So if she said she saw wonder, I believed her.
But that only made the whole situation worse.
We were both interested.
We were both also painfully aware of the reasons it couldn’t go any further.
I took a sip of my coffee.
It had been the perfect color, flavor, and sweetness.
But it tasted like sawdust on my tongue.
With a grumble, I tucked it in the crook of my arm, yanked the stairwell door open, and moved out onto my floor.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” a woman’s voice snarled in the hallway after a door slammed. Her high heels clacked against the floor as she seemed to make a beeline for me in all of her gorgeous red suit-dress glory. “Are you single?” she asked, her icy blue eyes pinning me to the spot.
“I, uh, yeah.”
“Take it from me, keep it that way. Don’t give these men your youth to consume only to drop you for the next young, pretty thing.”
Ah.
So she was coming from the lawyer’s office.
In the short time I’d been renting an office, I’d overheard dozens of screaming matches and angry rants coming from inside the family law office.
I’m not proud to admit that I sometimes listened a little closer to see what everyone was so angry about. One time, they were fighting over custody of the dog. And, hey, fair. Anothertime, it was about a collection of coffee cups. Which I figured had more to do with hurting each other than actual coffee cups.
“I hope you get everything you want in the divorce,” I told her.
“Well, I don’t think I’m going to get his balls. But I will settle for the house,” she said, exhaling hard, some of the anger deflating. “But seriously, don’t fall for a man whotellsyou he loves you. Only one whoshowsyou he does. That’s my advice.”
With that, she walked off to the elevators. I turned to watch her confident stride and upright posture.
Until the doors were almost closed.
Then I saw her face crumple.
My heart ached for her. For all of us, I guess. Because we’d all been there. Fooled by a man with charming words but whose actions never proved them true.
That man was watching you dance like you were the most precious thing he’s ever seen.
And I was suddenly struck by how different Perish had been. Because his words never promised anything. But his actions had always shown how upstanding he was.
“Ugh,” I grumbled, shoving my hand in my bag to fumble for my keys.
I needed to stop.
My bag half-fell from my shoulder, and I shifted things around, trying to find the stupid keychain as I made my way to my office.
It was that distraction that made me not notice until I stabbed the key in the lock that the door wasn’t even closed.
My spine straightened.
Ice flooded my veins.
The keys dropped silently back into my bag as my hand reached for my bottle of pepper spray instead.
