Then I see him—Jordan with two thin boxes in his hands and my purse on top. In an instant, it’s like someone has thrown open the windows and let the sunshine in.Jordan is here.I might be tempted to run to him if I wasn’t in a meeting with my boss. Instead, I smile at him through the glass-paneled walls of the conference room.
His eyebrows pinch together, and he mouths, “Are you okay?”
I scan the room with my peripherals. Everyone else seems riveted on the screen, which is displaying the next product we’ll be marketing for a company called StarTech. I look back at Jordan, giving him a slight shrug.
The defeated look on his face tells me he knows I didn’t get the job. I can tell he has more he wants to say, but since our communication method at the moment is one step above Morse code, he raises the boxes in his hands and mouths, “I’ll be at your desk.”
While the backs of my eyes are still burning, I manage to rein in the tears. Jordan is here, and when Jordan is around, things don’t seem so terrible. I send him a subtle thumbs-up.
That’s when it happens.
Zia scurries around the corner and slams right into Jordan. The folder in her hand bursts open on impact, and the pink papers inside flutter around them like cherry blossoms in spring. Zia wobbles on her designer heels, and Jordan transfers the boxes to one hand while wrapping his arm around Zia’s waist to steady her.
Zia grabs his arm. Her long lashes flutter once, twice—no, three times—before she gazes into Jordan’s eyes. They both smile simultaneously.
Nausea roils in my stomach. I think I’m going to be sick. If I thought losing a promotion was bad, that was nothing compared to watching the man you love have a Hallmark-worthy meet-cute with another woman.
Time seems to pass in slow motion after that. I watch as Jordan helps Zia pick up her papers. Their hands accidentally brush a time or two. Jordan makes Zia laugh. Zia pulls out her phone. Jordan enters his number.
I fight the urge to clamp my hand over my eyes, but for some twisted reason, I can’t bring myself to stop watching.Moth, meet the flame. Flame, meet the moth.
Zia calls his number, and Jordan answers his phone as if they’re not standing two feet apart from one another. They continue what looks like a sickeningly flirty conversation over their phones until Zia motions to the file she holds and gives him a wistful goodbye wave.
Why, Meghan Markle? Why?
I feel like I just crawled through all nine circles of Dante’sInferno. I can’t imagine a more acute torture than this. An ugly gurgle makes its way out of my mouth.
“Paige, did you have a comment?” Vanessa asks.
Suddenly, all eyes are on me.
“No.” I shake my head vehemently while keeping my chin down and any fresh tears away from prying eyes.
“Then go ahead and press the speaker button on the center console, and we’ll get StarTech on the line.”
I rise hastily and push the buttons on the speaker in the center of the table, then I move to sit down as quickly as possible before tears drip onto its surface. But my swivel chair has different plans. True to its nature, said chair must have swiveled as I stood up, because when I sit down, I sit directly onto the arm of the chair and lose my balance. And when I reach for something to hold onto, I end up grabbing Jen’s cup.
I go down, head over Lucky Louis heels, as a cup full of Starbucks comes splashing down on me.
Chapter 6
JORDAN
I’m leaning against Paige’s desk when I finally spot her walking down the row of cubicles. She’s moving toward me with a big smile plastered on her face, but her eyes are red and splotchy. Something tells me she didn’t spend the past fifteen minutes in the women’s bathroom grinning like she is now.
Paige is a crier. If her body feels any excess of emotion, it pours straight from her eyes. If she hears an especially good line in a rap song, she cries. If she sees more than five hot-air balloons in the sky at once, she cries. And when she has a particularly bad day at work, she cries. But she really doesn’t like the crying when it draws attention to her, so I grab the box of tissues from her middle drawer and place it on her desk for when she needs it.
I follow her lead and mirror her smile. “Top ten worst days?” I ask when she’s beside me.
“Top five.” She attempts another smile, but this one barely moves her lips.
She doesn’t give me more than that, so I know she’s not ready to talk about what happened in that conference room. I segue into a safer, easier topic. “You look really nice.”
I mean it. Despite the large coffee stain, the tan suit and white blouse and the way her long brown curls frame her bright-green eyes are all something to see.
Paige gurgles out a laugh and runs a hand down her suit jacket, emphasizing the brown liquid splattered across her clothing. “You mean this piece of couture?”
I pretend to put a phone to my ear. “Paige, Paris Fashion Week is on the line, and they said they want their design back.”
