“I was awake,” she retorted, glancing away from me.
“How could you?—”
“Because I waited up for you!” she snapped. “You’ve been coming here every night. And when I didn’t hear from you, I figured you’d come here when you got off work. So, I waited, and the longer I waited, the more worried I got.”
“Ellie, this isn’t a relationship?—”
“Don’t you dare start that bullshit with me,” she seethed. “This isn’t about whether or not we’re in a relationship. Do you really think I was sitting here, twiddling my thumbs and drawing hearts on paper as I waited for Prince Charming to come home?”
I didn’t say it, but yeah, that was about the gist of it. Sans the hearts on the notes. That didn’t really seem like Ellie’s style.
“I just didn’t want to wake you up,” I said again. “And I had a long day ahead of me. There was a case that I needed to take care of first thing in the morning. I missed my meeting with my secretary because she arrived late, and it took me all damn day to convince another lawyer to help me on a case. I was just finishing up when I got back to the office.”
“And not once did you think to check your voicemail or your texts?” she snapped.
“I didn’t check my phone at all!” I yelled.
Why the fuck was I even explaining myself? We weren’t dating, and the idea that I went missing was completely absurd.
“You gathered the whole fucking town because for one day you didn’t hear from me. That’s ludicrous!”
“It wasn’t the whole town. It was Mav and Remi.”
“And Wayne. And along with them, everyone else gathered to find out what was wrong. Hell, there was police tape on my office door!”
She took a menacing step toward me, her bitch face on full display. I had never seen it before, and based on the mother of all glares, I hoped I never saw it again.
“So, you have a problem with me being genuinely worried about you?”
“No, I?—”
“If you go missing again, and no one hears from you, I should just pretend like it’s completely normal?”
“Well, it’s not likely I’ll be kidnapped in a town this size,” I muttered.
“There was a murder years ago here. And just last winter, a little girl was kidnapped.”
“I’m not a little girl,” I argued.
“The point is, you’re acting like I was being ridiculous, and maybe I was, but it wasn’t because I was pining over the loss of a boyfriend or wondering why you wouldn’t answer my pathetic calls. It was because I was worried about you. And the sad truth is that when Mav and Remi were asking where you might be, I didn’t have a single answer for them.”
“There are only so many places to go.”
“Yes, but you weren’t at any of them,” she said sweetly, her cruelty taking a backseat for only a second.
I knew a devastating blow was coming.
“And do know what I came to realize?”
“Um…”
“After all these questions, it became quite clear to me that I don’t know a thing about you.”
“Yes, you do,” I laughed. “We spend every day together?—”
“And you tell me nothing! I went to your cabin, and that’s how I found Bianca’s number. I asked if she had heard fromyou recently. She said no, by the way. And in case you were wondering if we gossiped about you, the answer is no. I said thank you, and I hung up.”
Sighing, I ducked my head, not out of embarrassment, but frustration. “Ellie, we said this was just sex.”
