Chapter one
A Long Holiday Weekend
The shift is palpable as I watch every person in the office walk towards the elevator, hour by hour, slowly emptying the space. Leaving me alone to my thoughts as the silence presses in.
A long three-day Memorial Day weekend. Margaret from human resources is flying down to Florida to visit her grandkids. Lena is planning to attend a music festival in Napa Valley. And what am I doing?
Good question. If you look at the PTO request, I submitted a few weeks ago, it would indicate that I have some type of plan.
Empty desks. Devoid of water cooler talk. Nothing left but this sharp pit in my stomach as the ticking sound on my watch grows louder than the sound of Chris’s voice.
My romantic dinner reservation at L’Etere is dying a slow, agonizing death. An elaborate dinner that has been strategicallyorganized for months to help me gather the courage to initiate the “let’s live together” conversation.
Chris is sitting inside his giant glass box in the middle of the office, spinning around in his chair with his cell attached to his ear.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that leaving before nine simply isn’t going to happen.
Pushing off with my feet, I roll my chair a few inches to the left, just out of his line of sight and type:Sorry, it’s going to be a long night. Will pick up burgers instead.
A painful knot forms in my chest as I press send. Knowing us, this probably is par for the course, considering our history…
When you’ve been together as long as Aidan and I have been, you form traditions. Ours? Friday night burgers. Tuesday night tacos. A topic we never had to discuss because it was set in stone. It’s been that way since our third date.
I should probably just ask him over a burger anyway since that’s the night everything really clicked for us.
The date his black BMW refused to start up. Every time he turned the key, the endless cranking sound would appear. After several tries, we moved outside of the car, pleading to strangers on campus in fifty-degree weather.
“Hey, before my date dumps me for being a dumbass, do you happen to have jumper cables?”
To which I responded, “I won’t dump him if I can just get my free food. Please help me. I am a broke college student who is sick of ramen.”
Our first bonding activity before we became official.
College students, as you would expect, are apathetic to say the least. It took a total of two and half hours and a few puppy-dog eyes to land us at the only burger joint in town.
Sal’s.
Our conversation flowed from childhood friends to firsts we experienced, then switching up and discussing family dynamics. This was the start of me learning his tells—his lip twitching when the conversation landed on his family, or his eyes lighting up when he talked about sports or video games.
It was quick, fast and a landmark for our relationship. It was sealed with a passionate kiss that left me disoriented for weeks.
Would the butterflies flutter my stomach every time I saw him?
Would we always talk about everything and anything to each other?
Now, years later, we are still together and I wanted tonight to be the night we took the next big step.
“Baby, clothes aren’t cheap. Maddox is outgrowing everything. My car needs a new battery,” Blythe yells over the speaker.
Chris’s ex is on the phone. I’ve never met her before, but from all the conversations that Chris never tries to hide from me, I know she hates working for her own money and had a baby to get out of it.
“You want to track my expenses, go ahead. You would see I’m feeding and bathing our child, giving him the best life as a full-time mom and dad.”
With each groan and frustrated sigh that carries through the whole conversation that I overhear, I promise myself, Aidan and I will never be like them.
If we move in together, it would fix how distant we have been. With his business venture proposals and my crazy hours…
Seventy percent of couples move in together by the second year of dating. Did you know that?
