But maybe all that was just wishful thinking, I knew. And in any case, it didn’t seem like this whole awful mess would be coming to an end anytime soon…
_____
A week had passed since the incident with Malcolm. I’d spent the first half of my vacation doing absolutely nothing, and was currently sitting on my couch watching the last episode of Lord of the Lions in my pajamas, slurping down a bowl of cereal in the middle of the afternoon.
Suddenly, out of the blue, there was a knock at my door.
I froze with my spoon halfway to my mouth, then indelicately pushed my cereal bowl down onto the coffee table.
“Shit,” I hissed, already knowing it was Malcolm. I paused the TV, hoping that he hadn’t heard its sound through the door and figured out I was there.
I held my breath, crossing my fingers that he might go away.
A few seconds passed in silence. I thought I might actually get away from him…
Then came another pounding on the door.
THUMP THUMP THUMP!
“Annalise!” called a muffled voice. “I know you’re in there… Please, open up!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” I hissed.
I sprang up from the couch, and a rainbow of stray Fruit Loops fell from the oversized t-shirt I had on.
I stomped over to the front door, my hands balled into fists, ready to bite my boss’s head off the instant I set eyes on him again.
“Listen asshole, I said I wanted to be left alone!” I scolded him as I pulled open the door, “And I really don’t appreciate you-”
But once the door was fully open, I realized that it wasn’t Malcolm standing there. In fact there was no one standing there at all.
Instead I stood in awe at the sight of my baby-faced ex, Dennis Holt, down on one knee with a bouquet of roses one hand, and a velvet purple jewelry box in the other.
“Annalise Morgan Rhoades,” he said in an emotional voice, his tiny gray eyes glimmering with sentiment. “Will you marry me?”
All I could do was stand there, mouth agape, staring down at him in awe.
“What the hell is this bullshit?” I finally managed, wondering if I hadn’t just drifted off in front of the TV and fallen asleep during Lord of the Lions. Somehow, whatever was happening right now was proving to be even more bizarre than that most bizarre of shows.
“It’s a ring,” said Dennis without missing a beat. He popped open the lid to the little velvet box, and an admittedly large and beautiful diamond shone back at me from a sweeping gold band. “I paid almost half a year’s salary for this.”
“But Dennis, I- WHY?!” I asked him, my head still spinning.
“Annalise,” he said, lifting himself up from one knee and somehow managing to make himself appear even more sincere. “Walking away from you that day was the worst mistake I’ve ever made. Everything that’s been going on these past few months, it’s made me realize that. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, night and day…”
I blinked at him, stunned. “Are you sure you aren’t just horny because of the lockdown?” I asked bluntly.
He grinned, and his smile was suddenly more handsome to me than I remembered it being.
“I always did love your sense of humor,” he said, still beaming at me.
“I wasn’t joking…” I said dryly.
“I know I was an idiot, okay?” he went on. “I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t. How could I even deny that, when I had the audacity to turn my back on the smartest, most talented, most beautiful woman on the planet? I don’t know why I did what I did. Whether I was just fed up with work and felt like I wasn’t going anywhere in life, or whether it was just the seven year itch people always talk about, or what… But you know, they always say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. And I’m starting to realize how lucky I was to be with you.”
I had half a notion to tell him that A., the two of us had only been together for three years, not seven, and that B. in the months we’d been apart, I’d actually only managed to grow less and less fond of him. But I kept my mouth shut, suddenly experiencing a stirring of something inside me, and wanting to see where exactly he was going with all of this.
He wasn’t that bad looking, really, I reminded myself. In a certain light, I decided, and with this much desire to please me (something he’d never really exhibited before throughout our relationship), he was actually kind of sexy…
“I know I was a jerk,” he continued, when I didn’t say anything. “But I’m a changed man now, Annalise. This pandemic has completely turned me around. You have no idea how much I’ve worried about you through all of this, how much time I’ve spent wondering how you are…”
My breath caught a little bit at this. “Wow, that’s… That’s kind of sweet, actually,” I said, astonished as the words passed through my lips.
Apparently my saying this was enough to encourage him, and immediately he reached out for me, taking both of my hands in his own. I let him do so, and felt the tingle of a familiar touch run back across my arms, and down along my spine. I lowered my eyes to the floor, my face heating up, my mouth getting dry.
“I have no idea how long it will be before this craziness ends,” he said, as sincerely as ever. “But all I want to focus on when it does is the two of us building a life together. I want to settle down, get married. I want us to have a house in the suburbs together, maybe even start a family.”
My ears were ringing. I was being flooded with information, flooded with conflicting emotions, and I felt completely blindsided.
“Dennis, I- I don’t know what to say,” I stammered, and this was one hundred percent the God’s honest truth.
“Say that you’ll at least think about it,” he urged me, and slipped the engagement ring from the box. He took my left hand in his right, and I stood there motionless as he pushed the gold band down around my ring finger. The stone was dazzling, and I stared in wonder at it, even as I struggled to process any other emotions at that moment.
“I know this is sudden,” he went on, “and I know this is asking you to process a lot all at once.”
“Yeah,” I nodded, still looking down at the diamond, until finally I managed to tear my head away, and return my ex-boyfriend’s gaze.
“But I love you, Annalise. I always have. And I want to spend the rest of my life doing what I can to make you happy.”
That was when it clicked for me. He actually meant what he was saying. He wasn’t just settling for me the way he had been when he broke up with me a half a year ago, or however long it had been. Now, he was actually making an effort to earn my love, to prove to me that he was worthy of it.
The difference, as far as I was concerned at that moment, was like night and day.
There was movement, suddenly. Whose movement it was, I’m still not entirely sure. Whether it was me leaning into him, or him into me.
Either way, somehow, our lips met.
We kissed, slowly, and I felt tears spill from his eyes as we did so.
It wasn’t passion that I felt, though. For me it was more like an experiment. There was familiarity there. Safety. And I knew, just from the way that he kissed me, that every word he’d just spoken was true. If I took him back now, I could count on him being true and dependable for the rest of our lives together. Things would be back on track the way they had been before all of this, and he would have already experienced his time away from me, to know that that truly wasn’t what he wanted.
But was it what I wanted?
At last I managed to pull away from him, gasping in a deep breath of air. He eased back gently, his eyes gazing intently over at me through the doorway. My lips felt strangely dirty, contaminated by what had just taken place, and I wiped them absently with the back of my hand, as though this could somehow set things right again.
“Listen, Dennis, I- This is too much for me right now. I’m going to need to take some time and think about this. A lot of time.”
I reached over and began t
o slip the engagement ring back off my finger.
“Absolutely. Take all the time you need,” he urged me, and reached back over to stop me, just as the gold band made it up to the top digit of my ring finger. “But keep the ring. It’s for you. I want you to have it, to remind you of me. As a symbol of my loyalty, and all the amazing things that could become real for us if you agree to be my wife.”
“I- thank you, Dennis,” I said reluctantly, and slid the ring back into place. He then handed me the bouquet of roses, which I took without feeling I had much real say in the matter. “Listen, I… I need to go back in and get some work done,” I lied to him. “But I- I’ll definitely think about it, okay?”
“Thank you, Annalise,” he said, his eyes brimming with tears. “Thank you so much.”
I slipped back inside and closed the door on him, and listened as his footsteps retreated back down along the hallway outside.
Finally I let out a deep breath, and slumped against the wall, sliding all the way down to the floor. I sat there, once again, in a total heap, one hand on my head with the fingers laced through my hair, and the other displayed before my eyes. I twinkled my fingers back and forth, watching the diamond glitter in the dim lighting of my apartment.
For a brief, shining moment, I’d realized what it felt like to be truly loved, truly desired, truly longed for. I’d felt everything I believed had been absent in my life for so very, very long now.
And yet I somehow felt less sure than ever that this was what I actually wanted in my life…
5-
The New Normal
It was late, almost midnight, when I stepped into the elevator in Malcolm’s building that same evening, and pressed the button for the very top floor.
I rode up in silence, my mind a blank slate, my world having been turned upside down multiple times over the course of the past week. Shouldn’t that have made it right side up again, I wondered? Whether or not it should have been, it didn’t feel that way at all. My head was still as screwed up and confused as it had ever been…
The bell as the elevator reached the penthouse floor left my stomach twisted into a Gordian knot. These next moments, I truly believed, may shape the entire future course of my life. I didn’t know what I should be expecting, and I thought it was a mistake to expect anything at all. I closed my eyes as the elevator doors slid open. I took a deep breath, and stepped out into the hallway, prepared to face my destiny.
There was no sound, and no light seeping out from beneath the door that I could see. I paced slowly forward, trying to stop myself from turning around, and hopping right back onto the elevator. At last I made it over to his door, and knocked gently against its surface with the knuckles of my right hand. My left arm hung down at my side, and though I’d left Dennis’s ring back at the apartment, I continued to nervously flex my fingers as though the band was still in place.
A long silence ensued, and I nearly convinced myself that Malcolm was out, and the best thing for me to do would be to leave that instant, and pretend as though I’d never been here.
But then the door opened. A silhouetted Malcolm appeared in the doorway dressed in a bathrobe, disheveled but clearly awake, a glass tumbler full of clinking ice cubes in his hand.
He smiled softly upon seeing me, his dark eyes gentle, not at all angry at me for having vanished from his life for the past week without warning.
“Nice to see you again, Annalise,” he said softly.
“Can I come in?” I asked, and he gestured me in through the door.
We went over and had a seat in front of the television, me on the couch where the two of us had first started pawing one another before relocating to the shower, him in a modern, expensive-looking chair positioned perpendicular to me.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he offered. “I’m afraid I’ve had a bit of a head start…”
He smiled as though expecting to do the same, but all I could do was stare down at my hands, at the finger where the ring had been.
“I just want to talk,” I said, and he nodded.
“I would very much like that,” he said, amiably enough.
I hesitated, and it was several moments longer before I figured out how to start. When I did finally manage to figure it out, it felt like it was wrong, but once the words were out I felt as though it would be impossible for me to change course.
“My ex stopped by my apartment, earlier this afternoon,” I said.
“Dennis, you mean?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes. Dennis.”
“Regarding what?” he asked following another extended pause from me.
“He… He asked me to marry him.”
Very slowly, I thought I could see Malcolm’s features sinking. He seemed crestfallen, but it was clear that he didn’t want me to know it.
“That’s-” he began to say, but came up short for words. “That’s- wow…”
I actually did manage to smile at this, reflecting on the absurdity of the encounter. “Yeah… That was pretty much my reaction too.”
Malcolm was the one staring down at his lap now, as he passed his empty tumbler back and forth from hand to hand, the ice cubes clinking against the glass with each new cycle.
“So what did you say?” he asked, obviously trying to sound casual, and mostly disinterested in the answer.
“I didn’t tell him anything,” I said. “I told him I would think about it. What else could I tell him?”
“That… Would be entirely up to you, I suppose,” he said.
We both looked up at the same time. Our eyes met for the first time since he’d invited me in. Those dark, lovely eyes. I very softly shook my head, though I’m not sure what I was responding to by doing so.
“I need to understand,” I said, finally managing to get out what had been on my mind for the past week. “Please, just… I need you to put it on plain terms, what you see us as. Because I thought it was one thing, and it seems like you thought it was another, and… And I just need to understand, okay? I need to know how to move forward with my life, and not keep being stuck in place, waiting for someone else to decide whether I’m worth their time!”
I started to cry, and I had to look away from him again. I dabbed at my eyes with my wrists, and I was vaguely aware of the sound of the clinking ice cubes in Malcolm’s glass as he continued to gaze over at me.
“So that’s what this has all been about…” he said, when I’d calmed down some. “I was kind of starting to piece that together. I’ll admit it was pretty stupid of me, that I couldn’t figure it out right away.”
“I just… I guess I just thought this all meant something to you! I’m not trying to pressure you, or give you some kind of deadline, or anything like that. It’s just… I’m tired of guys screwing around with me! I’m tired of feeling used, or like I’m not good enough.”
“Annalise, you are amazing,” he said, with the utmost sincerity. “And if I’ve ever made you feel like you were anything less than that, it was purely by accident, and I apologize from the depths of my heart for hurting you.”
“It’s just, when you said all that about no commitment, no strings, and all of that stuff, it was suddenly like all the time we’d spent together hadn’t meant anything to you. Like we were just friends with benefits, or, or-”
“Or secksbuddies?” he asked, with one of his little playful grins, trying to bring some levity to the situation.
Even though I was still crying, I couldn’t help but laugh. I grabbed one of the throw pillows from the couch and tossed it playfully at his chest.
“Oh, shut up, I’m trying to feel sorry for myself!” I joked. And somehow, I’m pretty sure that was the turning point in our conversation.
We both laughed for a while, and then things fell quiet between us. He gazed over at me, and I gazed back at him, the lights of the city twinkling behind him in the distance.
At last, carefully, he reached across the empty space that divided the two of us. He took both of my ha
nds in his, and I let him without any objection.
“Annalise,” he said gently, and my name was like honey on his tongue. “I’m sorry. The truth is, I replayed that last conversation a thousand times in my head after you went home that night. I realized how stupid it was for me to say that, and how much I really, truly didn’t mean it.”
“Then why did you say it?” I asked, cautiously accepting that this might actually be the truth.
He sighed, looked down at his feet, and then looked back up at me.
“Because I was afraid,” he said. A stillness rose up inside throughout the penthouse, and I could feel my pulse beating in my wrist as he held my hand in his.
“Why?” I asked, astonished at the possibility that he might even experience such an emotion as fear. “What were you afraid of?”
“Well, to be honest,” he began slowly, “I think I was kind of in the same place you are. Thinking about my past experiences, and thinking they even begin to compare what you and I have had together. I was afraid of rushing into something like what I’d gotten into with Alyssa. Diving headlong into a toxic, unstable relationship, and not getting to know one another well enough to decide whether we actually belong together.”
“Oh, God,” I said, pulling one hand away from him, and placing a palm against my forehead. “How selfish could I have been? I was so wrapped up in my own problems, I didn’t even think about all of that… Of course you would want to take things one step at a time, and not rush into some big commitment. You’d been single for even less time than I had. God, I made such a big deal out of nothing…”
“It wasn’t nothing,” he said, and reached for my other hand again, pulling it back into his. “You aren’t wrong for having felt the way you did. If I’d wanted to take things slow, I should have said ‘Let’s take things slow.’ Instead I acted like I didn’t care what happened between us at all. And that isn’t true, Annalise. Not at all. To tell you the truth, I think sometimes I care about it a little bit too much. And I think maybe that was what I was afraid of more than anything.”
Lockdown with My Billionaire Boss : Second Chance Office Romance Page 7