by Geneva Lee
By the time we left, we’d earned enough for a pile of candy. We ate it shamelessly on the drive home, scattering wrappers all over the floor of his Tesla. It was the strangest, and somehow most fun, date I’d ever been on. Except it wasn’t a date. It was two friends— no, colleagues—hanging out together. With the colleague’s kid sister. The trouble was that the term colleagues didn’t cover how I felt about him. I wasn’t certain what did. I wanted to have sex with him. That was the one thing I was certain. It was also why when we pulled up in front of the condo, I didn’t ask him to come inside. I was hopped on Skee-Ball victories and sugar, I couldn’t be trusted to make decisions.
Before I could get out, Gavin jumped out of the car ran around to my door. That was a date move. It was in the dating handbook on page one. Maybe I should ask him in for a drink. Except that even if this was a stealth date, asking him in was a couple chapters later. Instead, we lingered on the steps, making idle chit chat.
“I had a lot of fun tonight.” I meant it. I’d never had that much fun outside time with friends. So why couldn’t Gavin and I just be friends? Probably because I was dying to see him naked.
“Yeah? I wasn’t sure what you would think,” he admitted, running his hand through his dark hair as he leaned against the door frame. He looked like a poster of James Dean, not the CEO of a real estate development firm. No wonder my head and my heart were at war.
“I loved it. I haven’t done anything like that for years.”
“Oh man. You haven’t been practicing? Then I’m in trouble. I play every week. It’s how I blow off steam. I’m not sure that my ego can take being beat by someone who rarely plays.” He clutched his chest as if wounded.
“Give me a few more weeks and there won’t even be a competition,” I warned him.
“I don’t think there was much of a competition now,” he admitted
I hesitated, a question poised on the tip of my tongue. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer. If I asked, it might change things. If I didn’t ask, things might not change. I wasn’t certain which possibility frightened me more. “Why did you ask me to come out?”
“Truthfully?”
I nodded. I had the audacity to ask and now I wanted to know the answer.
“You’ve been working so hard. You don’t think I notice, but I do. You eat lunch at your desk and then you pack up when everyone leaves and go work at the coffee shop. I thought you needed a break,” he told me.
The answer crushed me. It was sweet. Thoughtful. Just like him. But it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. He’d merely been delivering his workaholic intern from herself. Nothing more.
“Thank you,” I managed to force out. What did I want him to say? That he spent all week trying to get me alone. That I was all he’d thought about for weeks, too? Of course not. I was being silly. I fumbled with my keys, trying to get them in the lock. It was time to wrap things up before I started to cry. “Dammit, I can never remember which one it is.”
Make it look like the keys have driven you to the point of tears. That will fool him.
Gavin reached out and placed his hand over mine. He took the keys from me and inserted one into the lock with one swift, sure motion. It was the perfect fit.
“Thanks.” I turned the knob, but before I could step inside and wish him one final, definitive goodbye, his hands found my waist.
There was one brief pause as he drew my body to his—a moment where his eyes searched mine as if to say ‘is this okay?’ I didn’t know what he saw there, but he found his answer. His palm stayed on the small of my back as the other found my chin and tipped my face to his. He lowered his mouth to mine slowly, hesitating once more at the last possible second. The world stopped, everything slowed down, and I waited for Gavin North to kiss me.
Our lips met in a soft crush that was urgent, but not insistent. He lingered as if savoring the taste of my mouth on his before the kiss deepened into something more, something that could never be mistaken for anything other than what it was: want.
I wanted him, too. Now that whatever invisible boundary we’d erected had been breached, I could admit that to myself. I could relish it.
I wanted him. I wanted his body against mine. I wanted his lips on my own, on my skin, on every inch of me. I wanted to taste him and feel him move against me. I wanted to take him inside, and I wanted him to take me too bed.
Gavin pulled away, his mouth hovering inches from mine before he whispered, “Sweet dreams, Cassie.”
He left me on the stairs, still wanting, and when I went in, I noticed, with a thrill, that he waited in the car until I turned out the porch light.
My dreams were interrupted by the incessant chime of the incoming FaceTime call, which was too bad considering my dreams were mostly of Gavin and what might come after that kiss. I checked the time and realized it was only midnight. Either I was getting old or the frenzy that followed Gavin’s kiss had worked me into an early bedtime. Somehow my best friends seemed to have sensed something was up, because they were conference calling. I answered, immediately hating them for making me face them in this groggy state.
“Who’s dying?” I asked in a gruff, sleep-heavy voice.
“You if you don’t spill the details,” Jillian informed me. She was alone for once. Liam, her perpetual shadow, was nowhere to be seen. That meant serious business.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about” I said coyly. But really, how did they know?
“Oh! Spill already!” Jessica yelled into the screen. Unlike Jillian, she wasn’t alone. Roman looked up in the background, wincing at the sudden exclamation.
I waved to him. “How is Mexico?”
If they thought I couldn’t think of ways to draw this out they were wrong.
“You texted us an hour ago. What did it say?” She looked to Jess.
“A very cryptic ‘Skee-Ball! Kiss! Love?’ What are we supposed to do with that?”
“And then you don’t respond to any of our texts,” Jillian jumped in.
“I was asleep!”
“Are you kissing Skee-Ball machines? Because if so we need to have a serious conversation. I know you swore off men, but…” Jillian trailed off.
Both of them were perched cross-legged on their respective beds like we were gathering around the campfire for stories.
“I kissed Gavin.” My announcement was met with silence.
“Your boss?” Jess finally asked.
“I thought you were keeping your distance,” Jillian added.
This wasn’t the response I had expected nor the one I had hoped for. “Don’t tell me you have a moral objection.”
“That’s not it,” Jess said, taking on the diplomatic tone I knew and loathed.
“Good, because you married a professor,” I reminded her. Where was the support? The squeals?
“We’re just surprised,” Jillian said. “What was the Skee-Ball thing about?”
I filled them in on the details of the night. By the end of my story, their attitude had softened toward Gavin, but I still felt like crap. I didn’t need them to be excited. Okay, that was a lie. I did need them to be excited. Instead, they’d gotten in my head and screwed everything up.
“Are you going to see him again this weekend?” Jess asked. The hits kept on coming.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Tonight wasn’t really planned.”
“Maybe he’ll call,” Jillian said in a soothing voice.
“And if he doesn’t it’s just because he’s busy with his sister,” Jess added.
But it was too little too late. It took a little effort to get them off the call. They seemed to sense that they’d screwed with my head. When I finally did, it took hours to fall back asleep where only nightmares waited.
Chapter Thirteen
I wore my nerves to work on Monday, doing my best to cover them up with a cute, black wrap dress. The encouraging phone call I received from my best friends on Friday night had been so discouraging that I thought about it all weekend lo
ng. What was I doing? I was risking everything and for what? I did not have a good track record with relationships, so why should I risk one now. As soon as I walked into the lobby of NorthWest Investments, I wished I could turn around and leave, especially since Trevor was coming off the elevators, his hands shoved into his trouser pockets and a smug grin on his face. He spotted me before I could run.
“Did you hear?” he called over.
I had no idea why he was so early on a Monday morning. Technically, I was early, but even he had beaten me here. A note of panic crept up the back of my spine. Trevor wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have a good reason. He’d probably been hanging around the lobby, waiting for me to come in, so he could rub that reason in my face.
“I’m just getting in. What’s up?” I asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“The permits came through. We’re going to be doing our presentations next Monday.” He looked a little too happy about that—like he was prepared to face the hiring squad. If only I felt the same way.
I shrugged my bag higher on my shoulder and shifted uncomfortably in my heels. “Next Monday?”
In truth, I was ready. I knew that. There was really only so much more I could do to perfect my plan for dealing with the preservation committee and getting the neighborhood on board for the restoration. But despite all of that, it felt like a teacher had just announced a pop quiz. I hadn’t even begun to think about the actual presentation. The part where I had to stand up and wow a bunch of people who didn’t even know my name was Cassie and not Kathy. I was so screwed.
“You okay?” Trevor asked, looking not the least bit concerned.
“Don’t get all touchy-feely on me,” I scoffed. “People might mistake you for human.”
“You sure now how to start a fella’s week off right. I’m going to miss you when you aren’t here in a few months and I have the job.” He hit me with that parting shot as he strode off. At least, he was finally showing his true face.
“There wouldn’t be enough room for me and your ego to work in the same office anyway,” I called after him. I limped over to the receptionist desk, my pride wounded, and dropped my bag in a heap with a heavy sigh.
“I thought you were supposed to relax over the weekend,” George said as he eyed me with concern.
I couldn’t tell him that I had relaxed. Friday night had been perfect. I’d blown off steam just the way Gavin usually did. Then I’d spent two days over-analyzing every second of it. Trust a girl to negate whatever R&R she managed to get. “It’s no big deal. How was your weekend?”
“I binge-watched Netflix and ate an entire pizza in my pajamas. So it was pretty much like every weekend,” George said.
“Maybe I need to hang out with you on the weekends.” It seemed like a much safer choice for everything but my thighs.
“Any time, girl. Consider that an invitation.”
I left him at the desk with promises of a coffee run later and decided it was time to get to work. I might be ready in theory for this presentation, but I needed to hustle if I wanted everything to go off smoothly by next Monday. But no matter how hard I tried, my eyes kept wandering toward the corner office area, hoping to see Gavin coming in or out of it. His blinds were closed, but the door was cracked open. Was he in there? I kept expecting to see his head poke out and look in my direction. Wasn’t he the least bit interested if I had come in for the day?
Cut it out, Cassie, I scolded myself. If I had spent half as much effort tweaking my presentation, I would be done with it already. Hell, I probably would’ve won a Nobel Prize by now.
Meanwhile, Jillian and Jess had decided that they needed to be more involved in my off-limits, office romance. The texts had started arriving at ten and hadn’t stopped, despite my trying to ignore them.
Jillian: Have you seen him yet?
Jess: I bet he’s waiting for you to go in there.
Jillian: She can’t make the first move.
Jess: She didn’t. He did when he kissed her. The ball’s in her court.
It seemed like I didn’t have to actually be a part of this conversation that they were having about me. I wanted to tune it out, but I was thinking all the same things that they were discussing. Maybe Jess was right, and he was waiting for me to make my move. That kiss. That kiss. It had been one hell of a first move, so it would only be fair for him to wait for me to respond. The trouble was that after 48 hours of analysis I still didn’t know what I should do. We’d crossed the line. That much was clear. If he hadn’t been such a gentleman, we probably would’ve crossed more lines. Maybe even dotted a few i’s and checked my list twice. But things hadn’t gone too far.
Yet.
Or maybe he would pretend like nothing happened. If so, I would follow suit. Perhaps he had spent the weekend realizing what a huge mistake he made. What if he was in his office right now hiding from me?
I stood up, my chair rolling backwards so hard it hit the cubicle wall. Well, I wasn’t going to just sit here while he pretended I didn’t exist. Before I’d really processed what I was doing, I was marching toward his office. My courage faltered as soon as I got there. I peeked inside and nearly collapsed with relief. Gavin was nowhere in sight. Agnes, the redhead from the meeting, came up behind me.
“Oh, he’s not in here,” she said. I stepped to the side to allow her access, and she bustled in, picked up a pen, and began scribbling a note. When she was done, she straightened up and smiled warmly at me. “You’re the new intern, right? If you need something from him, you can leave a note. He’ll get back to you sometime today.”
“Thanks, I’ll do that.” Now I was on the spot. I took the pen and paper she held out to me and waited awkwardly for her to go.
She stayed.
“How are you settling in? That seems like kind of a silly question since it’s only a temporary gig, right? But I know you’re working on the Majestic Theatre project. Let me know if you need any help with that.”
I remembered how vocal she had been at the initial meeting and made a mental note to take her up on that. “I think it’s going okay, but I won’t really know until we present.”
“Don’t let any of them scare you,” she lowered her voice. “Half of us don’t know what we’re doing half the time. That’s the real truth about being an adult. Were all just feeling our way through it.”
“So this sick to the stomach feeling that I’m getting it all wrong isn’t going away anytime soon?” I asked her.
“No,” she said, shaking her head with a laugh. “But there are perks.”
I was all ears. So far the only perks I’d experienced were taxes, bills, and an ever-growing list of responsibilities. “Like what?”
“No one can tell you when to go to bed,” she teased.
“I guess I’ll settle for that,” I said as we both laughed. She headed back out and I turned toward Gavin’s desk, alone with the notepad at last. I had no idea what to write. The things I wanted from Gavin probably shouldn’t be in writing. Not in a building with an HR department. Also, there was the fact that I really needed to deny what I wanted from Gavin. In the end, I settled for ‘I need to talk to you. Cassie.’ I hesitated, almost signing an XOXO and then decided against it. The hesitation cost me because before I could leave, Gavin reappeared.
“Cassie.” He sounded happy to see me. I guessed he hadn’t been avoiding me after all. “I just stopped by your desk and you weren’t there.”
He’d been looking for me. I twisted at the pen’s cap nervously, the movement mirroring how my insides felt. “I’ve been in here waiting for you.”
Now that sounded pathetic. I should have said that I ran into Agnes or made up an excuse for where I had been for the last ten minutes. Instead, I held up the pad of paper. “I was leaving you a note. Agnes left you one, too.”
He took it as he circled to the back of his desk and read it over, his nose crinkling with concentration as he did. I took a small step backwards. If I went slowly and quietly, maybe h
e would forget I was here until I was out of the room entirely. Gavin tossed the notepad down.
“You wanted to talk to me,” he said. It was amazing how one simple sentence could make me feel backed again the wall. My eyes shot toward the open door. It wasn’t really a conversation to have if half the office could hear it. He noticed my glance and walked over to close it. I wasn’t entirely sure that was any less obvious—the boss closing the door with the intern inside felt like the beginning of a porno—but it was going to be the first step in having this conversation that I still wasn’t sure I wanted to have. Before I could screw up the courage to open my mouth, he turned around and hit me with, “About Friday night.”
His words hung heavily in the air between us as ominous as the gray clouds blocking the sun outside.
I had my answer. I really didn’t want to have this conversation, and now he was blocking my only escape route. If he noticed my deer in the headlights terror, that didn’t stop him. “That kiss might not have been the best idea.”
I’d been thinking the same thing for 48 hours, but hearing it from Gavin’s own lips—the lips that had kissed me—crushed me. I squared my shoulders and forced a smile. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“I think you’re misunderstanding me.” Gavin ran his hands through his hair in frustration. He done the same thing on Friday. I realized it was a nervous tick. There was some solace in knowing that I had gotten under his skin, too. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
“I think I’m understanding you perfectly,” I said. I really didn’t need him repeating himself if it was just going to be a series of direct blows to my heart.
“You told me you weren’t interested in dating. I keep pursuing. I’m sorry,” he said, spreading his hands. “If that’s what you really want, then I’m going to respect it. I got a vibe on Friday, but it wasn’t”—
I didn’t let him finish the sentence before I was kissing him. He wanted me and that was all that mattered. All the questioning, all the analysis, I really, truly had my answer as to what I wanted. I didn’t want Gavin to stay away. I wanted him closer, consequences be damned.