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Not while this battle is going on inside me, pulling me in two directions. A run on the beach might help me get a handle on how I feel. Action and activity would help me make some sense out of what’s happening.
“I wish you’d said something about being a salesman,” she quips.
“Yeah, well, you said you were a writer.”
“I said I write. And I do. Sales letters, pitching our services. You know how that goes.”
“No, I don’t. I’ve never written a letter about what we do. I call people.”
“Yuck. Really?” She screws up her features. “Cold calls?”
“They’re not cold after you talk to the same person a couple of times.”
“Oh. Well, I figured you were some sort of delivery guy. You know, cruising around in a big truck, sitting on the wrong side, brown shorts. Anyway… it’s a little late to worry about that. Have you checked your email?” Her jaw clenches as she busily pats coffee off her hand.
“Nope. Sorta had other things on my mind.”
She freezes for an instant. Her bare shoulders are stiff.
I see tendons along her neck tighten as she sucks in a breath. “Right. Hm. Well, I got an email from Devina this morning, and I saw she copied you on it as well. The Shopper Sharks marketing department is?—”
My blood’s now rushing, and my face feels uncomfortably hot. “Hang on a sec. Just—just hang on.”
She pats the cloth napkin along her bare forearm and refuses to look at me.
I can’t believe she’s trying to jump into work-talk. We haven’t even addressed the elephant in the room. “We’re gonna talk about Shopper Sharks like nothing happened?”
“Well, we have to. Devina wants?—”
“I don’t care what Devina wants,” I blurt. Maybe it came out too loud. A few tables away from us, a couple of college-age kids steal a look our way. One whispers to another.
I lower my voice a little. “Look, I know this is awkward and complicated and… confusing.”
She bites the inside of her lip. “Um, yeah. You can say that again.”
“Neither of us wants to be in this position. But we are. Maybe we should talk it through so we can figure out how to handle it.”
If I was on the beach running, my whole world would be centered around getting air into my burning lungs or pumping my arms. That sounds much more enjoyable than what I’m enduring here.
Where is the woman I met yesterday?
She’s gone.
Hazel now seems withdrawn, nervous, and definitely mad at me—like I’m the only one of us who did something wrong.
We both kissed last night. It wasn’t one-sided. I felt her hands slide up my back. I felt her open her mouth to me.
When we fell back against the door, it was because that kiss knocked us both off our feet. I wasn’t the only one who experienced the intensity of it.
But now, she’s acting like I’m a monster.
“I think we should talk about what happened,” I announce.
“Hm. Well, I think that we should talk about work because now we both have a task marked ‘urgent’ in our cues, and if we don’t?—”
“Hazel, I don’t care about my work cue.” I care about figuring out why I feel so torn.
I care about pulling these diverging parts of me back together so that my world makes sense again.
