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“Okay,” he answers.
He steps out of the room, I assume to get the agreement, and I keep my eyes on the view. It all blurs together.
Fat drops of rain slide against the glass, and I watch the little rivers, wondering what makes the rain feel so solemn and poetic all at the same time.
Maybe it’s the idea that water is all cleansing.
“You can’t go home in this,” he whispers, and I glance over my shoulder to see him leaning against the doorframe, papers in his hands.
“I can and I will.”
Which is exactly what I do before the ink on my signature has dried.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHERRY HELL
EZRA
“What crawled up your ass?”
I lift my drink to my lips and continue examining the bar as if Ivan hadn’t spoken.
“Seriously, you’re killing the vibe,” he adds, his words twisting with I’m sure a sour expression on his face.
Did he really use the wordvibe?
Are we hippies smoking pot in the back of someone’s van? This is what happens when Ivan hooks up with women barely out of their teens. He starts fucking sounding like them, and now I have to sit with a guy who talks like a twenty-year-old with no long-term goals.
“Should I kill you instead?” I ask him, setting down the rocks glass, ice clinking against it. I lift my hand to the cocktail waitress who’s been eyeing us, signaling that I’d like another double cognac on the rocks.
My third one of the night.
“Ever since we got back from CherryHell, you’ve been miserable,” Ivan points out. “I mean, it’s been a slow descent into this dead lifestyle of yours. But it’s been a lot worse lately.”
His complaining makes me want to pay my tab and go home. Grown men shouldn’t whine. Certainly not grown men over thirty.
I wonder if it’s me. If he’s grown so accustomed to a version of me that no longer comes out to play. If it’s my fault for keeping up with this lifestyle until a few years ago. Maybe I’m the problem because all of a sudden, I no longer have a tolerance for the way things used to be.
Then again, I hardly have a tolerance for anything since the night Eloise walked out into the rain and didn’t look back.
She hasn’t answered my emails or phone calls.
I’m not familiarized with the feeling of wanting to punch Ivan in the face just because he’s breathing—usually I require at least another HR complaint about his office etiquette before reaching this level—but here we are. And I can only blame the woman a hundred miles away with her lean, lithe frame and hair so long I wonder if she accidentally sits on it.
I want to wrap the dark strands in my fist as she sits on me.
Naked.
Her softness cradling my hardness.
“Another one of those and you’ll be on your ass. I think I’ll pardon myself before you get there,” Ivan announces with a grunt as he stands. It reminds me that we aren’t as young as we once were.
And that he’ll still be thinking with his dick, even when his blood can hardly get to it.
“Don’t forget the meeting tomorrow morning,” I tell him, just as the waitress sets down a new glass. It’s an early one, with overseas investors that we can’t afford to fuck up with.
I ignore the middle finger he flashes at me and slide some cash her way. She continues to stand here like she’s waiting for more as I tip the glass back and drink it all at once. The warmth is the only thing keeping me settled.
