He’d wanted me?
Rowe bent towards me, his head moving towards mine, and I was so out of it I couldn’t even imagine what he would want to do that for. Did I have something on my face?
And then his lips met mine, and everything else flew out of my head.
“Xavi,” Rowe murmured, pulling back, his voice low and gentle. “I want –”
The handle of the supply closet rattled and we leaped apart, Rowe reaching for the other side of the handle as it was yanked forward and then faking a laugh for the person in the hall, making some joke about the two of them opening the door at the same time. I grabbed a blue folder and waved it in front of myself as an excuse as I walked out, following Rowe. He was already going back through the door into the office.
The back of his head.
And that was all I was going to be able to see until the end of the work day.
I wasn’t sure if I could handle the wait.
Rowe
“Hey.”
The simple word was loaded with so much.
I nodded down at Xavi, repeating his greeting. “Hey.” Only mine was warmer and more assured, where his was a question mark – a timid and fearful hope that there might be some acceptance waiting for him on the other side.
At my confirmation that maybe there was, he smiled, though still a little hesitantly. “Are we going in there?” he asked, pointing at the hotel’s restaurant.
“Where else?” I asked with a chuckle. We’d been in there so much over the past few days, it was beginning to feel like we were regulars – an odd feeling to have for a place like a hotel on the outskirts of town that I’d never even had a reason to visit before.
“Right,” Xavi nodded. His smile was pulled tight. “Is… do you know who’s here?”
“Only Deon,” I said. I wanted to slip my arm around his shoulders and tell him everything would be alright, but the relationship between us was something different now the weekend was over. It had to be. It couldn’t go any deeper, because I was still not sure if I was leaving or not.
I shouldn’t have invited him. But what if I stayed? What if we had a chance?
I wished, too, that we had traveled together in the same car instead of driving separately from work. It would have saved gas, and Xavi was clearly nervous. And, if I was honest with myself, this lifeline dangling in front of me made me want to hope.
Made me want to tell him what I’d almost said in the supply closet, even if I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.
“Right,” he nodded again now as if he was trying to be brave enough to go inside, looking at the entrance and the tables we could see from the lobby, searching for a face he knew. I wasn’t sure whether he was hoping he would know someone there, or hoping it would just be us so he didn’t have to face any questions about why we were hanging out again.
He needed a helping hand. Literally.
Without thinking, I stuck out my elbow, making a triangle shape with it. “Coming?” I asked.
Xavi only hesitated a moment before he slipped his arm through the crook I’d made, hanging onto me as we walked into the restaurant like he was balancing out the opposite side of my cane.
Why did this feel even more intimate than holding hands?
We walked in and I spotted Deon in the corner, at a table with a few others. He lifted a hand and waved at me as we entered, and seeing this, the waiter extended an arm for us to pass by him with a smile. Within a moment – too short of a moment, because I wanted to keep that feeling of Xavi tucked in at my side – we were at the table, nodding greetings and introductions at the others and finding a place to sit.
The table was booth-style on one side. I ended up sitting next to Xavi there, with Deon on my left and the other three strangers ranged on the other side of the table on chairs. Whoever they were – I was in such a frazzled state that their names had left my mind immediately – they were engaged in watching something on one of their phones, the other two craning their heads over, and they showed no signs of sharing it with us. Deon looked bored out of his mind, and he rolled his eyes at me as he took a sip of his drink through a bright yellow straw.
“Ignore,” he said, gesturing with his head to the others. “I don’t know why I agreed to have dinner with them. So, dish. You two managed to fool everyone all weekend or no?”
“No,” Xavi spoke up before I had the chance. “I came clean yesterday.”
Deon watched him for a second. “You need a drink,” he pronounced, but Xavi lifted a hand and waved him off.
“A drink is the last thing I need,” he said and sighed. “Trust me. You wouldn’t like me when I’ve had a drink. I’m trying not to be that Xavi anymore.”
