Page 31 of Apparently, I’m A B!tch

Chapter18

Nikki

Monday afternoon

My pastry had gone hardand stale by the time I made it back to my desk. I sat and stared at it, shoulders slumped, while taking deep breaths in and out of my nose. It was more to stop the heaviness that settled on my chest since hearing Lilly’s news, but it wasn’t really helping.

I was a complete idiot.

Since Sunday night, all I did was stew. If Harvey and the case weren’t on my mind, Tristan and the art class were. It grew late as I drank wine while watching trashy reality TV, my mind wandering as I caught myself smiling at memories of Tristan, until those memories turned into familiar daydreams about him kissing me.

We would be in the middle of a conversation at the coffee shop, and he would abruptly pull me close, telling me he couldn’t handle it anymore. He had to kiss me, he had to touch me. His arm was around my waist as he brushed the edge of his fingertip across my bottom lip before leaning down and touching his mouth to mine. It was soft at first, then more urgent, as his grip on me became firmer, until his body was pinning mine against the backroom wall behind the coffee shop.

It took a particularly loud commercial to pull me back to the reality of my couch inside my messed-up apartment, and I had to face facts. My crush on Tristan hadn’t gone away. It seemed impossible that I would still feel this way months after we stopped being us. What was it going to take to get him out of my system?

I went to bed listening to cheesy pop songs, aching at the thought of Tristan eating dinner with another woman before I consoled myself with the fact that it wasn’t a date. It was strictly business, that was what Tristan said.

So, this morning, I decided I was going to make things right between us again, and I would start by getting his shirt dry-cleaned. When that wasn’t an option, I found the original store he bought the shirt from and chose a replacement that not only did I think he would like, but one I immediately pictured him wearing while on a date with me.

I was delusional enough to think that maybe he’d see the shirt and ask me on a date. In what world did that make sense? But he did have the perfect opening line: “I’ll have to find a reason to wear it now”. But, instead of playfully and confidently saying, “How about while having dinner with me?” I brought up Rochelle, like a jealous teenager fishing for information, and ran out.

I put my head in my hands and groaned. If he didn’t know I had a crush on him after all these years, he knew now. He probably thought I was pathetic. A desperate bitchy loser that was grouchy more than she was fun and… I forced myself to stop and let out a frustrated breath.

This wasn’t worth thinking about. Tristan was off the market, and that had to be fine. This was alright anyway. I spent my entire morning running around New York trying to replace a shirt for a man I wasn’t even friends with when I was supposed to be working. Imagine dating the guy? I would barely be in the office, and I couldn’t afford that. Especially when I had a different man to prove wrong.

A knock at my door broke through my thoughts and I lifted my head to see Kelly walk in, her curly hair piled into a tight bun, and her lips painted a deep crimson. Kelly was a striking woman. She was almost as tall as I was, with a deep, chocolate skin-tone that matched the richness of her melodic voice. She had deep-set eyes that turned up at the corners and full lips that she painted on a daily basis. It was actually odd to me that Harvey didn’t try to date her, what with her devotion to him and her obvious beauty.

She stood to the side of my desk, looked down at me from where I sat and pointed a manila folder in my direction. “Here you go, boss. These are the case files you asked for.”

I drew back from my Tristan-induced stupor, looking from the manila folder to her and back again. “You pulled these out for me already?”

She didn’t quite roll her eyes, but she did drag them across my desk, breathing through her nose before she said, “Yes. What else was I going to do? Sit there and twiddle my thumbs ‘til the end of the day?”

I cocked my head and thoughtlessly asked, “Is that what Jake does?”

She actually groaned and dropped the folder on my desk. “If you’re just gonna moan about Jake, I don’t want to hear it. It’s bad enough that you and Harvey made this stupid deal in the first place, and if you think I’m–”

My eyes flew open and I stood, realizing what I asked too late. “I swear I didn’t mean that how it sounded. It’s just that you did this so quickly, and I could barely ever get Jake to do anything for me within a decent time frame.”

Kelly’s eyes narrowed, her thick dark lashes almost meshing together. “That’s because Jake can’t stand to look at you, let alone talk to you, and I don’t blame him. But me? I’m going to get out of here and get to that research you put on my already overflowing workload, because I’m not going to be the third paralegal that you have fired this year.”

She turned and left, shutting the door behind her, leaving me alone with my cold coffee, stale pastry and large case files.