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“Yes, I am completely serious,” he said, looking confused.
“Do you have any clue, no, wait, of course you don’t. Why would you?”
“Any clue what?” he asked.
I shook my head, looking out the window to try and gain some composure.
“You have no clue what it’s like to absolutelyneedthis job. Not because of some drive you have inside you. Not because it will hurt your ego or your reputation. But because you absolutely have to have the money that comes with it, so you deal with abuse and indignities for it. To need a job so bad, and to see so much good coming from it, that you are willing to ignore how you’re treated.”
“I know I was hard on you, but—” he began.
“And then,” I said, cutting him off, “to find yourself in a compromising situation. To find yourself drawn to, attracted to yourboss, who then kisses you. And you want it. You like it. But then he acts like it never happened. So you think, okay, that’s where we are. It just didn’t happen. And then last week happens, and…”
I was on the verge of tears. Everything I had welled up inside me for seven days was coming out. I could barely catch my breath, much less speak.
“Look, you’re right,” he said. “I know. But I want you to know something. I didn’t do those things because I thought less of you. Or because I was using you. I did those things because I genuinely like you. I want to be with you.”
“You what?” I choked out. “Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not,” he said, turning onto the highway. “I’m being completely serious. I don’t want to be without you. I don’t want to be apart from you. Those days where we were having coffee in the morning and sneaking kisses, those were some of the best days I’ve had… ever, really. I couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning and go to the shop and meet you. Work was just the reason I got to see you. Do you understand? It changed my outlook on life.
And then, when we had sex, it wasn’t just sex. It was everything I had been thinking about, dreaming about, for weeks.
But I have a company to run. And this… this could ruin me. If it got out, I could be destroyed. So, I shut down. I didn’t know what to do or how to handle it. But I made a decision: I don’t care.”
“You don’t care?”
“I don’t care what other people think anymore,” he said. “I want to be with you.”
In spite of everything I had told myself for weeks, all the self-affirmations and determinations that I didn’t care if we weren’t together, that I didn’t care if I just had this job as a job for the next few months to make the money to help Mom… in spite of all that, I was thrilled.
“Do you mean that?” I asked as he pulled up to the bar’s sidewalk.
“Yes,” he said. “I do. I don’t know where to go from here, exactly, but I want to play it by ear. I want to see where this can go. I’m asking you, please, give me a shot. I know I screwed up, but I want another chance.”
I stared into his obsidian eyes and searched for any trace of dishonesty. Any trace of a salesman back there, transacting false emotion for temporary flesh. There was none. Just sincerity.
Impulsively, I leaned across the center console and kissed him. It was quick, as far as kisses go, but it made a statement. And before he could say anything else, or I could open my own big, dumb mouth and ruin the moment, I opened the door and threw myself outside. I ran into the pub without looking back.
Perhaps Monday night was going to be good after all.
ChapterTwenty-Two
Julia
Aweek has passed, and things slipped back to normal again. Or at least what passed for normal before he had gone ice-cold again. I felt like that was a thing of the past, though.
Our early morning coffee shop meetings were back, only now we didn’t hurry to get back to the office. Nor did we completely hide that we were talking about more than work. Some side-eyed glances from people I recognized around the building went my way as I sat across from him at the shop or while I sat in my office and fielded people wanting to come talk to him. But I didn’t mind.
Not if things kept going the way they were.
Ostensibly, we were trying to be subtle. That was the idea, anyway. Not hiding completely, but also not flaunting anything. Let people whisper, let them start rumors and gossip. But no answers. Not yet. We needed to keep that quiet until we figured out exactly what we were going to do.
As Friday came to a close, I stepped into his office with my bag and checked outside. It was empty out there. Probably only the cleaning folks by now. No one stayed past five anymore except us. And sometimes Mr. Cleveland, but he was off on a work trip.
“So,” I said, “are we still doing dinner tonight?”
“I promised, didn’t I?” he said, grinning as he finished signing a few papers.
