by Tasha Jones
Felix sat waiting for me in the lobby of his office building just like he said he would. He looked even nicer in real life than he had in the picture Alorah had showed me. I hoped this wasn’t some sort of façade, or unfortunate trick of genetics to give him resting nice face where it was not warranted. Nevertheless, as soon as he saw me, he stood and extended a hand to me. I smiled at him, taking his hand. It was a little clammy. I wondered why he had called in the first place. Everything about him screamed “nice guy.”
As soon as we sat down, he offered me a bottle of Fiji water. I took it graciously, opened it, and took a tentative sip. “You look every bit as beautiful as my wildest imagination.”
I laughed at this. “Well, I think that’s more of an insult to your imagination than it is a compliment to my beauty.”
Both of his eyebrows shot up his forehead at this. “And witty as well!”
“Why are you so surprised? What did you expect?”
He shook his head. “I have absolutely no idea. Peter has odd tastes.”
I did not like the idea of being tossed around. “Peter recommended me?”
“Not exactly…”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“I learned that Peter was seeing you and I told him to break it off.”
“Is there a conflict?”
“You see, he plays a very integral role for Edward Worthington.”
My heart sunk to my stomach. “So this is about Worthington?”
He gave me an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid a lot of things are.”
“Right. So, what’s the hang up exactly and why couldn’t you just tell this to Alorah John?”
“I’d sooner trust you than I would Mrs. John.”
I was swimming in a pool of confusion. “And why is that?” I asked.
“Well, you’ve already been with Peter and if you were going to say anything to damage the campaign, you would have already. We want to keep this as contained as possible.”
I felt like my whole imaginary life was flashing before my eyes. Everything I had hoped for myself with Edward. It was like yet another reminder that we could never be. I wouldn’t dare tell him the truth. God, it was so disappointing. “So, you don’t want my services.”
He laughed at this as if it were the funniest thing anyone had ever said.
I could not deny it was starting to get to me. “No. I just don’t want you anywhere near this company or the campaign.”
I tried not to spill any tears on the rug on my way out.
Chapter Seven - Edward
“Look, the Irish are getting good and tired of our fake promises.” It was too late in the afternoon and I had too much of a headache to continue to make diplomatic concessions about our company’s questionable morals.
The whole thing was profoundly tiring.
“You don’t have to use harsh words,” Othello, one of my engineers said as he began to roll up the plans.
“On the contrary, my words are not harsh enough.”
Peter, who sat at the head of the conference room with his sleeves rolled up, observing everything from Othello and his pack of minions to the interns who sat in the back corner, gave me a curt nod by way of distant approval.
“So, what would you have me do?” Othello asked.
I shrugged, nervously tapping my foot as I labored to come up with a real alternative. I came up empty-handed. “I don’t know…” My voice trailed as I continued to ponder. “We are losing their patience with us and we are running out of lies.” I gazed at everyone in the room, but still couldn’t manage to come up with anything. “All right. Let’s just pick this up at a different time.” With that I walked out of the conference room, letting the door shut behind me.
As I got into the elevator, my head was still reeling with this problem. I felt pressured, like the whole world was waiting to hear what I had to say, when I really didn’t have anything to say in the first place. The doors whooshed open, revealing the short hallway that led to my office. I stalked down it and opened the door, the heavy wood reverberating down my weakened arms. I had gone far too many nights without sleep and it was starting to catch up with the rest of my body.
“Mr. Worthington?”
I turned to find Bridget staring at me with an expectant expression and her phone in her hand. I hoped to God that it wasn’t a reporter. Ever since I announced, people had been calling, hoping to set up an interview. But that was another thing demanding my attention; I had yet to solidify my platform and my team could not reach a unified consensus on what was or was not a smart decision.
My head started to ache just thinking about it.
“If that’s the Daily Sun...“
She shook her head. “Someone by the name of Nisha Johnson.”
My heart stopped. I tried to remain composed as I replied with, “Oh. Just pass it through. I’ll be in my office.” With that I brushed past her, went into my office and shut the door behind me.
I stared at the phone, waiting for the buzzing sound.
“Hello?” My voice caught in my throat.
“Worthington?”
“Where you expecting anyone else?” I leaned back in my chair, lifting my feet onto the desk.
“No. No one else.”
She sounded… odd.
“Are you all right?”
“I think we should talk.”
I let out a nervous laugh. “It’s only been two weeks. Are we already having The Talk?”
It was a joke, but she didn’t even chuckle. “Yes. Yes we are.”
I covered the mouth piece so that I could swallow the lump in my throat. “Are you serious?” It didn’t make much sense the fact that after two weeks, my stomach churned with the mere thought of this moment. Knowing that I might one day see her again was the only thing that kept me calm, kept me going.
“I am very serious, Edward.”
“What have I done?”
“That’s the scary thing.”
“What’s scary?”
“It isn’t you.” Her voice faltered.
“Are you married? Taken? Engaged?” It seemed like the only explanation in the world.
“What?” Obviously, I was wrong. “Why the hell would I--?”
“I just thought...“
“Well, you thought wrong.”
There was a pause. I could hear her deep breathing from the other end of the line and something told me that she was deeply upset by something. I didn’t know exactly how I knew this, but I suspected she wasn’t doing this of her own volition. “No games, Johnson. What are you up to?”
“We just come from different worlds.”
“What different worlds?” My voice grew heavy. “I don’t know anything about you and you hardly know a thing about me.”
“I know what everyone knows and that’s quite a lot.”
So this was about the tabloids. “No. It isn’t. It’s nothing but noise.”
“I just think that one day, you’ll look at me and you’ll wonder what you were thinking.”
I took my legs off of the desk, switched the phone onto speaker and put the earpiece down. This was not the day. I wasn’t ready to see her go, especially like this. “You are the stupidest, most intelligent person I’ve ever met.”
The sound of her laughing on the other end warmed my heart. “So, that’s your strategy for changing my mind? Insults?”
“Nisha. This is madness.”
“No. We are madness. You deserve the royal family. Not me.”
“But if you could just tell me what you mean, then...“
“I can’t.”
I knew what this was. She was dating someone on track to become a politician, and, for whatever reason, she was afraid of what people would think. She was running from the spotlight. “Yes you can.”
“How do you know that…”
She seemed to waver. I could see the light. “Because I like you.”
“You do?”
“Yes.
You’re radiant and I’d be lucky to have you on my arm. The royals would want to be you.”
“I just… this all sounds...“
“Don’t worry about how it sounds. Just don’t leave me hanging.”
“You might regret this.”
“How could I?”
Static filled the earpiece as she sighed. “This was much harder than I thought it’d be.”
“So don’t do it, Nisha.” The pause told me that I still had a chance. “Look, I know it’s hard to believe me, but why don’t you just come to a press conference with me next week. You’ll see how much they’ll love you and if they don’t or you don’t feel comfortable, well then you can call it. And I won’t stop you.”
“I want to believe you…”
“So believe me.”
Chapter Eight – Edward
Two Weeks Later…
I felt the pain from my evening workout almost before I even woke. My eyes flipped open and I winced at the sun streaming through the giant window that took up my entire back wall. The day was aggressively bright, as if it meant to pull me out of my bed and throw me outside. A groan slipped out of my lips as I turned over to check the time. It was barely after eight in the morning, but already far too late. Saturday mornings were for the campaign office and answering to the people who judged me for a living so that I would go out onto the trail, ready for whatever they would throw at me. By the time I had finally gotten myself up, I could already feel my body adjusting for the rest of the day. To tell the truth, I felt more alive, more productive and more like myself than I had in the longest time.
I crossed my spacious room, grabbed my terrycloth robe off the hook that hung on my bathroom door and made my way down the long hallway to the kitchen. The scent of coffee assaulted my nose as I entered the room filled with expensive-looking stainless steel appliances. A paper and a small pile of toast had been placed on the counter along with a small dish full of butter and a knife. I glanced around me as I went for the coffee maker, looking for the housekeeper, but no one lurked in my back hallway. I couldn’t hear anyone in the guest bedroom and there clearly wasn’t anyone standing in my parlor. She must have stepped out for groceries or something.
With this worked out, I turned my attention back to the paper. As soon as I looked at it, a smile played on the edges of my lips. My heart swelled in my chest and, as soft as it sounds, I could almost feel my eyes tearing up with happiness. There, on the front cover of the Daily Sun were Nisha and I. I could tell by the green dress she wore, the one that matched her eyes and contrasted with her skin so beautifully that this had been taken at the charity event we attended last weekend. She looked stunning with a smile that could light up the entire room, even through the newspaper. In looking at this, I hardly even glanced at myself, even though I stood right next to her with my hand around her.
Just in staring at her like that, I became consumed with the need to see her… and soon. My heart fluttered in my chest as I dialed her number with my house phone.
“Hello?” her voice sounded groggy, like she was still sleeping.
I grimaced, completely forgetting that waking her up was a real possibility. “Oh goodness, did I wake you?”
There was the sound of her shuffling, before she responded with, “It’s all right. I should be up anyway.”
I shrugged. “Well, it is unladylike for you to stay in bed beyond ten.”
She giggled at this. The sound of it made me smile. “Did your grandmother tell you that?”
“My grandmother’s dead.”
She made an odd sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a gulp. “I am so sorry.”
I chuckled at this. “No. I’m just messing with you. She’s in a home.”
“You put your grandmother in a home?”
“No. My mother did.” I winced at my own mention of my mother. I hadn’t even thought about her in years.
“Oh… So is there a reason you woke me up this early, or are you just wanting to torture me?”she asked.
I shrugged. In truth, there really wasn’t a reason, but I didn’t want to say that and sound stupid, so I came up with one really quickly. “I want you to have dinner with me.”
“Really? We just had dinner yesterday.”
I laughed at this. “I don’t know about you, but I eat dinner every day.”
Her giggle filled the earpiece. “I know, but don’t you think we’ll run out of places to eat?”
“This is London, love. Such a thing isn’t even possible.”
I could almost hear her smiling through the phone. “Well, all right then. If you say so…”
Chapter 9 - Nisha
Edward and I were going somewhere fast. Part of me wanted to halt it right then and there; to stop it before I felt trapped inside of all of it. But the other part of me wondered what I had done to be so lucky as to deserve this. Part of me wanted to simply ask him what the expiration date on this was. Part of me wondered aloud, “What’s the catch?”
Edward glanced at me, his eyes flashing blank for a short moment before he turned his attention to the menu in my hand. With a smile, he replied with, “The mushrooms. The mushrooms are the catch.”
I laughed at this. “You’re just saying that because you hate mushrooms.”
He shrugged. “I’m not wrong…”
I scoffed at him. “All right, well what are you getting?” I asked as I looked over his shoulder. I caught a whiff of his magical scent. It nearly drove me wild with desire right then and there.
“The Chicken Parmigiana,” he replied in a matter of fact voice as he looked up at me.
We were inches apart and all I wanted was to feel his lips against mine. Then, as if he had heard my thoughts, he dropped his menu and wrapped his arms around me. He kissed me with such volition that I thought we might have been in one of those old American romantic flicks. I could feel his arms, tight and strong around me, so secure that he made me feel safe, as strange as it sounded. Our lips danced together in this kind of Viennese Waltz of emotion. I clutched at his expensive-looked dress shirt as his hand hiked its way up my leg. His tongue had just slipped in between my lips when...
“Excuse me, sir?”
We broke apart. It was the waiter with the wine. I took a sip of the white selection as I waited for the blood to settle away from my face, and then ordered the mushroom dish just like Edward didn’t want me to.
Then, just as the waiter collected our menus and walked away, he turned to me and said, “I love you.”
I honestly didn’t believe it, but, “I love you too.” The words leapt out of my mouth before I could even begin to stop them.
He leaned over his glass of wine and kissed me again. I could feel the beginnings of his five o’clock shadow brushing against my skin as he did this. “I suppose we’re in love now.”
“I suppose,” I replied, just as the appetizers came around. I sat there, eating my calamari and staring at Edward, wondering when I would wake up from this dream. In the weeks that followed, I found myself staring at him a lot, but not just like that, in the relative privacy of a SoHo restaurant in Central London, but in the public arena: watching him on stage at conventions, sitting on his arm in interviews, mouthing his speech to him from backstage.
It wasn’t until I ran into Felix on the way to his prep room at a rally that I got that feeling again, you know? That feeling that things were moving far too fast and that sooner or later, my sports car of happiness would crash, bursting into flames and killing anyone in the immediate vicinity.
He shot me a double take and even though I simply kept walking without so much as a glance back in his direction, I always wondered to myself whether he stared at me that way because he wasn’t sure if he recognized me, or because he was surprised that I could have cleaned up so… presidential.
Either way, I tried not to think about it on my way in to see Edward. He was standing in front of the window, on the other side of a rickety old classroom on a top floor in the Univer
sity of London. “Ed?”
He turned, facing me with that winning smile on his face. He gestured at the tie that hung around his neck. “Do you mind?”
