Proper look me in the eyes while I make you come love. It was the kind of sex we’d already had on accident, and the fact that she knew then what it took me so long to figure out made my heart ache.
But apparently a woman with her self-respect and ambition waits for no man. Not even when that man is Will Abbott.
I was fucking voted New York’s most eligible bachelor four years in a row. Women fell all over themselves to get a night with my dick, and I was prepared to give her so much more than just sex. I mean, there would be plenty of sex, too, but it wouldn’t be just that.
If I had to make her cheese on toast for breakfast in bed every day for the rest of my life, that’s exactly what I would do. Because without, her everything was lackluster. Before she showed up, growing my business, whooping Frank at tennis, beating my own bench press records, eating in fine restaurants, and blowing my load in the occasional good time gal was all I needed.
But none of that stuff did it for me anymore. Not now. Not now that I knew she was out there. I would trade any of those things to be able to make her smile again. Nothing came close to filling me with as much joy as she did. I fucking baked for her! What the hell?!
And for all I knew, if I couldn’t win her back, I might never get hard again.
I sat down in front of the bagels and cut one in half, knowing full well that carbs would only make me feel better for a moment. Then I spread a layer of cream cheese on it that was as thick as my pain and took a big bite.
No matter how I looked at it, the contrast between my meticulous plans for last night and what actually happened was a joke. Nothing happened the way I wanted.
Instead of sharing a drink with her, I shared a drink with a homeless man.
Instead of fucking her, I let a floozy fondle my dick in vain.
Instead of eating a five star meal, I burnt one by myself.
And instead of surprising my perfect Valentine with ten thousand red roses, I had a big, useless mess on my hands.
I swallowed a bite of bagel and took another.
Maybe I deserved this shit. After all, I had lied to her, jerked her around, and sent her mixed signals.
But weren’t those particular transgressions forgivable?
After all, I also gave her the job of her dreams, excellent company on several romantic evenings, and the wettest, wildest orgasms she’d ever experienced. I even took a punch for her and picked her up from the shittiest bar in New York, saving her from countless lecherous men in cowboy boots and horrible, grating music.
If only there was some way of knowing if she felt the slightest bit guilty for blowing me off last night. Not knowing if all hope was lost hurt more than my eye socket, my nose, and my ego combined.
Because it meant I didn’t know how sorry to feel for myself.
Either I had officially missed my chance to be with the most amazing woman I’d ever met- a woman who made everything more fun and worthwhile- in which case, I should have some whiskey with my bagel- or she still had a flicker of affection for me in her heart- in which case, this wasn’t over.
If she didn’t hate me as much as she was letting on, maybe I still had a chance. After all, apart from the romantic gestures I intended to shower her with last night, she didn’t know about the part that mattered most, the part about my feelings for her.
I still hadn’t said it. I showed it in every way humanly possible, but I hadn’t confirmed my feelings for her in words. From my lips to hers, you’re the one that I want and there’s nothing I won’t do to make you mine.
And she deserved to hear that.
I owed her as much.
Only then would she be able to make an informed choice about whether or not she should give me a chance to be more than her lover, more than her boss, more than her friend. Only then- if she truly knew how I felt- could I accept her decision either way.
Not that it would be easy, but for both our sakes, I couldn’t drag this out anymore.
The next time I saw her, I would tell her how I felt.
And whatever she wanted, I would deal with it.
Chapter 15: Ella
“Does your head hurt as much as mine does?” I asked, looking over at Jackie.
She was in her purple onesie on the opposite end of the couch. “Drink some more Sprite. You’ll feel better.”
“I can’t,” I whined, fluffing a pillow and curling against it in the fetal position. “I can never drink anything again.”
She pointed the remote at the TV and flipped the channels.
“Are you pissed at me or something?” I asked.
“No. Just disappointed.”
“What?!” I propped myself up on my elbow. “Everyone knows that’s worse. What are you upset about?”
“I guess I’m just not impressed with how you spoke to Will.”
“Are you kidding me? I can speak to him however I want.”
“You made that perfectly clear.”
“What’s your point?” I asked, wondering why she would pick a fight with me when she knew how shitty I felt.
She shrugged and redid her ponytail. “I guess it’s just that he’s still your boss at the end of the day.”
“Yeah.”
“And he did us a favor.”
“What favor?”
“Ella, I know you haven’t been going out much-”
“I haven’t.”
“I know. You kept reminding me over and over again last night.”
I looked towards the TV.
“But you got totally out of control last night, and it’s one thing to not apologize to me since I’m the one that was pouring drinks down your throat, but you were a total bitch to him.”
“I don’t think I should have to apologize for getting a little drunk.”
“A little drunk?!” she said. “I couldn’t get you to stop dancing on the bar, and Will had to carry you out of it in the end after getting punched in the face by some douchebag that had been looking up your dress all night!”
“Why didn’t you say someone was looking up my dress?”
“I tried,” she said, leaning forward for the Pringles tube. “But you were totally blacked out.”
I swallowed.
“The cab driver almost wouldn’t take our fare because you puked all over the side of his car.”
“What?”
“All I’m saying is that even though you shouldn’t normally have to apologize for getting shit faced, when you puke on the guy that’s come to rescue you and then act that ungrateful in the morning, there’s something seriously wrong.”
I pursed my lips.
“Sorry,” she said. “I know you feel like crap, but you let yourself down in the way you treated him this morning.”
“I was just trying to protect myself, Jackie. He’s been using me for months.”
“
I wish someone would use me like that.” She shook her head. “From the look of his place this morning, it seemed like he sort of went out of his way for you.”
I rubbed my eyes. Whose side was she even on?
“I mean, shit, Ella. If I knew he was going to go to that much trouble, I would’ve tried a lot harder to make sure you called him.”
“He’s a liar,” I said, feeling worse by the minute.
“Is he though?”
“Are you kidding me? He told me his Dad died of a broken heart and he’s alive in a nursing home forty-five minutes from here.”
“So what?”
My mouth fell open.
“I know you’re sensitive about that because you’re sad about your Dad, but he has a right to cope with his own grief however he wants.”
“But he’s not dead.”
“It doesn’t matter. You heard what he said. His dad has fucking dementia, and if that’s not horrible enough, you made him feel bad about it.” She put the Pringles tube back on the coffee table and picked up the remote again. “Which you had no right to do.”
“Okay. I get it. I was a bitch.”
“Yeah.”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Look for a new job.”
“I don’t want a new job.”
“Then take your sorry ass over to his place and apologize.”
“For what?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Do you have a pen handy? Because you probably need to make a list.”
I reached for the Sprite on the table in front of me.
“Sorry I stood you up on Valentine’s Day. Sorry I verbally abused you. Sorry you got punched in the face because I was belligerent. Sorry I puked on your shoes. Sorry about your Dad.”
I took a sip of my drink.
“Should I go on?”
“No,” I said, setting it back on the table. “That’s quite alright.”
“Look, Ella. I know you’re hurting because you feel like he doesn’t care about you the way you want him to, but the way you’re coping isn’t…”
“What?”
“Coping.”
“You know that’s all it is, though, right?” I looked at her. “You know I’m only trying to keep myself from getting more hurt than I already am.”
“Of course I do,” she said, “but the fact of the matter is that I’d rather you were hurting Ella than bitching Ella. Being this hard doesn’t suit you.”
I let my head rest against the pillow. “That was a lot of flowers, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “A lot a lot.”
I sighed.
“Has it occurred to you that maybe while you’ve been trying to push him away, he’s actually kept falling for you?”
“Yeah, but I’m convinced that’s only cause he’s a control freak, ya know? Like how everyone wants what they can’t have. Except it’s worse for him because he so rarely can’t have something.”
“Maybe, but maybe not.”
“You think he’s, like, in love with me and I haven’t noticed?”
“I’m saying you don’t fill your apartment with roses to impress somebody that you only consider a recreational fuck buddy.”
I groaned. “I know what you’re saying, but money is no object to him. That’s like a regular guy getting a girl a dozen roses.”
“Still. When have you ever heard of a guy getting a dozen roses for a woman that he wasn’t head over heels for?”
I wracked my throbbing brain.
“That’s what I thought.” She pulled her feet up on the couch and hugged her knees to her chest.
“But I already tried to have hope for so long. I already tried to convince myself that his feelings would change, that he would realize what we had was something special, and he never did.”
“Some people are slow.”
I laughed. “Will Abbott is not slow,” I said, thinking of how quickly he found hot buttons I didn’t even know I had.
“Just because he’s successful in business doesn’t mean relationships come easily to him. Try and imagine being in his shoes. He has a lot more to lose than you do if things don’t work out.”
“What are you talking about? That’s not true at all.”
“Of course it’s true.”
“Well I never thought about it that way.”
“Probably because it’s not easy to put yourself in the shoes of a billionaire business tycoon.”
I stuck out my bottom lip. “But I’m the one that could lose my job.”
“So what? It’s not like you’ve had the job that long? But he’s basically a public figure. Do you have any idea how careful people like him have to be so they don’t screw up their reputation?”
“Obviously not.”
“Well trust me. He may have a lot of luxuries, but one of them isn’t the ability to enter into relationships lightly.”
“I don’t know if that’s a fair assumption.”
“No you don’t, and you probably never will because you’re too busy talking yourself out of caring for him instead of giving him a chance.”
“I gave him plenty of chances.”
“But he asked you for one more, didn’t he? Isn’t that what you told me last night? That he asked you for one more chance?”
“Yeah.”
“And you didn’t give it to him.”
“Because of the lie and-”
“I know you’ve got your reasons,” she said. “I heard them last night until you were green in the face.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “But something tells me he didn’t fill his apartment with roses and cover his bed with petals so he could have you over for a parting fuck.”
I sat up and stretched my neck.
“I’m no relationship expert obviously-”
I pursed my lips.
“But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether or not you can live with knowing that- after everything he’s done for you- when he asked you for one more chance, you wouldn’t give it to him.”
I leaned forward and put my elbows on my knees.
“Can you live with that?” she asked. “Or will you always wonder how last night might’ve gone differently if you hadn’t blown him off?”
I hung my head. “I’m assuming that was a hypothetical question?”
“Fucking right it was,” she said, slouching on the couch. “Fucking right.”
Chapter 16: Will
I figured I’d have one more drink before I stopped feeling sorry for myself.
Not that I thought it was going to be that easy, but I needed a deadline. Deadline’s worked for me.
I pulled the stopper out of the aged whiskey and tried to ignore how much nicer it tasted when I had someone to enjoy it with. I poured a generous measure into the glass, inhaling deeply as soon as the amber liquid hit the air.
It was nice to smell something besides roses. They had to go. Surely there was a couple getting married somewhere that would be happy to have them. Or maybe the florist would come back and pick them up. At least I knew they had the manpower since they got them here in the first place.
I should’ve thought this through.
My phone rang in my pocket. When I saw that it was Frank, I let it ring out. He would be full of enthusiasm and dying to know how I got on with my romantic evening which I’d foolishly told him about in a moment of weakness. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the mood to admit how badly wrong everything went. He would feel obligated to try and cheer me up, and it wouldn’t be fair to make him waste his breath.
There was only one thing in the world that would cheer me up: forgetting the whole thing ever happened. Now that I’d lost her for good, I sort of wished I never hit on her in the first place, never fixed the raffle so she’d win, never gave her a job, and never tried to seduce her. After all, the whole time I was doing those things I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know that she was goin
g to get under my skin, that being with her was going to feel so good.
I thought it was harmless, and as soon as I realized I stood a risk of getting hurt, I hurt her first.
Now neither of us was better off. On the contrary, I’d managed not only to “mess her up” by refusing to recognize our undeniable chemistry but to ruin the only prospect I gave a damn about.
As soon as I sat down on the couch with my whisky, I realized the remote was on the other side of the room. I didn’t get up to get it though. I didn’t see the point. I was just going to finish this glass and call it a night anyway.
I wondered how my black eye would look in the morning. The swelling had gone down considerably already because of the guy’s poor technique. Still, if it was bad, I probably wouldn’t go into the office. The risk of triggering the rumor mill was too great.
I looked at the clock. It was just past seven. I wondered what Ella was doing. I figured she was either in bed nursing her hangover with water or lounging around with Jackie nursing her hangover with the hair of the dog.
I wanted to hate her for being such a pain in the ass. I wanted to be disgusted that she would dance barefoot on a bar in a condemned establishment, but I wasn’t. It only added to her charm that there was another layer to her I didn’t know existed.
I assumed it was Jackie’s influence that got her into that tight blue dress. There wasn’t a guy in that place whose night wasn’t made by seeing the way it hugged her curves. It was so short it even made her legs look long.
I took a sip of whiskey, letting it soak my tongue before I swallowed. I almost wished it wasn’t so smooth, but I didn’t keep cheap, throat burning booze in the house.
Maybe it was all for the best. She was young and carefree and wilder than I knew. Being with me might hold her back. Sure, she would be able to do anything she wanted whenever she wanted, but I was also older than she was and more sedate- assuming I was getting my workouts in. Perhaps it was foolish to think she could’ve ever had long term feelings for a guy like me. After all, I wanted to spoil her, to possess her.
