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“Please,” she said, waving her hand. “I’ve told you enough.”
“If that is how you see me, that is all I care about.”
“Good,” she said. “Itishow I see you.” Her eyes were moving up and down his chest and to his face. “But that isn’t all I see either. I see this awesome guy who is finally letting others see it too. Sometimes I wonder if this is all real or not.”
“You’re not alone there. I got the hot popular chick.”
“I wasn’t that hot or popular back then. I just hung out with the right people, but that doesn’t mean they were my friends. As you witnessed. I always thought most of my life I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. For once, I was in the right place at the right time when you knocked on Poppy’s door.”
“That is a good way to think about it,” he said. “But why did you feel that way before?”
He wondered if he’d get a bit more background on her. More than bits and pieces.
He even had some hope that spending two days with her family would knock some of those cobwebs loose about her ex or her job.
She always said just enough about things.
“Just things like that back in the day. Someone would say something and I’d be caught in the crossfire. It happened more than once. Even in my job, I’d be in the room when shit was happening and then my name would get dragged down with it. Most times I was only sitting in a meeting listening like other people.”
“Did that happen when you got your promotion?” he asked.
She sighed. “Yeah. I told you about the one mistake. It was nothing. I sent out an ad with a typo in it. Right before they started printing, I caught it and called to get it stopped. It resulted in a one-day delay for the setup to be fixed, but we got everything in time. I always gave myself time as a buffer. I hadn’t even told anyone about it. Why? Nothing came about it.”
“Then how did they find out?” he asked.
“Because someone else who was having things printed at the same place was chatting with the same rep I used and that rep jokingly asked if things were set and explained what happened with me.”
“Which was wrong of that person to do,” he said. He was feeling angry for her.
“Yeah. It’s not like I’m the only one that ever did that. The only business either. I wanted to call that rep and blast her. Or even her boss. But I didn’t. It would make me no better of a person. We all make mistakes.”
He could understand that. “That person had no way of knowing how it’d turn out.”
“That’s right. And nothing should have been a big deal. But everyone there is petty. So my coworker told another and then another. It turned into I wasn’t qualified for the job and should have never gotten it. The funny part is, that was the kind of work I was doing before the promotion. It’s not like it was a new responsibility I couldn’t handle. It was a typo.”
“You’re better off where you are now,” he said.
“I am. The sisters wouldn’t be that way if I made that mistake. Unless the typo was a price issue, but trust me when I tell you that I go over everything multiple times. I never send out any newsletter or flier or print a thing now until I’m positive it’s fine. I even have Ivy look it over. At first I hated to ask her, but she loved I included her. Sometimes she has really good ideas and I love that she tells me she is learning from me.”
“That’s great,” he said. “It’s how you approach it.”
“It is. I learn from her too. She has a good eye for things and we work well together. We just do different jobs, but when it comes down to it, it’s teamwork and wanting the same results in the end. Just like a relationship.”
“How is that?” he asked.
“If we want the same thing then when one of us makes a mistake the other is understanding and maybe forgiving. Like me saying what I did to Brit earlier. I hope you forgive me.”
He smiled. “I do. But there is nothing to forgive. You had no ill intent.”
“Maybe I did,” she said. “A little of the mean girl thing. Not that I was a mean girl, or didn’t think I was. But it was about redemption. For you and a little for me. That’s wrong on my part. That’s where the ill intent was.”
“We are all entitled to feel those things, Sage. Don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m reminding myself that life can change at any moment that is beyond our control. I’m not going to sweat the small stuff.”
“I don’t deserve you,” she said quietly.
“Maybe we deserve each other and should think of it that way more.”
She smiled and nodded her head.
