This was a friends talk, but I didn’t need it. Ifeltit every time I tried to touch Nina. I’d done something. It was surprising, though, that someone Nina kept at arm’s length was invested enough to do it. I leaned into her, keeping the conversation between us.
“What’s your end game with Nina?” Lynnie asked.
My heartbeat hiked behind my sternum as I glanced behind Lynnie. Nina was tending to a customer; she packed up a box of cupcakes, commenting on flavors and smiling at the guy.
I wanted that. I didn’t want her flinching or tensing or hyperventilating every time I came near her. I didn’t want her fixing my meals or beverages wrong because I’d failed her somehow and she needed an outlet. I wanted her ease, her smile.
I cracked my knuckles. “Look, I know something’s off, but she’s my girl. Whatever that was, it’s in the past. I’m going to make sure she knows.”
Lynnie scoffed. “There’s no way to make up for wrongs you don’t remember.”
Maybe, but I had to start somewhere. First, I’d find everything there was to find about Nina and me. Starting with this work project. Second, I’d fix it. Third, I wouldn’t fuck up again.
The customer was still here, box of cupcakes in hand, eyes locked on Nina.
Lynnie actually laughed in my face when she realized what I was looking at. “Her trust is shot to shit, you know?”
I leaned over the table, eyes locked on the customer giving Nina a card. She smiled and took it. I bit my tongue.
“There’s no way, dude.” Lynnie grinned, enjoying busting my balls way too much.
I dragged my gaze from Nina long enough to smirk back, dimples and all. “Well, I hear I’m good at rebranding a product. This time,I’mthe product.”
I sat back, attention on Nina. If she felt my gaze on her, she didn’t return it. I had a plan though. A three-step strategy, and along the line, I’d become better than this self-absorbed jackass who owned the phone I’d been given.
“These really aren’tthe same color?” Nina asked me, putting two rectangular cutouts of red and, clearly,burgundynext to each other.
She thought huffing and puffing would make them the same color. I let out a full belly laugh without messing up cutting around a pomegranate-shaped bottle of cologne. Her gaze on me cataloged my every movement. Sometimes, our thighs would touch, and she wouldn’t flinch right away. Still, it’d been almost a week, and this collaging assignment, courtesy of Dr. Steinberg, was the closest I’d gotten her to relax around me.
We sat cross-legged on the living room rug, a mess of magazines, scissors, and glue sticks spread between us. I was creating a gradient background, with larger elements on top. Nina was gluing colored paper onto white and calling itintentional. No doubt, she was the marketing strategist, and I was the designer. Welaughedtogether, and it was almost couple-like.
Flipping through the pages, I came to an abrupt stop, then I traced sinuous waves on the sunset of a cruise company logo. I knitted my brow, and my jaw hardened. The thundering between my eyes pushed against my skull. She studied me but asked nothing.
“I remember arguing with someone about the lines in a logo I drew. They were too straight. Needed more movement,” I explained, flashes of sketching on an iPad and looking at the lines on a large screen came to mind.
Her lips thinned.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
She nodded, so I kept going. “It was a wedding dress I’d drawn. You said it looked stilted, stiff. No bride would want that.”
Nina’s gaze avoided mine, fixed on the disarray of burgundies and reds in the center of her collage.
“Infinity Weddings.” It wasn’t a question. She’d gotten just as tense and guarded when that brand came up before. “Someone didn’t want to make the changes.”
“Youdidn’t want to make the changes. Neither did Natasha.”
“Who’s Natasha?”
I’d seen her name on my phone, incoming texts and calls. Even through my work email. Every time I tried to read anything on it, though, the letters got blurry and I got an awful headache.
“She’s on the team you lead. She’s pretty much your minion.”
I chuckled. “My minion?”
She scowled. “Annoying jokes and everything,” she added, then gasped and covered her mouth.
I smirked—progress. She was slipping up, and I was finally getting answers. I stopped smiling so she’d know I wasn’t taking this lightly. “We made the changes. And the client liked it.”
