AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I try to avoid the topic by getting out plates and putting them on the table.
“You can still hear me!” she yells, from across the room.
“Fine.” I feel defeated and look up at her again. “Do I find Mae attractive? Yes.”
“I knew it.” She slaps her hands on her jeans.
“But…nothing is going on. It can’t.”
She comes closer and sits down on a chair. “That was going to be my next question. It seems like they know nothing about your plan for the condos.”
“Well, that’s probably because they don’t.”
“What? Dean!”
“I know, I know. It’s terrible. But I wasn’t anticipating liking her…uh, them, so much.”
“So, what’s the plan? You’re going to keep being buddy-buddy with them until one day you walk over and announce, ‘Oops! Sorry, your place is mine now. Get out.”
“I suppose that is technically kind of the current plan.”
She’s quiet for a second, resting her elbows on the table and her mouth against her clasped hands, but then says, “I don’t like this.”
I sit down next to her. “I don’t either. But what else am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. Find another location?”
“I don’t think I’ll find one as perfect as this. Plus, that would mean I bought this house for nothing.”
“It’s certainly not nothing if buying it meant meeting your soulmate and the future Mrs. Cornel.”
I sigh. “Again, nothing can happen between us.”
“Not unless you devise a new plan on a different chunk of land.”
“I already said I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
She’s an amazing assistant, but she’s never really had the head for business. Instead of thinking in terms of dollar signs, she sees life as some kind of unachievable fairytale.
“And don’t say it’s all about money,” she says, as if reading my mind.
“Well, it is.”
“Ugh! That’s your excuse for everything.”
“That’s because money is what makes the world go round.”
“Pffft. Maybe in terms of commerce. But what’s really important is love.”
I mime throwing up.
She punches my shoulder. “Shush! I’m serious. And you have a chance for it. I can see it in your eyes when you look at her. It’s the same glimmer Seamus gets when he looks at me.”
“Are you sure that isn’t flatulence from all of the Philly cheesesteaks you make him?”
She jokingly hits me again. I love making fun of her and her East Coast upbringing.
