ME
I’m not alone.
I snapped a picture of the dog, who posed, head tipped to the side and ears flopped over, and sent the image to her.
ELENA
Who’s the cutie?!?
ME
His name is Brick. He likes long walks in the park and sausages. He’s my running buddy for the day. I’ve got to get him back before the shelter closes.
As I sent the text, my stomach tightened. I was going to add Brick in a kennel to the list of things I wasn’t going to think about.
ELENA
Give him a kiss on the head from me.
It was turning into a long damn list.
28
Iflipped through the small pile of resumes on my desk, trying to find someone who could help me dig out from under the mountain of work threatening to bury me. I’d only had the ad up a couple of weeks and already I’d gotten more than twice the number of responses I expected. After I eliminated the unqualified ones and screened for the basics, I’d printed the rest.
I needed help with admin and organization, not design, but given the nature of my business, I wanted someone with a decent aesthetic. That meant jettisoning the ones with multiple fonts and kitschy bullet point icons, including some industrious PA who’d peppered their work experience with emojis, presumably to indicate their emotions at the time of their employment. I did not want to become a crying cat face on a future resume. That left me with five solid candidates and wishing I already had an assistant to set up the interviews.
I scanned my calendar, searching for a chunk of time—sooner rather than later—to schedule the interviews. I wanted the new person trained and in place before Ford returned from his trip with Charlotte and his project heated up. With the work on the Essex project and my current residential clients, I was already struggling to keep up with production schedules andsubcontractors. My business ran on reputation and referrals; I couldn’t afford to drop a single ball.
Fighting a moment of panic about the Benoit fabric order, I skimmed back through my calendar until I found the entry and confirmation number. It was the designer equivalent of leaving for a trip and worrying I’d forgotten to turn off the iron, and the relief was just as strong. As I exhaled, my gaze caught on one of the periwinkle dots I used to mark my times with Jake. The dots made a pattern going back several months, with the current gap the longest in recent history.
I hadn’t bothered to mark my calendar for the night we played girlfriend. It felt like by then things had changed and marking the might-have-been-probably-was a date as a booty call didn’t seem right. I hadn’t heard from Jake since the texts after the gala almost a week ago. That didn’t feel right either, especially since I thought our relationship had grown into something more than just friends with benefits. I thought we were going to try actually dating.
I knew what it must have looked like for Jake to see me with John. I also knew he didn’t have a reason—or right—to be jealous. I hated that the first time Jake asked me to go out on what couldn’t be misconstrued as anything but a date, I’d had to say no. But he knew why I did it and how important the project was to me. I hadn’t lied to him or hid anything. It was a core of our relationship even before we had one. We told each other the truth.
We had to keep being honest with each other if we wanted a chance at figuring out how to make our relationship more than just opposites attract. If I was going to figure out how to work around the board shorts and open cabinet doors, he was going to have to take me at my word that there was nothing to be jealous about and not run and hide at the first uncomfortable bit. That wasn’t how grown adults did things.
I ignored for the moment that I’d jumped right to the challenges of living with a man I’d barely started a relationship with and the fact that if I had to watch him take another woman out, I’d be salty too. If that’s even what he was. I couldn’t tell because he’d insisted it wasn’t a problem, and then promptly disappeared.
Turning my attention back to work because world domination was less frustrating than dating, I made a handful of phone calls to set up interviews with potential assistants. It wasn’t like I had time for a relationship anyway. I had an empire to build.
It’s one of the reasons Jake and I worked so well from the beginning. Our negotiated times together had been so clean, even when we planned to do very filthy things to each other. There was no angst. If one of us said we were busy and had to reschedule it was because we were. There was no time spent puzzling through emotions and no second-guessing. Honest, straightforward, negotiated pleasure. It had been the perfect arrangement. Which didn’t explain why the idea of going back to that felt so hollow now.
The phone buzzed in my hand and I jumped, half expecting to see Jake’s name on the screen and was disappointed when I didn’t. It was Jackson, the tailor whose name I’d given Jake for a suit for Ford’s party.
JACKSON
Sorry to bother you, but we’re running out of time for alterations and your friend hasn’t called. Do you want me to follow up with him directly?
ME
I’ll take care of it. Thanks for letting me know.
If I was looking for an excuse to reach out to Jake, I couldn’t ask for a better one. I hated that it felt like I needed one. That had never been the case before. Things between us had always been easy, but if I wanted more, maybe I needed to plan on doing more.
ME
Got a message from the tailor about time getting short. Let me know if you need me to facilitate.
