“I didn’t steal your phone, or anything like that. We were working. When you got up, it fell. I picked it up and happened to see it. I’m sorry.”
I nodded, remembering the moment.
“It’s just, once I knew, I struggled with it all week. Then the night came, and I made poor choices. I made Chase choices.”
Chase choices.
We both chuckled at his self-deprecating statement.
“Well…I guess I’m glad to hear you didn’t steal my phone,” I said.
A nervous laugh escaped him. I was still angry, yet neither of us knew how to proceed.
Chase was younger than me. Significantly younger. It wasn’t a May-December thing. Even though he was almost twenty-five, there were still almost five years between us. Immature would not be a word I’d use to describe him, but he did have some growing up to do in some areas of his life.
His choices, at times, were not always thought through. How could I continue to be mad at him for poor choices when I was withholding something from him? That was a choice I’d made that could affect us. Whether he found out my truth or not, it would always be there, lurking in the shadows.
It would continue to affect us.
Who in their right mind would be comfortable dating the co-CEO of the company they worked for? He was my boss.
But we had a past. We gave this a shot once before.
After the party at The Plaza last summer, he’d convinced me to go home with him. It didn’t take much. I’d had my eye on him for months, and our constant flirting at work was one of the better parts of my day. But then, when he showed up to the partywith Amanda, I was hurt. I knew we couldn’t go to the event together, but I also didn’t know he was still seeing her.
I’ll call it what it was. I was jealous.
And it was intense. That was when I knew it was more for me. More than just our casual flirtations across my desk each morning. We were getting to know each other during those moments. They weren’t the deepest of conversations, but they meant something to me.
Turned out they did to him as well. Because we connected that night. In more ways than one.
We were different in so many ways. In our upbringing. In the way we lived our current lives. And that created its own set of problems, at least for me.
“My place is nothing like yours, is it?” I scanned my tiny space.
His apartment, rather his penthouse, was on Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side, looking over Central Park. Slightly different from my living quarters.
“So?” he asked. “What does that matter?”
As I peered out the window onto the street of my neighborhood, I wondered if he was right. I loved my apartment, my neighborhood.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Chase. I wasn’t brought up like you. I don’t come from much.”
As he came up behind me, I could tell he wanted to hold me. His finger drifted along my arm. When I didn’t shrug him off, his finger hooked mine, giving it a gentle tug.
That always melted my heart.
He wrapped his body around me. It always felt good to be in his arms as he held me tight. I felt safe, protected. That was always something I craved growing up. Still did.
“Well, why don’t you fill me in. Tell me something about your childhood,” he said.
Oh man, where did I start? I wasn’t sure how much I truly wanted to tell him or if he really wanted to know the whole truth. Guiding him back to the couch, I sat us down. I knew I’d need to be sitting for this.
“I grew up in a shithole town in rural Ohio. We really didn’t have much money, so I had to work from the time I was thirteen or fourteen to help out, babysat mostly. But my money went to help pay the bills, rent, and food, not for me to go to the movies or the mall with friends.”
Chase held my hand, rubbing the back of it like he usually did. I refused to look his way, though, not wanting to see the potential look of pity he might give me.
“We have one thing in common,” I told him. The irony was evident in my voice. “We both have a parent who deserted us. My dad left us when I was three, I think. He, uh, was an addict and took off one day. We never knew what happened. My mom didn’t care enough to try and figure it out. At least that’s what she told me when I got older.”
