I haven’t missed his double talk. But I can’t afford to blow up this conversation without some answers. So I relax my shoulders, telling myself to stand down. “When’s your meeting? The one in Miami?”
His eyes flick to the floor for a second. “Postponed. With the hurricane, everyone south of here is headed to Orlando to avoid the worst of the storm.”
“But you’re staying put? What about the hurricane?”
He shrugs noncommittally. “A few more days. There are some loose ends I can handle from here.”
The words prickle under my skin. My pulse ticks up, but I don’t flinch. Instead, I narrow my eyes. “Am I one of them? A loose end?”
“You always were direct.” Simon nods, looking me over like he’s trying to recall some buried memory. “I’ve missed that about you.”
“Answer the question, Simon.”
A server approaches with water glasses but, sensing the tension in the space between us, seems to think better of asking if we’d like to order anything.
“No.” He softens. “You’re not a loose end, Este. You’re…you’re a question mark.”
I hold his gaze, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. “That’s poetic. Did you rehearse it in the mirror?”
He chuckles fondly. “Still quick. Still sharp. You’ve no idea how rare that is.”
“What do you want?” I ask, barely repressing the urge to slap the tabletop.
“I was worried about you,” he says, as if it’s the most innocent thing in the world. “I hadn’t heard from you in years, and then last year, you turned up on every cable news channel after your friend’s husband was murdered. And then I saw the news on Beau with that waitress,” he continues, giving a weary sigh like he’s weighed every other option and there’s only one choice left. “I think you should come back to California with me, Este.”
My eyes go wide with the absurdity of it. “That’s quite the non sequitur, Simon.”
“I’m here because I want you to know how sorry I am. I never should have let you go.”
“God, men will do literallyanythingbut go to therapy. Including fly across the country to bother a former employee with their personal problems. Why. Are. You. Here?”
“Because Ifuckedup,” he says, finally coming alive. He leans across the table, urgency pulling his face into something I recognize as pleading. “The last time my life made sense, I was with you.”
“I know you’ve never made one before, but this is not how apologies work, Simon.” The more emotional he gets, the more remote I feel. I want to tell him to leave, but I need to know why he’s really here. So I’ve resorted to my strongest suit of armor—sarcasm.
“I mean it, Este. Come back to California. I’m sorry about all of it.”
“I feel the need to correct the record here, because I think you’re misremembering the part where you fucked me and then you fired me. On anote card.”
He sighs, all manufactured attrition. “That was cold of me. But after the way I botched that acquisition meeting—all because I couldn’t focus with Beau looking at you—after all that time I spent trying to get you to take down your walls, here was Beau making you smile like you belonged to him.”
For a brutal second, I can only blink. Holding my breath, I wait for more. For arealreason. Some grand reveal that might justify the note card, the exile, the humiliation, and the years I’ve spent nursing a wound that never quite closed.
But that was it. The end of my career, the end of everything I had built hinged on Simon’s petty jealousy.
The truth is so banal it feels like mockery. So ordinary it steals the air from my lungs.
It’s my turn to laugh, but my chest is stiff.
He exhales another long sigh. “I did everything I could back then. To get you to take us seriously. To get you to let me past your walls—”
“You? Tried to get me to take down my walls? Such a convenient way for you to remember it—”
“I believed in you—”
“Stop talking. You don’t get to say anything. And whatever you’re feeling isn’t my problem. Me coming here isn’t some opening. You’re not invited back in. So I need you to hear me when I say: I am never going back to California.”
“Fine,” he goes on. “I don’t care where we go, but for God’s sake, let me get you out of this situation. I care about you enough to say seeing Beau with that girl was very worrying.”
