Right Under My Nose

by Parker, Ali

  “Me neither.” Zoe shook her head “Can’t believe you both finally pulled your shit together and admitted you’re meant to be together.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far quite yet,” I warned her. “I mean, we only hooked up. Nothing’s happened between us yet.”

  “Yeah, but the two of you have been dancing around this point for, like, six weeks?” she reminded me. “If you haven’t gotten sick of each other by now, I’d say you’re pretty set for life.”

  “Well, we’ll see.” I held my hands up. “Hopefully, this date’s going to be a little more successful than the first one I went on with him.”

  “I’m sure it will be,” she promised me, and then she sat down at the desk opposite me, wrinkling her nose up, a look of concern crossing her face.

  “Zoe? What’s going on?” I asked nervously. I felt as though every single emotion in my body had been racked up to eleven, and I was noticing every little detail of everything people did around me. It wasn’t serving me too well.

  “I’m just…” She looked up at me. “I’m worried, that’s all.”

  “But you were the one pushing for something to happen between the two of us!” I reminded her. “I thought you’d be happy we finally bit the bullet and did something.”

  “Trust me, I am,” she promised me. “And I hope things work out between you. I do. It’s just that…”

  She searched for the best way to phrase her concerns that wasn’t going to offend or upset me.

  “He’s got a whole lot of money, right?” she confirmed, and I nodded.

  “And men like that, when they come with a whole lot of money, there’s some… complications that can run alongside that,” she continued, delicately teasing out her actual meaning. “I’m sure he’s great, but just… be careful, all right?”

  “I will.” I furrowed my brow. I wasn’t even sure I knew precisely what she was saying, but she was looking out for me, and that was all that mattered. “I appreciate the concern, Zo, but I’m sure I can handle myself.”

  “I’m sure you can too.” She smiled at me. “He won’t know what hit him.”

  She stood up again, glancing at the large clock with the bright red hands above my desk.

  “I should get back to class.” She tapped my desk a couple of times. “I’ll see you at lunch, though, right? And I expect all the gory details.”

  “I promise there was nothing gory about what happened,” I called after her, but she was already gone. The bell rang, and I heard the shuffle of the kids forming a line outside my door. I got to my feet, brushed down my skirt, adjusted my blouse, and went to let them in. It was difficult, sometimes, switching over from weekend mode into work mode, but I would have to find a way to do it. I didn’t want anyone, least of all Hunter, catching on to what had happened this weekend.

  They were all chatting amongst themselves when they entered, and I noticed Hunter looking at me. For a moment, I panicked, wondering if his dad had filled him in on some of the stuff that had happened that weekend, but he couldn’t have been that stupid, could he? Holden and I were still in the very early stages of whatever the hell it was we were doing, and he would’ve been nuts to go ahead and tell his son all about that. It would have caused chaos for him. I calmed myself as Hunter got closer and offered him a smile.

  “How was your weekend, Hunter?” I asked him, and he nodded.

  “It was good,” he replied, but he was clearly distracted and a little nervous.

  “Something you want to ask me?” I wondered aloud, and he nodded, scuffing his foot back and forth on the floor before him.

  “I was wondering—” He took a deep breath, as though he had been carefully rehearsing these words since he had gotten out of bed that morning. “—what are you… when do the afterschool clubs start?”

  “Next week,” I replied. “The gaming one will have the sign-up sheet out soon, and I’ll make sure to put your name on it.”

  “Awesome.” He beamed. “Thank you.”

  I smiled as I watched him head back to his seat. It was so good to see him engaging with something. Yeah, the gaming club might mostly be kids staring at computer screens, but anything that made him feel like he belonged to a group of people was surely a good thing. I was going to get Hunter feeling more comfortable around the rest of the kids in his class before he graduated my year. I was sure of it.

  “All right, all right, settle down, everyone.” I clapped my hands together at the front of the class. “Take your seats, please.”

  The kids broke off from their groups and hurried to take their spots at the seats scattered through the room, and there was the shuffle of them grabbing everything they needed out of their bags and lay it in front of them. As I waited, I found my mind drifting back in the direction of Holden, of that night, of how amazing it had been—and the fact that I got to do it all again so soon. That was going to be a hell of a lot of fun. What had he planned for us? Something romantic, no doubt. And probably expensive. I was pretty sure I had run down the list of luxury vehicles that I wanted nothing to do with, but what if he turned up in, like, a tank or something? I giggled at the thought.

  And then, I realized I was standing there in front of a room full of kids, all of whom were waiting for me to start their lessons, and I was grinning away like an idiot thinking about something else entirely. I blinked and quickly grabbed my lesson plan, glancing over the words in front of me in the hopes of reminding myself what the hell I was supposed to be doing that day.

  “All right.” I straightened up and cast my eye around the room, hoping none of them would have picked up on my stutter start right there. “Take out your workbooks and turn to a fresh page.”

  All of them did as they were told, and I tried to keep my head in the game. I had five days till my date with Holden, and I wasn’t going to be able to spend every moment of that time daydreaming about what that night was going to bring. I had to stay focused, and that meant casting him out of my brain for the time being, no matter how hard it was going to be to stop myself from thinking about what we had already shared—and more importantly, what was yet to come.

  28

  Holden

  “Look, I’m sorry, but this isn’t what we were looking for.” Andreas White sat opposite me, tapping on his laptop screen and shaking his head. “Do you understand where I’m coming from?”

  I felt my neck burning with embarrassment as I turned my attention to the website he had pulled up in front of me—the one I had designed for him over the last few weeks. I had been pretty happy with it when I turned it in, but I had spent most of that month completely distracted from the tasks I was supposed to be taking care of. I shouldn’t have been surprised he was coming to me with complaints. I should have expected this.

  “I’m sorry to hear you’re not happy with this.” I reached out for his laptop and started clicking through the website, and sure enough, I swiftly noticed a few things wrong with it—a dead link, a graphic that jerked and didn’t play properly. This was nowhere near my usual standards, and I was instantly irritated with myself for letting this project get away from me.

  “We’ve already had a few complaints from clients.” Andreas shook his head. “And we’re going to redesign the website again from scratch. I’m not happy with it, and I know the rest of the team feels the same way.”

  Part of me wanted to get mad that he was here chewing me out, but that wasn’t going to help anything. I needed to stand up and take responsibility for what I’d done, not run away from the problem and hope it fixed itself.

  “Of course, I’ll do the website redesign for free,” I promised him. “I’m more than happy to offer a discount on any future projects you want me to work on—”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have time for you to do that.” Andreas shook his head. “We’re already looking at hiring a firm who can get this done quickly and efficiently.”

  “I understand.” I nodded, even though I wanted to slam my fist against my desk in annoyance. I
knew he was doing what was right for his company. I had obviously and evidently fucked this one up, and I could have done better if I had given it my full attention.

  “I’ll refund your money for the original website design,” I promised him, hoping I would be able to mitigate the damage to my reputation if I could make it so he hadn’t lost anything but time. He eyed me across the table and shook his head.

  “You came so highly recommended from several of my colleagues.” He sighed. “I expected a better quality of work from you, Holden.”

  “I can only apologize,” I repeated myself, wondering how long I was going to have to sit here and listen to this guy be disappointed in me because it was already getting pretty old.

  Mercifully, he had nothing else to say to me. He got to his feet, shook my hand, and left me in that office all by myself once more. I slumped back into the seat as soon as he was gone, feeling like an idiot, wanting to yell curses at the sky, but it wasn’t going to help anything.

  How long had I been running this business? A decade almost? And this was the first time I had been fired from a project. It fucking sucked. The worst part of it was, I could have done better if I had made more of an effort. I had half-assed that design, and I was losing a hefty amount as a result. I couldn’t get the time back I had poured into that project, and I had to give him his money back for a job poorly done. I couldn’t believe I’d let a client like him slip through my fingers. He worked for a big ass company, and there could have been ongoing work there if I had managed not to completely fuck it up on the first try.

  I leaned back in my seat and stared at the ceiling. I knew I was going to have a hard time focusing on the projects I was taking on unless I put something between me and this meeting. I grabbed my phone, texted Raymond, and asked if he felt like meeting for a coffee. He replied in the affirmative, and a few minutes later, I was walking to the café down the street from my office, the cold air a decent reflection of my mood at the moment

  When I arrived, Raymond was already there, and he waved me over, having already ordered my usual.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he greeted me. “Something go down at work?”

  “Yeah, actually,” I sighed and shook my head. “I got fired from a project.”

  “Oh.” He furrowed his brow. “Did you fall out with the client, or…?”

  “No, he didn’t like the work I put in for him, and I have to admit, I don’t blame him,” I confessed. “It wasn’t up to standard. He wasn’t willing to wait for me to do a redesign, so I offered his money back. He’s going to another firm to get it done, someone who can get it in quicker.”

  “Has that ever happened to you before?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nope, but I looked at the website, and I think he’s right,” I admitted. “When I turned it in, I felt good about it, but I must not have been paying attention. There were rookie mistakes all over that thing, the kind of shit I was doing when I first got started. I don’t know where the hell my head was at.”

  “I think I have an idea,” Raymond remarked, as I took a sip of my coffee. “Autumn.”

  “Yeah, but we only started up this thing last week.”

  “Sure, but anyone who’s been paying attention can see the two of you had something going on a long time before that,” he reminded me. “I don’t want to sound like an ass, but maybe you’ve been distracted with everything that’s going on with her?”

  “I suppose you could be right,” I admitted. The thought of it irritated me. I had just gotten something romantic off the ground, and it was already starting to affect my performance at work? What was I supposed to do, choose between having a decent job or a decent love life?

  “What are you going to do?” Raymond asked. “Going to keep things up with her, even if it gets in the way of work?”

  “I don’t want to call things off,” I told him firmly, and that was the truth. The thought of breaking things off with Autumn when we’d only recently gotten them going, made my stomach twist up painfully inside me. I had only recently accepted that there was something going on between us, and there was no way I was going to cut that off when it made me feel so damn good.

  “So you’re going to have to change the way you run the business then.” Raymond leaned back in his seat and spoke as though this should have been obvious.

  “Like how?” I asked him. He shrugged.

  “I mean, I know you’ve been totally closed off to it in the past, but maybe you could think about hiring some more people to help you out around there,” he suggested. I shook my head.

  “No, that’s too much stress,” I replied. “It would change everything. Besides, I don’t know if I’d trust somebody else to take on this work for—”

  “With all due respect,” Raymond said. “If the work isn’t getting done up to standard because you’re distracted, maybe it’s worth hiring someone who can throw themselves full-bore into it?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head again. The thought of it didn’t suit what I’d been trying to go for when I started up the business.

  “All right, what’s keeping you away from that idea?” he asked. “Is there something about it that doesn’t suit the business?”

  “No, it’s not that,” I conceded. “I just… never wanted to run this company where I had dominion over other people or anything.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Raymond nodded. “But things are changing for you. When you first started the company, it was only you and Hunter to take care of, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So things are different.” He shrugged. “Now you have Autumn in the picture as well. And even if it’s not her, you said you wanted someone else in your life in that way. You’re going to have to accept that you can’t juggle all those things at once.”

  I eyed him from across the table for a moment, annoyed at how much sense he was making at that moment. I had started the business, even if I never would have come out and admitted this to anyone, because I’d wanted to prove a point to Hunter’s mother. I’d wanted to show her and anyone else who might have doubted me over the years that I was perfectly capable of building a life for myself and my son that anyone would have killed for. But now that I had done that, and the business was still operating, and my world was changing faster than I could keep up with it, maybe I did need to think about hiring someone new.

  “You could come back to the company,” I suggested. “Just for a while, until things settle down again. Could be fun, the two of us working together—”

  “Yeah, I’m not going to abandon Olivia with a baby while I go out to work again,” Raymond told me firmly. “The reason I dropped out of that place was so I had a life of my own, right? I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in coming back to work.”

  “Of course. Sorry.” I held my hands up.

  “Not all of us can do the baby thing and the business thing at once,” he remarked good-naturedly. “But maybe you can do the employee thing for a change?”

  “All right, you’ve got a point,” I said, capitulating. “I have no idea how I should go about hiring someone new, though. Any ideas?”

  “I’ll keep my ear to the ground and see if we can’t figure something out.” Raymond nodded. “You’ve got a reputation in this town. I’m sure plenty of people would be happy to work for you.”

  “Jesus.” I rubbed my hand over my face. “The thought of dealing with someone else at that place is fucking exhausting.”

  “You raised a kid by yourself while you started that place up, remember?” he reminded me. “So I’m pretty sure you can manage to bring in someone else who can make everything easier.”

  “I guess so,” I admitted. “But if this goes horribly wrong, I’m holding you accountable.”

  “Good luck with that.” Raymond raised his mug to me playfully and downed what was left. I leaned back in my seat and considered what I’d agreed to. It was going to change everything about the way I ran my business—but then, a whole lot had be
en changing in my life in general these last few weeks, and most of it had been for the better. Maybe I needed to let go of my control freak mentality and accept change when it came my way. Maybe it was for the best.

  29

  Autumn

  “The weekend is here at last!” Zoe punched the air as she entered my classroom, not bothering to knock. I might have scolded her for that at some other time, but I was as excited about what this weekend had to bring as she was for a change. But then, I had a damned good reason. My date with Holden was tomorrow night, and I could hardly wait to see what he had planned for me.

  “How was your week?” I asked.

  She shrugged, shook her head, and made a face. “The less said about that, the better. I felt like a lot of the kids were antsy, you know? Like they needed a holiday.”

  “Or maybe you’re projecting because you need one,” I shot back playfully, and she held her hands up in concession.

  “You might have a point there,” she agreed. “I’m already dreaming about taking a city break somewhere. Preferably with some handsome young thing on my arm.”

  “Well, good luck with that.” I turned back to the papers on my desk, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get anything done with them this evening.

  “Let me know if your man has any friends, right?” she remarked. “Preferably in the billionaire category too. I can’t afford this city break all by myself.”

  “I’ll keep my ear to the ground,” I promised her with a chuckle. She did make me laugh. I was glad to have her around, to help assuage some of the nerves running through my system in the lead-up to this date that I was kind of terrified about. No, not terrified. It wasn’t that I thought it wasn’t going to be fun, or I wasn’t going to have a good time. I was just scared at the thought of what would happen now that we were properly together. Would it be different? Would the chemistry be less intense? It was impossible to say, and that was freaking me out a bit.