I slide back in her chair, the wheels rolling nicely across the hardwood floor, and study my handiwork. I made it through three of the four packs of sticky notes, and honestly, they weren’t needed. It’s a masterpiece. Pinks, green, and blue notes are stuck everywhere, each of them proclaiming just how sorry I am. Just how much her forgiveness means to me.
“It’s an apology bomb,” I say.
“A what?” she asks, as she walks next to me, leaning over to grab the single note I stuck in the middle of her computer screen.
“Hurting you was the worst thing I’ve ever done,” she reads. “I will never deserve your forgiveness, but I will forever try to earn it.”
“I mean it,” I say.
“Jaxon…” She sighs, and I can’t tell if she’s giving in or if she’s annoyed.
I hop up, giving her access to her desk. “Not to worry if this doesn’t do it. I still have plenty of other ideas. This week is just the warmup.”
As I slide past her, I can’t help but notice the warmth of her body. The way she’d fit perfectly into my arms if I tried to hold her, to dance with her.
Because I seem to be unable to stop looking at her, I also don’t fail to notice the way Izzy’s breath hitches, just slightly, as I move in front of her. Maybe she’s feeling the same strange pull I am.
Maybe there’s something there for her too.
“What are the other ideas? Because I feel like if a—what’d you call it? A forgiveness bomb?—and daily coffee is your definition of a warmup, you need someone to review the list and veto any that get too crazy.”
She’s not wrong, but it’s part of my charm.
“Ah, I’m sure they’ll be fine. I’ve got a good feel for this.”
“You wanted to ask Tiana to homecoming with a choreographed dance…where dogs and cats were doing the dancing. And you just wanted to go as friends with her!” Izzy says, sitting in her chair and giving me her best I-told-you-so look.
“I stand by that—it would’ve been an excellent way to do it. She would’ve remembered it forever.”
“You didn’t own a dog or a cat…” She waves her hand as if brushing off the thought. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s exactly why you need to run this list by someone. I can’t have feral cats running around my office because you decided you wanted them to sing an apology to me.”
Well, there goes that idea, I guess.
“You could make it all stop if you just forgive me,” I say, stating the obvious.
Izzy shakes her head. “True, but I don’t. Though, to be fair to me, you’ve felt bad about it for less than a week. I’ve felt bad about you leaving for fifteen years.”
I force a smile to my face despite the tightness in my chest at her words. I didn’t expect her to forgive me today, but she’sright. I deserve to try to make amends for it for the next fifteen years. And I will. It’s just that, the more time I’ve been spending with Izzy lately, watching her good-natured ribbing of the women in workout class, hearing about the work she does every morning, I just…it’s going to hurt to have to wait that long to mean something to her again.
“Fifteen years it is, then. Luckily, I have enough ideas to last me that long,” I say.
“Ideas such as…”
“You’ll just veto them.”
“I won’t,” she says. “I will attempt to be objective, despite not wanting you to do anything for me.”
The smile tugging at the corner of her mouth seems to disagree, but I let it slide. “Ah, come on, Iz, you know you’re enjoying the coffee and conversation every morning.”
“Isabel. And I do enjoy the coffee…”
“Ouch. Point taken.”
“You’re stalling, Jaxon,” Izzy says. “Tell me your list.”
“Ugh. Fine.” I raise my hands in mock surrender. “Upping my daily deliveries to also include groceries for you. Cooking you dinner. Writing you letters every day for a year,” I check them off on my fingers as I run through some of the more normal ideas on my list. “Sending you voice memos apologizing. Sending you memories from our childhood. Just stuff like that.”
“Now tell me the list that you just filtered out,” Izzy says, and I can’t help but laugh. It feels good to be around someone who knows me so well, but who also doesn’t put up with any of my shit.
