by Amy Brent
I liked to know what was going on when it was going on, especially it if involved me.
I sat there and ate my breakfast in silence. Then I told them to box up Kylie’s and get me an extra juice and coffee. I paid the bill and tipped the waitress. Then I made my way to my car. There was no excuse for her not eating, so I headed back to her apartment and hung the bag of food on her door. I set the two drinks on the floor and knocked on her door, then made my way back to the elevator.
I got in just as her door opened, and the doors slid closed before she saw me.
I didn’t want to upset her any more, but I also didn’t want her neglecting herself simply because I’d made her upset. If she needed space, that was fine. But I couldn't hang on to her tether any longer. I’d done that with a woman for many, many years. Tried to make things work with her when I never should’ve forced them in the first place. I wasn’t making that mistake again. I wasn’t putting myself through that, and I wasn’t putting Kylie through that. If she wanted to be with me, she would know. She was a headstrong woman who had a goal in mind for her life. I had let her know her goals lined up with mine, so she had all the information at her disposal to make her decision.
I went home and attempted to distract myself, but I couldn't. I stripped myself of my clothes and tossed them to the side, relegating myself to a trip to the dry cleaners. But the second I stepped into the bathroom to get myself a shower, I looked at myself in the mirror.
And the evidence of Kylie’s exploration was all over my skin.
Nail marks down my back and hickeys on my neck. Her small teeth marks in my left shoulder and her crescent nails that had bruised my chest. I ran my hand over every inch of them, recalling our night of passion. How I couldn't think about anything else but her. How I blacked out after getting off work and didn’t come to until I was staring down into her eyes. I’d never been this affected by a girl, this intoxicated by a woman before. Not even Adam’s mother had captivated me the way Kylie did.
I should have been gentler with her at breakfast.
I was zero for two in the “waking up together” department. She wanted the romance of a peaceful sunrise, and my life kept throwing wrenches into the plan. I should’ve stayed in bed with her. I should’ve gone with my gut and pulled her back into bed before calling up any restaurant in the city and paying them enough to deliver. I shook my head and ran myself a shower, then stepped into the warm stream. The waterfall poured over my head and I reached for the misters, filling the glass cavern with a steam that blanketed my body from the rest of the world.
But the only thing I could think about was how much I wanted Kylie there with me, against my body while the mist covered us from the world.
Damn it.
She had penetrated every part of me, and I knew no part of my life would be sacred once again until I had her answer.
It was going to be a long week.
Kylie
The awkwardness at work was exactly what I had been afraid of, and now I had to contend with it. Ryan’s office door was shut when I walked off the elevator Monday morning, and he hadn’t rustled from his desk since I’d sat down. Gone were the friendly conversations and him coming in to ask me how the rest of my weekend had panned out. Gone were the glimpses of his face through the small unfrosted slat in the wall that happened to be at eye level with me whenever I turned to look out the back windows of my office.
It sent my thoughts spiraling into a chaotic overture.
I loved my job, and I loved working for Ryan’s company. But if I didn’t choose Ryan—or if I simply remained single—did that mean my job was on the line? Would I be fired for not wanting to date him? I didn’t know. I had no idea of knowing. The ultimatum he gave me at breakfast frightened me. I’d never seen him so cold and determined when he was talking to me. And in an odd way, it gave me a glimpse into how I’d made Adam feel on multiple occasions. I hadn’t given him ultimatums like that, but I had backed him into corners on topics that made him feel uncomfortable.
Part of me wanted to call and apologize for all the times I had done that to him. But then he would ask why I was calling and the only thing it would do was spawn yet another argument.
And that was exactly what I didn’t need.
It wasn’t like I was trying to choose between Ryan and Adam. I had no intention of going back to Adam. We had run our course and our futures weren’t aligned any longer. I couldn't be with someone who didn’t want the same outcome as me once it came time to settle down. I wanted a house, and he wanted to live day to day in an apartment. I wanted a family, and Adam didn’t. He wanted me to work for his production company, and I’d rather throw myself off the Space Needle.
Differences.
But it had only been three weeks since we had broken things off. And yes, I was hot and bothered for Ryan. And yes, Ryan was Adam’s father. Settling all of that aside, however, I still didn’t know why I was drawn to Ryan. I didn’t know if it was because I genuinely cared for him or if I was simply relishing my singledom. I wasn’t one to have rebounds. At least I didn't think I was. I had stuck with one guy throughout college and hadn’t dated much in high school. So I had no precedent for a rebound. I didn’t think they were advantageous. I thought they were cruel and unfair to both parties involved. But the truth was, there was enough of a chance that Ryan was exactly that, and it gave me pause on answering his question.
Giving him an answer just like that wasn’t as easy as him snapping his fingers. Yes, Ryan was used to getting whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. His money and lavish lifestyle afforded him that. But human emotion didn’t work on the same schedule. My heart was still breaking. And as I picked up the pieces, I shattered Adam’s in the process. I had spent four years with his son, and it was going to take more than four weeks for me to get over that.
Didn’t he understand that?
My office was empty, quiet. There was nothing but the sounds of Ryan and Doug coming and going to fill the hallway at any given moment. No one came to knock on my door and no one stopped in to see how I was doing. None of my coworkers popped their heads in to ask me out for lunch and no one left notes underneath my door wishing me a good Monday.
It was like I wasn’t a part of the company culture any longer.
Just like that.
Would it only get worse if I rejected Ryan?
My cell phone rang, and I debated whether to pick it up. I had every intention of working through lunch and going home early. I wasn’t hungry, nowhere near it. But once the phone stopped ringing, the person immediately called back.
And I was shocked at whose number was on the screen.
“Adam?” I asked.
“Hey there, Kylie.”
“Are you okay? Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m good. I’ve just…been thinking.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Could we get lunch, so we could talk?”
I sat back in my leather chair and closed my eyes. Where was this going and how big of a rock was it going to throw in my path? But honestly, it didn’t really matter. Adam deserved answers, even if I could only give him vague ones. Ryan was right on one thing: I needed to start addressing my emotions and sifting through them before they buried me.
And I felt the dirt already draining down my throat.
“Sure,” I said. “Where at?”
“What about the diner?”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” I asked.
“It’s just a diner.”
“It’s not just a diner,” I said. “It’s where we had our first date. It’s where you asked me to be your girlfriend. It’s where we had breakfast every morning whenever—”
“Okay, okay. No to the diner.”
“I’m fine with the diner,” I said curtly. “But it’s not ‘just a diner.’” I sighed into the phone as I began remembering why Adam and I had imploded.
“I’ll see you at ‘not just a diner’ in thirty?” he asked.
I snickered and shook my head as I stood from my desk.
“I’m leaving work now. See you soon.”
The second I walked into the diner and saw him, my heart sped up. And I hated that I still had that reaction. After everything we had put each other through and the line he’d kept me on for months, I hated that I could still be excited to see him. I slid into the booth, and he passed me a mug of coffee, which I was happy to drown in creamer before chugging down.
“Long day?” Adam asked.
“Long weekend,” I said.
“I put in an order for your usual. If you want to change it—”
“It’s fine. I haven’t been hungry lately, so whatever I don’t eat I’ll just take with me. Thanks.”
“Yeah. No problem.”
The silence between us hung.
“You said you aren’t eating? That isn’t like you.”
I grinned and lifted my eyes to meet his for the first time since I’d sat down.
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
“Care to talk about it?”
I furrowed my brow at his question as I sat up straight.
“What did you want to talk about?” I asked.
He spun his coffee mug around in his hands, and the action brought back so many memories. He did that whenever he had a bomb to drop. He did that whenever he had big news. He did it the day he told me he was dropping out of college. He did it the day we almost broke up two years ago. He did it the day he announced he had opened his own production company. And he was doing it again.
“Adam?” I asked.
“I made a mistake, Kylie.”
“What mistake?” I asked. “Has something happened?”
“No, I mean—” He groaned as the waitress set down our food in front of us. “I think I want you back.”
My eyes locked with his as that word spun around in my mind. Think. He thought, but he didn’t know. Just like everything else he didn’t know. Things he never knew apparently.
“I think I want you back so we can work on things between us and get back to where we were, where we were headed.”
“You think you want me back?” I asked. “What does that even mean, Adam? You think you want me back.”
“It means I know we have a lot to work on—I have a lot to work on. But I think all we need is to sit down and work it out and everything will be good.”
“Good.”
“Yes, good. You know, like it used to be.”
“It can’t be how it used to be, Adam,” I said.
“Why not, Kylie? I miss you. I can’t sleep. I can’t think straight. I can’t continue with my projects. I need you.”
“You need the inspiration I give you, Adam. You don’t need me.”
“I see you and my father have been talking,” he said flatly.
“He’s my boss and I work next door to him. Get over it.”
His eyes grew hot while our food grew cold.
“I thought you’d be happy to hear this. I don’t want to throw the past four years away.”
“And neither do I,” I said. “But the truth is, you were right when you ended things. We aren’t headed down the same path.”
“I said I thought we weren’t.”
“Yes, because you never settle on anything. You never make a firm decision and stick with it. You never know what you want, but you know what you might want a little way down the line. There’s a difference, Adam. I can’t keep holding on to your ‘I thinks’ and your ‘possiblies.’ I want a family.”
“Kylie.”
“I want a house.”
“Stop.”
“No, because you need to hear this. There isn’t ‘I think I want a family’ with me. There isn’t ‘I think I might want a house’ with me. It’s definitive. It’s where I’m heading. And I deserve someone who’s headed in that direction.”
He shook his head and looked away from me as I slumped back into my seat.
“I love you, Kylie.”
He sounded so defeated, and the caretaker in me wanted to wrap him up in my arms. I wanted to pull him close and mumble into his hair that everything would be all right. That we would get through this and we would be all the stronger for it.
But who was going to do that for me?
Certainly not Adam.
“I can’t handle this right now,” I said.
“Kylie, Don’t leave.”
“I’m not leaving because you already did,” I said as I stood up.
“I just wanted to talk.”
“And you got your chance to talk. After speaking the only truth you’ve probably ever spoken to me in the past two years, you’re ready to go back on it because you can’t handle being without me. We became so codependent on each other that we can’t move on despite the misery we were in for the past few months and despite our different trajectories.”
“What’s a few months compared to four years, Kylie? I didn’t get to where I am without you. I can’t get to where I want to be without you.”
“And I can’t get to where I want to be with you, Adam.”
I reached down and pushed a few fries into my mouth before I threw back the rest of my coffee.
“It’s not about you. Not only about you. It’s about me too. It isn’t about you or your father or the company or your films, or anything like that. For once, this needs to be about me. And for once, someone on this godforsaken planet should give me what I want.”
In his stare, I saw the point when his soul exploded, shattered into a million different pieces and scattered itself onto a darkened horizon. I felt my stomach roil with sickness. I felt myself about to vomit on my shoes. I needed to get out of there before I caused any more of a scene. I’d said so much more than I had wanted to say, and now that it had all gotten tossed out there, I didn't know what to do with myself.
“I have to go,” I said breathlessly.
I shoved my way out of the diner and ran back to my car. I slammed into it and called Ryan’s office, then left a voice message on his desk phone. I needed to go home. I didn’t feel well. I’d make up the hours over the weekend.
Then I hung up the phone, tossed it to the floorboard of my car, and raced to my apartment.
Tears flooded my vision as I weaved in and out of traffic. I had Ryan telling me he wanted to be with me and take a shot at some sort of a relationship and I had his son telling me he thought he was still in love with me. Confusion flooded my veins as I skidded into the parking garage and grabbed my phone. I sprinted for the elevator. Air rushed in and out of my lungs. I needed to get away from the public, away from prying eyes, away from anyone who could trigger any other emotions for me to deal with.
Because I couldn't handle it.
Maybe that was my downfall as a person.
Maybe I wasn’t equipped to handle so many emotions at once.
Ryan
“The reason you should go with my company is because we can do all of it in-house. The second you walk through those doors, you have everything at your disposal. Everyone from content creators to programmers and coders to storyboard leaders to an entire final optimization team are here. My company provides all of it, and we provide it better than any competitor out there,” I said.
“What about overtime? How do you bill overtime? Every video game requires overtime, but some companies gouge more than others.”
“We don’t gouge. I also give my teams creative breaks. They don’t work weekends because they need that time to think, rest, and recuperate. The creative mind is a finicky thing, and the second you overwork it or starve it, it collapses. And so does your project. Money doesn’t fix that issue. Rest does. Relaxation does. That’s why my building also has a spa for everyone in my company to use, free of charge. Massages, quiet rooms, anything they need to creatively get away and decompress before giving you the best product possible.”
“That means it’ll take the most time for us to produce our game with you, Mr. Tucker.”
�
�But that also means you’ll get the best quality product. All the games we have produced over the past twenty years have two things over every other competitor’s products. One, we have the lowest individual game return rate, so you keep more of your profit as it flows in. And two, we are consistently ranked as the number one company for customer service. That’s out of all the Fortune 500 companies this nation has to offer. We’re the best. So, if a customer is dissatisfied, they’re filtered through the best customer service this nation—no, this globe—has to offer. And they end up happy every single time,” I said.
I’d been sitting with a potentially new client for over two hours. And while they would be very lucrative in the long run for my company, I was getting tired of the back and forth. My company was the best in the business, not simply because we treated our clients to the best, but because we treated our employees to the best as well. I had actually learned how to treat a creative mind from my own son. I had watched his struggles and figured out the best ways to help him decompress and work at his optimal creative level throughout the week, then implemented those tactics into my company as a whole.
I needed this negotiation to be over. I needed them to sign the contract. Because the longer I sat in that restaurant with them, the more I thought about Kylie.
I saw her in so much. I saw her in the faces of the people around me. I heard her voice in the crowds when she wasn’t there. I was worried about her. She had called in sick Monday afternoon and called in sick again today. I didn’t know if she was really sick or simply avoiding me, but I did know she was remoting in to work. And I had no way of checking in on her without pushing her further away from my grasp.
I didn’t want that to happen.
I didn’t enjoy having her out of reach now, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to enjoy it if my actions pushed her away from me altogether. But the longer I sat there and watched my prospective clients whisper among themselves, the more my mind wandered. And the more I worried about her. And the more I thought about her, the more desperate I became to see her.
